A Conversation with Marc Vetri

Yesterday, Marc Vetri published a story on the Huffington Post about the sorry state of food journalism. Perhaps you heard? As one of the city's — no, the nation's — most celebrated chefs, people paid attention, and jilted food journalists like yours truly took to social media to express their thoughts.

In my ongoing effort to make chefs' lives worse here's a link to my review of @marcvetri's @LoSpiedoPhilly http://t.co/VZ3BZd0MKZ

— Adam Erace (@adamerace) January 27, 2015

I've been covering restaurants in Philly for ten years, and except for the mothership on Spruce Street, I've formally reviewed all of Vetri's. As restaurant reviewers, we critique chefs and food for a living and should be able to accept criticism back. We dish it out, we should be able to take it. But to me at least, Vetri's article was less about constructive criticism than it was about courting controversy with sweeping generalizations and contentious sensationalism.

I don't disagree with everything Vetri said. Do I think there's a lot of garbage out there passing for food writing? Of course. Do armchair critics undermine what I do and make things difficult for chefs? Duh. Most professional food writers out there would agree. Vetri says he spoke to many that encouraged this article; I would have too. But I don't know any food writer who would encourage statements like:

"Unfortunately, to combat the curse of instant access, real journalists have been forced to downgrade their standards, and are now in the business of giving younger readers their much-needed immediate buzz as opposed to producing more thoughtful—and thought-provoking—content. In the process of lowering their standards have done irreparable harm to the once-elegant business of reviewing restaurants."

 "Instead of changing with the times, finding ways to set a new standard, [restaurant critics] have descended into the abyss of shock-and-awe journalism—anything to draw readers' attention, and to encourage them to share on social media."

"The next big question is what the major critics will do next in their continuing campaign to make the lives of chefs more miserable."

I've interviewed Vetri many times before and have always found him to be a talented chef and a nice guy, so I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. When he texted me about my Tweets yesterday afternoon, I asked if he wanted to have a Q&A about the article. He accepted. Here's a link to our hour-long conversation.

I don't dislike Marc Vetri. He's a human. Talking with him and reading between the lines, I get the feeling he might change some of the things he wrote if he could. But as professional writers should know, having a media platform comes with a responsibility. Some capitulate to clickbait. Some don't. As a journalist, on which side does Marc Vetri land?