"London’s Pop-Up Restaurants Let Rising Chefs Shine" by Oliver Strand

Full article: "London's Pop-up Restaurants Let Rising Chefs Shine" in The New York Times

Nothing beats the feeling of ending something in a good note. So here I am, ending this blog by applauding a quality news feature.

By Andrew Testa. Source: The New York Times

In this article, author Oliver Strand takes the readers of The New York Times to East London and explore the vibrant dining landscape there. There has been a wave of “temporary, roving or both” pop-up restaurants injecting spontaneity and life into the London’s food scene.

Strand wrote that these pop-ups run by rising chefs or “gifted veterans” of famous restaurants are dazzling “activist diners” – those that want to see these rising chefs in action before they become famous. And Strand used a good quote from Daniel Young, an online food journalist, to illustrate this point: “You want to be able to say you saw Bob Dylan when he was at the Folklore Center.”

But making good use of quote was only one of the many techniques Strand used to add colour and flair to this article.

To summon readers into a trance, Strand spent some effort in setting scenes even in this 1500-word article. For example, at the beginning of the article, he drew this picture: “That the locations are often secret, sometimes dramatic and operate in a regulatory gray area only adds to the sense of culinary adventure.” Another example was used to describe Dock Kitchen, where exotic dishes meet English classics: “…a light-filled glass shed on top of a renovated Victorian factory reached by pressing a buzzer and climbing a flight of stairs along a canal…”

Also, I particularly admire Strand’s good use of juxtaposition to let facts stand out: food that have “Michelin-starred precision” on Ikea plates; amateurs trying to cook like a professionals in underground restaurants in the United States versus professionals cooking in an amateur’s kitchen in London’s pop-ups.

Apart from the writing, the webpage features a lot of high quality images to support the article. There are pictures that echo the “part recital and part art happening” nature, the “dinner party” feeling, the “guests helping out” practice at these pop-ups etc.

I highly recommend this article.  Strand’s ability to craft eloquent writing while weaving in all the important information and facts throughout inspires me. In fact, I’m now following him on twitter.

"Delhi, India - Designer Delhi" by Kerryn Burgess

Full article: "Delhi, India - Designer Delhi" in Gourmet Traveller

Designer Fleur Wood (Source: Gourmet Traveller)

This piece of feature is what I call lazy journalism.

This travel feature by Kerryn Burgess about Delhi, India is an interview with Australian fashion designer Fleur Wood, who shares her travelling secrets with the readers.

At the beginning of the story, Burgess introduces Wood, an experienced India-phile, and explains Wood’s love of and familiarity with India as the reasons for the feature. Nevertheless, this part of the article is probably the only part the writer has contributed.

Out of the 2500 words of this story, around 2200 words are quotes and another 100 are addresses of the sights to visit. Burgess bombards readers with blocks of quotes by Wood and these quotes are only separated by subheadings of where to see, shop and eat.

Why would readers want to read a transcript of interview?

Initially, I was drawn to the article because I wanted to learn about Delhi. However, a feature purely based on the opinions of one particular person will only works if the readers can connect with that person. Sadly, I couldn’t. I didn’t know who Fleur Wood was and I doubted a lot of readers would. So right there, readers are starting to lose interest.

On top of that, the lack of visual supports, such as videos or images, further draws the readers away. It’s hard to visualise the attractions Wood recommends simply by relying on her quotes (after all, she’s a fashion designer, not a writer). The article did put hyperlinks to a few of these attractions, but the hassle of clicking these links and having to wait for the websites to appear can frustrate readers - at least me.

The way the article is structured may appeal more to readers that are actually planning to visit India as they can treat the article as a guidebook. But for readers who genuinely want to see India through the portrait of excellent travel writing, this article disappoints.

I think this is simply a perfunctory article put together to take advantage of the Commonwealth Games. It’s a pity that it fails to engage readers with this enchanting place, India.

"Global gourmet" by Sue Bennett

Full article: "Global gourmet" in Sydney Morning Herald

Normally, I’m quite good at summarizing an article, but for this one, I’m lost. That’s because I can’t find the central point of the story; I’ve read the story thrice, so I think I’ve done the writer justice.

The lack of supporting visual 
makes this article all more confusing.
Source: www.ilovefoodtrucks.com

It’s clear that the article is about Amanda Gale, the group executive chef of the luxury Como Hotels. But I’m not sure if the story it’s about Gale’s curiosity to discover exotic cuisines, how she became a chef or something else entirely.

Between the article and its headline, there is a short paragraph: “Wherever she goes around the world, Amanda Gale is curious to discover other cultures' flavours, writes Sue Bennett.” So I presume that’s the central idea of the story. But only the first half of what follows seems to support that.

