There’s something about the substack model that I sorta despise as it relates to food media. It probably relates to chowhound and this website, where the collective breadth of knowledge is shared out of a stupid, esoteric passion. (Whenever I try to explain how this website works to a random person, they look at me as if I’m a crazy person.)
With that being said, is anybody actually paying money for food substacks? I kinda liked the Angel, but then she moved to New York. There’s Max’s substack. (Hi Max! I’m sure your substack is good.) There’s Patricia Kelly Yeo’s. And I don’t wanna pay for any of them.
Not for me. It’s not that I think people who’ve found a market for their tips / takes / knowledge / recipes don’t deserve to be paid in this stage of our economy. If others are willing to pay them for their niche, that’s totally fine by me, and I almost come to expect that. It’s more that I can quite readily access great food information without a paywall or subscription. Especially with the kind of food I’m most interested in researching - Japanese, Chinese, and Italian - I can find really valuable information from content from those countries, whether it’s websites (without paywall), videos on youtube, or books, and those sources of expertise have been unmatched by my estimation. Thank goodness for Google Translate. And for recent and relevant takes on the restaurant scene, this site has been great. If it’s a local restaurant scene or for planning travel, I’ll probably find out about the restaurants eventually just by browsing or recommendations by friends.
I would maybe consider subscribing to a Substack if I really wanted to get into baking, making desserts, or ice cream, and I wanted a one-stop organized way of learning all the tricks and equipment for those. I think it was Marco Pierre White who said that baking is basically chemistry. I have neither the patience nor the carb and refined sugar allowance to do all the testing on my own. There is one particular ice cream creator I’ve seen who does some really interesting things; maybe I’d consider hers if I got serious about dessert.
I don’t ever really seek out professional food reviews or listen to podcasts. So, even with the occasional troll or hater here, I do appreciate this site indeed to share enthusiasm and dialogue with likeminded folks.
This site is so reminiscent of the old internet, where knowledge was treated more like a gift and less like a commodity. I am quite literally a wanna-be novelist, so I certainly believe in writers getting paid! I think what I’m so skeptical of is all these writers with credentials that I don’t really believe in just starting these little substack blogs and then demanding money for them? These just seem like rich kids with good dining budgets. Something really telling was Emily Wilson from the angel talking about how if she wants infinite choice, she just goes to a country club. Of course she’s a country club kid! (Which is fine, my future child will also be one because I’m so obsessed with golf. Side note, if you play golf, come play Oakmont, Glendale with me. Open invitation to anybody on this board basically.)
I dunno, maybe we should all start substacks, ha. @pomodoro , you’d immediately be one of the most knowledgeable writers on substack about Tokyo dining / sake! But there’s also something really special about you just posting on here because you care a lot about these things and you’re just trying to help people.
Sorta related, my favorite substack is Tasbee Herwees’s. tasbeeh herwees | Substack . She writes really well about what it means to live in LA these days, and she’s really on the pulse of the literary, arts, and sorta the food world. Her substack is also entirely free, but you can pay if you want to. Honestly, I just might.
and thanks for the invite to golf, but i don’t golf (yet).
best of luck with your writing endeavors! i’ll pay for good writing. i guess that just gets to the issue for me which is “is there a unique or interesting point of view” enough to justify adopting this new model of subscribing / paying for essentially access to a blog. i’m trying to limit my subscriptions and giving out my email / create passwords as is. if I come across a Substack that offers real erudition (not just rehashed basic stuff or some nice opinion, but real expert-level knowledge) on a particular food subject, i’ll consider it. maybe they’re out there and I just haven’t looked hard enough. a paywall automatically kind of dissuades me from looking around too much anyway.
but for traditional print like fiction or nonfiction, i’ll certainly pay. i’ll pay for rare old books, too. (i’d love to get a Rose Adler-bound book and display it with a Seizo Sugawara lacquered Jean Dunand dinanderie, one can dream . i did find a Rose Adler-bound book in Tokyo but decided against it.)
haha, i wouldn’t ever really think to. i do value being outside of the industry and just reporting back on my own personal travels freely here to engage with people who share a similar interest. sometimes i want to go into much more detail on a meal, but i’ll limit pictures and descriptions because threads would be way too long. i dunno, creating a Substack just feels so self-important to me, i wouldn’t be comfortable with it personally. to create something behind a subscription/pay wall, one has to offer some real insight, and if I’m learning something by having a good dialogue with a chef, for example, I think that sometimes those finer points are shared in a genuine conversation not meant to be broadcast to an audience. on a related note, perhaps, some chefs in Japan specifically prohibit reservations made by other chefs. for me as an outsider, to learn something insightful then get credit for it by sharing on Substack (in subscriptions or payment) might almost feel like a little betrayal in some sense.
