As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, the days when we all huddled into restaurants without the risk of illness looming can be difficult. And you may have a hard time remembering the days when the Dallas Morning News told you about the best and worst meals in town.
We are back now. Hi, my name is Brian and I am a new contributing food columnist who will offer an in-depth analysis of the local restaurant scene.
Until last month, I was a restaurant reviewer for the Dallas Observer, a five and a half year tenure and 144 restaurant reviews. I covered kitchens as popular as Tei-An and Homewood and as unloved as a messy sports bar in the AT&T stadium.
According to my records, I have eaten more than 200 meals, including takeaway, at restaurants in the Dallas area in the past 12 months. The list yet to be explored has over 100 more locations, many of which you will read about in a moment.
I trained as a writer, not a cook, unless you count my student days building sandwiches at Quiznos. (That experience resonates in today’s job market. I quit Quiznos for a better paying job, and within a week everyone else quit. Frustrated that no one would work for $ 6.40 an hour, the franchisee and the building was demolished. How many food writers can safely say they closed a restaurant?)
As the son of an American father and a Turkish immigrant mother, I received dual culinary training. Coming from a long line of talented home cooks, Mom taught her picky kids to embrace two worlds of food. We still eat lamb chops on holidays, dip every vegetable in garlic yogurt, and have a confident opinion about baklava.
My upbringing taught me that there is no such thing as a “standard” culture or cuisine to which all others are just side dishes. It also taught me that an open mind is the key to a happy stomach. That background guides my approach to food writing and is part of the reasons The News asked me to write this column.
My title is Columnist, not Critic, because I write about the Dallas food scene from different perspectives. This column covers a wide range: surveys on specific kitchens or individual dishes, reporting behind the scenes, trends in food and drink, restaurant reviews with a cultural context and the diverse effects of social, political and demographic problems on the restaurant company.
Our coverage and analysis covers food eaten by everyone, not just the insider, wealthy foodie. We will continue to expand the diversity of our offer in terms of who runs the kitchens, what prices they set and where they are.
Yes, the food on the plate is still important, as is the people who serve it. But I see restaurant reviews as an opportunity to learn about other topics in addition to whether dinner is delicious: the history of a neighborhood, the communities that dine in a restaurant, the cultural contexts that gave rise to each dish, and each other evolving tastes of our city.
Some restaurant staff and owners have told me they don’t want harsh criticism to come back because we are still in a mass crisis. Advertising can make or break a business right now.
But even more people are hungry for honest comments. Customers don’t want to spend hard earned cash on disappointing dinners, and many business owners see their job as a craft and want to get better at it.
This is a chance to help a city’s food scene through direct talk and hard love. Authors like me serve as consumer advocates, but we also need to provide useful, detailed, and empathetic feedback so that restaurants find our critical comments helpful rather than harmful.
The balance is never easy. It’s just trickier than usual right now.
Between surveys, reporting, interviews, reviews and opinions, there is a lot on our table. Enjoy the meal. Or, as we say in Turkish, afiyet olsun.
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