The first half of the story talks about Gale’s excitement and the difficulty she faces in making exotic cuisines such as Bhutanese, Maldivian or Dominican.  This is actually a very interesting angle because you don’t hear about these cuisines very often and I doubt many people have tried them. So why not keep this as the central idea of your story, Bennett?

Then all of a sudden, while we are sitting in a restaurant in Bangkok with Gale, Bennett brings us back in time when Gale quit university and started working at restaurants. However, Bennett never brings us back to that Bangkok restaurant and I don’t even know why we were there in the first place.

The incoherent ideas in the article confuse me. The story doesn’t flow because there is simply no transition to link these different ideas. To illustrate this, let me quote this:

“In addition to her group role, she’s [Gale’s] now executive chef at the Uma Ubud hotel and Como Shambhala Estate health resort, both in the heart of the island.

It’s important for the hotels menus to reflect their locations.”

I see what point Bennett is trying to make but that big blank space between the two points juts me out of the story. And this is only one example.

Lastly, I’m simply bored by the monotone of the story – Bennett repeats the same short-sentence structure again and again with 800 words. All I hear is “blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah…”

Oh god, even typing this tone bores me.

"Thais Bristle at Australian's Take on Thai Cuisine" by Thomas Fuller

Full article: Thais Bristle at Australian's Take on Thai Cuisine in The New York Times

by Cedric Arnold for the International Herald Tribune. Source: The New York Times

This article reminded me of my heated discussion about the authenticity of Thai cuisine in Sydney with an Aussie friend. I, an Asian that grew up in Asia, believed that Thai food here is not real Thai; my friend, an Aussie bloke who had travelled to Bali (which is not even part of Thailand!) a few times, believed that Thai food in Sydney can’t be too far from being authentic because there were so many Sydneysiders that frequently travelled to Thailand.

He thought Sydneysiders must have brought back their knowledge and palate of authentic Thai cuisine.

But can an outsider really master all the nuances of an exotic cuisine without immersing himself in the culture? This was the question raised by Fuller in this story.

Fuller reported that Thais went ballistic over Michelin-starred Australian chef, David Thompson’s audacity to declare his mission to “revive Thai cuisine”. Thompson said Thai cooking was “decaying” and lacking the complexity and variation that it once did.

This declaration infuriated Thais. Fuller wrote that Thais’ pride and identity are closely tied with their venerable cuisine because many recipes were “tested and refined in royal palaces”. Thais are generally peaceful and pleasant towards outsiders, but not when their pride and identity are threatened in the kitchen.

Even though the angle of this story is pretty much straight news, Fuller managed to invigorate it through great quotes, anecdotes and “show, rather than tell”.

The quotes Fuller used are precise and vigorous. For example, Fuller cited a Thai food writer saying Thompson was “slapping the faces of Thai people!” or a Bangkok-based food writer from overseas comparing Thompson’s blasphemy to “Osama bin Laden going to the Vatican and saying he is the high authority on Catholicism”.

I wonder how much effort Fuller had spent to get those great quotes.

He also intertwined a couple of anecdotes, such as Thompson’s finding inspiration in “funeral books” and his winning the compliment from the wife of a Thai government official, to spice up the story.

To give us details, Fuller painted us the picture. He portrayed a food writer’s anger as “bitten into an exceptionally hot chilli pepper". And he showed us how Thais usually eat – on plastic tables and flimsy stools, on roadside.

I also admire his effort in balancing arguments on both sides of whether Thompson’s declaration was ambitious or insane. So at the end, it’s left to the readers to decide what they believe.

"Junior MasterChef is raising a crop of foodie kids" by Anooska Tucker-Evans

Full article: "Junior MasterChef is raising a crop of foodie kids" in Courier Mail

Source: Channel 10

This is a slightly coloured news story, reporting the potential effects Junior MasterChef has on the food trend of Australia.

The article is of typical length of a news story - 540 words – and with a short interesting intro about the potential changing taste of Australian kids. I think the intro captures the whole idea of the article, so I’d like to quote it here: “Forget fish fingers and spag bol for your children’s dinners, now it’s macadamia-crusted snapper and goats cheese ravioli on the menu.”

In terms of timeliness, significance and oddity, this news article nailed it. Junior MasterChef has just started, with an astonishing 2.2 million viewers for its first episode, and the buzz is likely to accelerate as the competition gets keener. The show obviously captures the attention of the whole nation and given our aggravating obesity problem and prevalent fast-food culture, the show brings about a lot of implications for people to consider.

For this article, Tucker-Evans did a pretty good job of balancing out opinions from different perspectives. The writer quoted four sources: fine-dinning restaurateur, Matt Moran, celebrity cook, Donna Hay, social commentator, Bernard Salt, and the show’s judge, Gary Mehigan. All of them provided different perspectives on what the show implies or triggers in the broader society.