plus, maintaining it would change how i approach some travel / meals and i prefer these organic rundowns - 1) for my own cataloging, 2) because travel to Japan is at such fever pitch, many places other than the tourist list deserve spotlight or a look in to. for example, i like being a repeat customer to build a relationship, and if I had a Substack I’d probably try to visit as many new places as possible with an audience in mind. for that reason too, i would never go on a paid for food tour in Japan to get into otherwise inaccessible restaurants (a casual ramen tour would be fine but hardly Substack worthy). I like to do the planning and reserving myself, and I don’t really have any internet audience just friends or family with whom I’m traveling. building experience and learning context is edifying and an important part of the journey to really understand some food at a higher level, so i don’t want to just go to cross off a bunch of supposed “best of” list. if anything, i’d only hide behind log in to prevent industry folk from trying to steal too many ideas from a report on what some chefs in Japan are doing, though that info is of course already out there in greater detail, largely in Japanese, for example…so i’m not sure what insight i could actually provide to justify a subscription.
and i’m certainly not an expert, just sharing enthusiasm of my journey and trying to give a look in because the sheer amount of great experiences in Japan is mind-boggling. if this was a Xanga sort of journal or something, i’d probably oscillate between travel, drink, design, and my thoughts on different industries; it would be unfocused and it would just feel odd to me to brand myself.
I’ve thought about the substack dynamic a lot, as related to different fields.
In a sense, I don’t think it’s different than paying professional critics at big papers in the days past to review restaurants. This is collectively crowdfunded in modern parlance through subscription fees, in a bundled package (the NYT, the WSJ). Nowadays, I don’t think people who aren’t obsessive can name a single major food critic. I myself can name maybe three?
It also means that the food critic ecosystem is much more fragmented, and subject to much more self selection, since most people will only pay for what they want to hear. If you look into the top substackers in general, or in any specific field, you’d be astounded at how much they make despite neither you nor most of your friends having ever heard of them. On the other hand, it means it’s super easy to talk past each other nowadays.
In the same vein, I always tell people that I appreciate what Michelin does, and even with Michelins flaws, they are generally directionally correct enough. The real question is if one’s utility function aligns with that of Michelin. For example I don’t really care about the wine list in general, which is a component of a lot of professional ratings. I don’t care as much about having good service as long as the food is good enough to offset it, but this is impossible to measure at scale consistently for Michelin.
I honestly signed up for this forum because of the generosity of the folks here to share their knowledge. I personally don’t really care about most critics unless they drop some deep insights into technique or background that isn’t obviously on display (e.g. I read in an Addison review that Brandon at Hayato makes two batches of dashi per service to choose the superior one) ,or if a restaurant is truly horrific and I should avoid it.
One last note is that, in the goodbye note written by the former NYT food critic, he mentioned a lot of interesting things. So much reference point meals, but what are reference points? How many cheeseburgers does he have to eat to say this is the best? Was he, a white dude who grew up eating mostly Euro-American food, the right person to judge Asian influenced food?
And most interestingly, that unless a restaurant did something noteworthy, good or bad, he wouldn’t write about them. He was aware of the power that any slightly negative thing he would say would be wielded against the restaurant, and he didn’t become a critic to put people out of business. But it became a fine line: a buzzy place that over salts an overpriced steak? Write up. A mom and pop place that he got an overpriced steak from? Maybe he’d let it slide into nothingness by withholding a review.
I fear substack writers don’t have the same sense of judiciousness that some of the old critics did.
I am 100% sure I read it in the LA Times, since I was reading an old top 101 yesterday hahaha. Also the phrasing is completely different, as the quote I read had more adjectives (something along the lines of two cloudless dashi stocks, which isn’t your style of writing)
Maybe Addison reads FTC?!?
I’ll try to find the link for you later
Edit: Out and about now, but if you have a LATimes subscription, it’s probably the 2023 101 best list, where Hayato was ranked #3. This is just off memory though
. let’s keep it that way!
. i did find a Rose Adler-bound book in Tokyo but decided against it.)