Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is senior editor for Minnesota Monthly and has won five James Beard awards for her food and wine writing. She is also editor-in-chief of the national recipe magazine “Real Food.”
In her own words, Grumdahl talks about food writing’s past and future.
On the evolution of food writing:
In 1997 when I started, there wasn’t much of a restaurant scene in Minnesota. There were no locavores and the great desire was to NOT be from Minnesota as far as food.
But I always believed exactly the opposite — that the Midwest was fantastic. Maybe you had to be an outsider (I’m from New York City) to see that the cheese is phenomenal and the dairy is unbelievable and you can’t get fresh chickens like that in New York City.
It’s grown leaps and bounds since then. It all started happening maybe 20 years ago at pioneering restaurants like Lucia’s and Café Brenda, but to my mind coalesced in the restaurant Auriga, the first to really feature on the menu a preponderance of local produce and products.
I would point to the Food Network, which started in 1997, the same year I started my column. It allowed people to care about food in a different way. It wasn’t this food continuum of gluttony to frivolity. The Food Network allowed you to be a hobbyist in food.
My coverage reflects the facts on the ground; I’m very much a beat reporter. I find out what’s happening and then I report on it.
When a whole lot of Japanese restaurants started opening, you’re interested in Japanese restaurants. When it’s micropubs, that’s what you care about.
A good food critic is a generalist, whether it’s the foods of Provence or the drinking culture of Korea.
This isn’t New York City where I could make a beat out of reviewing five-star restaurants. I’ve always written about corner Vietnamese places and tiny storefronts.
On writing about food in an online world:
You have this immediate reaction from readers and from people who are not readers. It gets complicated.
For a long time I respected the critic rule to wait six weeks before reviewing anything. Online has really impacted that. I don’t feel like my job is any less needed or that people regard me with less respect. With all the hobbyists on Yelp, they are MORE interested in what a professional critic has to say, so they can compare their experiences and their writing.
Kind of like how people who play in their own softball league are more interested in the Twins.
I was worried a few years ago that amateur critics would supplant the professionals. But it hasn’t. Instead, it’s made critics entertainers. I can’t believe that people are so interested in what I do every day in terms of Facebook and Twitter.
On the audience shift:
Being a restaurant critic in Minnesota is relentlessly local.
That new steakhouse in Minnetonka? It means something to the people who live there, so it means something to us (the magazine).
I’m not sure where things will go. It will become more cross-platform, it’s not going to be just a print review, it will also be a television review, a radio interview looking for behind-the-scenes tidbits, an electronic stream pre-viewing and recapping any developments post-publication.
You’ll be ceaselessly promoting the brand, working as a brand ambassador, using your status as an entertainer to help the print publication as a whole. In the past it was the publication, or, as they say today, the platform, that made the reviewer. In the future, the publications will be looking to the reviewer to boost their own brand from day one.
Here’s what food writers have to say:
- Ruth Reichl, former editor of “Gourmet” magazine
“Everybody has always thought they could be a food critic” - Holly Hughes, editor of “Best Food Writing”
“I love the alternative weeklies; they still devote space to longform writing” - Jonathan Gold, food critic for LA Weekly, Pulitzer Prize winner
Food section “almost like a newspaper within a newspaper” - Miriam Morgan, food editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, winner of the 2011 James Beard award for Best Food section
“Reporting about food is no different than anything else, it requires knowledge of the beat” - Craig LaBan, food critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, James Beard award winner
“You can’t underestimate how the change in technology has changed food writing”
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