To take the story to the next level, I suggest finding an angle that’s less obvious. The angle the writer used for this news story is fine. But to make it more interesting (probably for another story of the show later on), I will look into the lives of these Junior MCs and their families. The kids’ upbringings will provide more insights into how our nation should raise our next generation.

I am utterly blown away by how talented and passionate these kids are. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know the stories behind them?

"A saga of war and wine" by Leisa Tyler

Full article: "A saga of war and wine" in Sydney Morning Herald 

Further reading: "A wine worth fighting for" (2004) by Elizabeth Gilbert in GQ magazine

Source: www.marcopolis.net

Once I’d read the first paragraph of this article in SMH, I couldn’t help but compare it with a feature written by Elizabeth Gilbert in 2004. Both articles are on winemaking in war-torn Lebanon, but one appears in a newspaper and the other in a lifestyle magazine. Two disparate articles on the same topic? Very interesting.

In “A saga of war and wine”, Leisa Tyler wrote about a revival of winemaking industry in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. The vignerons even had plans to transform the place to a destination of wine tourism – hotels, wineries, vineyard restaurants and even the first winemaking museum in Arabic world.

She intertwined some notes on transportation and accommodations, history of the place, and an important sightseeing spot with the story. Excluding the fast facts of “getting and tasting there”, the almost mandatory element of a SMH’s travel article, the article is around 1200-word long – a typical length for a newspapers’ feature.

Given the limited space for the large amount of materials Tyler put it, I have to say she had fallen into the traps of “tell, rather than show” and “use more adjectives than active verbs”.

A 17-word sentence like this: “Led by Guiberteau, we make our way into the cellars where last year's vintage fills stainless-steel barrels” could have been tightened to a vigorous 13-word one like this: “Guiberteau led us into the cellars where…”. Of course it can still get better, but you see my point.

The story is informative but too journalistic for my liking. I much prefer the narrative style in “A wine worth fighting for” by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Source: www.marcopolis.net

This 2004 feature in GQ magazine is a 6000-word profile of a winemaker, Serge Hochar, who had been making wine in Lebanon during the war. Of course, Gilbert must have faced a more lenient deadline and more words to work with.

The time and length allowed her to inject anecdotes, set scene, show significant details of the people, craft better sentences, and include longer quotes. The story flows so nicely that it sounds like a conversation with a friend.

Most importantly, she brought out the passion and artistic persona of her subject - winemaking as an art and a creation of life.

Two articles are as disparate as Lafite and Burgundy. Which one do you feel like?

"New wave of foodies want their caviar, too" by Jane E. Fraser

Full article: New wave of foodies want their caviar, too in Sydney Morning Herald.

Source: Whybin TBWA

In this article, travel writer, Jane E. Fraser wrote that there is a growing trend among Australian foodies to look for gourmet experiences in unexpected destinations. Replacing traditional food travel destinations such as France and Italy are Thailand, Japan, Iceland, Spain, Greece and basically everywhere else.

She said there is a shift in what these foodies are looking for. Instead of merely looking for good food, thanks to the MasterChef effect, they now look more for the culinary experience - fishing in traditional Vietnamese way, wine-tasting in Thailand, or tyring out “the world’s only ecologically certified caviar” in Spain.

I think this is an exciting new angle to food travelling. The logic of such trend makes sense, but Fraser did not provide enough support and evidence to prove such a trend exists.

She quoted only two sources in this article: the owner of Food and Wine Travel, Karen Ridge and the managing director of Biznaga Travel Company, Casey Death. The majority of information was provided by Ridge while Death was only cited in two paragraphs about their company’s two-week travel package to Spain.

I seriously doubt the credibility of the sources. They are owner and manager of travel businesses, and it’s reasonable for me to assume certain level of bias in their stances.

The lack of figures and statistics to back up the trend is a serious flaw in this article. Is there any figure from the Australian government? Why not interview this new trend of travellers and hear what they say?

It seems that we can only take Fraser’s words for it. I didn’t know her so I checked her website, which said she’s one of Australia’s renowned and award-winning travel writers. However, readers always doubt what travel writers say in general, don’t we? We are sceptical because we think they are usually endorsed by the travel industry.

This article gives this feeling. The last paragraph about a STA’s travel deal smells “endorsement” – it is awkwardly placed; it isn’t directly related to the article; it sounds absolutely commercial.

Lastly, something minor. At the beginning of the article, Fraser used “that” cooking show to allude to MasterChef. But why not name it to avoid any ambiguity? Also, there is a grammatical mistake in the title – it should have been “new wave of foodies ‘wants’ their caviar, too”.