(So Much) More Than Just Food

by Neil Schloesser
Contributing Writer

I used to write food reviews but that changed after I had a small bowl of coleslaw. I was confident in my reviews. I had a definite idea of how food should taste and the best way to present food. It was still opinion but I believed that my critiques rose above the level of mere opinion. I tried to make them informed and balanced and tempered by reasoned analysis. I found that to be impossible after an afternoon spent in Spokane. 
 
I grew up with a foodie parent. I grew up knowing the flavors of exotic cheeses, vinegars, fruits, and vegetables. My mother couldn’t boil water but my father couldn’t, wouldn’t, serve a plain dish even if me and my sisters begged on our knees, blood trailing from our open sores crying for a dish that hadn’t been doctored.  The notion of having just corn, or just macaroni and cheese was as foreign to my father as a sense of style is to a person with a mullet. Plain food was an alien concept that went against his beliefs, both artistically and socially, as he expressed himself through the food and then used it to socialize with his family, the dinners being the classic family time when we expressed troubles and triumphs, laughter and annoyances, and received chastisement, encouragement, or the occasional pearl of parental wisdom. Food and supper were the mediums in which my family bonded and my father was a chef in more than the obvious way.

My father grew up around food and kitchens. His father was a cook at the Fargo Country Club when men were booze-swilling characters and women were still girls. Dad spent his early years working in fine dining establishments in Fargo and in Minneapolis. He traveled before he got married and then a little more before my sisters arrived. Dad raised his family while he worked around the moneyed people at the Fargo Country Club. His job allowed him to combine his love of food and people. He shared these two passions with his family, often by bringing home leftovers of duck or chocolate mousse from the Club’s kitchen.

Knowing how to cook and what foods smelled and tasted like went hand in hand with being a good host and learning how to greet people and shake hands and making a good first impression. Food and being social were nearly identical in my house and serving bad food was just as bad as being a poor host. This was my dad’s job, both professionally and personally. At work, he was the caretaker of large parties. At home, he was the father, the provider of feasts and good times.  If my dad believed in luck he would have thought himself lucky.
   
My dad has a natural curiosity that lends itself to being social and combining ingredients. It also means he likes to travel so he took his family on travels across the country or went away with mom on vacations. To travel means to try and on our vacations, we ate whatever we crossed and experienced whatever we could afford. As an adult, I’ve continued to try everything that crosses my path. I’ve traveled to Italy, Japan, and Mexico, among other places, and I’ve lived in different parts of America, so when I cry over the awfulness of a dish, it’s because I’ve been around and I’ve tasted a few dishes from their native habitats.

I’ve continued my father’s tradition of cooking at home. During the course of a week, I will make three or more meals and I try to make fresh bread at least once a month. These are skills I’ve been working on for a long time so when I critique a restaurant, it isn’t out of spite, it is because I have experience in the world as a foodie who eats, cooks, and bakes.
 
My father has ruined me in that I expect flavors to be brilliant. When I dine out I expect balanced flavors, aromatic dishes, and beautiful presentations, but this is rarely the case so I eat in because I can make a better meal at home. I’m not being arrogant; my standards are just really high. We’re talking about food here, not gruel, which is why I was confident in my reviews.

I wasn’t entirely comfortable writing a review because it is opinion but my attempts at making it objective eased my concerns. Driving home from California, I stopped in Spokane to look around and eat. I stopped at a place called Chicken-N-Mo, which is in their downtown. It’s a small, thin restaurant, the type that serves great food and ambiance. Unfortunately, this place only served good ambiance.
 
I ordered fried chicken, coleslaw, chili, and a bun. I first tried the coleslaw and did double take.  “Surely it can’t be this bad?” I thought. It was. The coleslaw was the worst I had ever tasted. It was watery, flavorless, and it’s only saving grace was that the cabbage wasn’t soggy. The chicken was moist but the batter was salty, and the chili either was canned or crap. The entire meal was a disappointment.  As I sat there, slack jawed and confounded, a woman came in and raved about the coleslaw. It was the best thing she’d ever had and was ordering a ton of it for a dinner party she was throwing. I was floored because I thought the coleslaw was terrible but here was this lady raving about how much she likes watery, bland food. She made me question my ability and qualifications to write a food review because if she can exist then maybe I was wrong and she was right and I had no business telling people what was good or bad about their food. I concluded on the drive back to Fargo that I did not have a right to critique a restaurant’s food. People have a variety of tastes and who was I to say that their tastes were wrong? So I quit writing food reviews.

Writing food reviews is difficult because I am imposing my beliefs onto another person but I believe that all restaurants should showcases the flavors of a dish and if they fail they should be held accountable. I believe that balancing flavors and presenting a dish with many flavors is important. Being clobbered by salt or one flavor is bad, really bad. It’s a sign of poor execution. A dish’s flavors should be like a bouquet of flowers for the tongue, none drowning out the rest and all contributing equally to the feast. 

When I eat out, I expect the food to be great. It should be as good, or better than what I can make at home or what my father can make at home. I base my reviews on this expectation. Food isn’t a game, it’s sensual, it’s an art, it’s a time to socialize, it’s so much more than just food that to treat it as such is insulting. Food is literally life and to serve a dish that disrespects this fact is blasphemous and deserving of a thorough review.   

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