Entry 3:
The day is taken up with the final grooming of my review, as it passes through the editorial machinery of the Times. Reporters who are used to banging it out and seeing it run the next day get a rude awakening when they come to 43rd Street, where the editorial shiatsu can go on for days. As a critic, I have something like diplomatic immunity, although no one can override style commandments that, until recently, forbade the use of racy colloquialisms like "fire" (executives were always "dismissed" or "ousted") and require editors to change "ensure" to "insure."
Late in the afternoon, I get on a cross-town bus and head to the studios of New York One, the all-news cable station partly owned by the Times. Every Tuesday, I sit across the table from my colleague Sam Roberts, the host of New York Close-Up, and chat for a few minutes about the next day's review. My head is pixilated so that no one can recognize me. This means makeup is unnecessary, so it's a quick in-and-out session that always begins with Sam turning to me and asking, "So, what's on the menu.?" The truth is, I've eaten so many meals since my last visit to the restaurant under review that I can barely remember what's on the menu. Once I started to rhapsodize about a fabulous cauliflower velouté that was not, in fact, served at the restaurant we were talking about. Sam, a naturally curious sort, also has the disconcerting habit of throwing in a question from left field like, "Are beef cheeks really cheeks?" or "Are the pigeons in a Moroccan bsteeya the same as the pigeons on the streets in New York?" So far, I've known the answers, but I foresee the day when I'll sit there spluttering.
I am shocked to find that even after spending many hours gorging at Alain Ducasse the last couple of weeks, I am ravenous when the dinner hour approaches. A new Italian restaurant beckons, a completely unknown quantity, and I am looking forward to eating food that isn't French. It's pretty clear that the people at the front of the house do not recognize me (Italian restaurants generally don't seem to sweat over my comings and goings), which is good, because they would be very unhappy with the comedy of errors that their waiters perform for the next hour and a half. The booming restaurant economy has thinned the ranks of competent staff, and this evening you can see it.. The waiters tend to cluster and socialize with each other, abandoning diners. One waiter simply looks at my wife when she asks where her glass of red wine has gone, and says, "I don't speak English." The water-bearer pours iced tap water into my Pellegrino. The main courses, like refugees, travel from table to table before finding their way to my table, where I get my wife's dish and she gets mine.
The food is OK, nothing special. The chef has delusions of greatness, reflected in the fulsome résumé printed on the back of the menu. Sorry, it's not enough to have a big personality. The espresso, inevitably, is bitter. And why do they always serve a double espresso in one of those cups with the dimpled handles that force you to grip delicately, and ineffectively, with thumb and forefinger, ensuring (sorry, insuring) an ergonomic breakdown? The restaurant is a bust.
I tend to be philosophical about bad restaurants. I think of my counterparts covering the theater. Their chances of seeing a good play are much slimmer than my chances of getting good meal. Of course, they don't have to eat the play—three times. But restaurant standards in New York are so high that, like the hummingbird, I flit from one beautiful flower to another, sipping nectar as I go. Nancy, my wife, takes it very hard when faced with a bad meal. I can see the smoke coming out of her ears, and on the ride home, she rails. There are restaurateurs who think I'm a tough critic. I've been tempted to let Nancy do a guest review from time to time and give them a taste of the lash.
