Best of luck!
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Not just you. Lots of people in that thread. Youāre still also insulting the writer who was hired for the job and implying they were green and inexperienced. That might have been their experience in the restaurant. A lot of people in this forum have differing experiences at restaurants too.
Anyway - my sense is not many people in this forum wouldāve said this stuff to her face and we got got. We can own up to it.
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She was green and inexperienced, but knowing that it was in fact her first job out of grad school I blame whoever hired her. Seems like she made the most of that remarkably lucky break.
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I share your sentiments. From my perspective, this isnāt an appropriate time for debating her qualifications or the merits of her reviews.
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great time for some empathy, tho. @froginawell69 thank ya for ya efforts in mainstream media n wish you the best. developing a perspective well and maintaining integrity when putting that into writing arenāt easy things. even more adversarial these days when starting fresh. more info than ever but a greater proportion of traps, too. god knows how poorly my opinions on food have aged over the years and how much further they have to go, so credit where credit is due
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take it one step further. think about how much her reviews/qualifications have improved since that early review. additionally, a professional critic is (indeed) held to different standards, both by internet randoms and their literal employer.
and tbh, thereās a symbiotic nature between boards like ours, professional reviewers like kelly/bill/tejal et al, tiktokers, restaurant PR, standard restaurant operators etc. (Iām 99.9% sure that Billās seen the āHas Bill Addison wrote a review todayā¦ā thread)
I always come back to the late great Jon Gold who, in 2014, said:
Good food is good food: The entity identifying it as such is irrelevant. That said, somebody who has tasted creme brƻlƩe at 200 restaurants is generally better equipped to assess number 201 than a novice encountering the numbingly rich dessert for the first time, and is also better equipped to put the dish in its cultural context. Is the more experienced person often a critic? Indeed.
Itās highly likely that Kelly would be the first person to tell you that her contextualization of Manzke couldāve been better at the time.
And the dig re: light boxes is also a bit unfair imho. The modern era demands visual context, and the modern restaurant aināt built for an easy time visually. Whether itās people using a lightbox to make their food photos pop (I can tell when folks do it!) or when people have their phone lights on for a whole ******** meal, it just is what it is. Of course, if someoneās turning the omakase into a nightclub, thatās another story; but, again, we are as guilty for demanding photos (whether explicitly or implicitly) as folks are for posting them with good lighting/editing etc.
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Please fix the post hiding
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Iām not getting into this any further after this. Someoneās time under a corporate umbrella doesnāt define their ability. And of course ability grows over time. Those two things can both be true.
I am sad for the state of food media today, and sad for anyone losing their job, especially someone whose writing I admire. Reposting from a thread where people talked shit about that writer and then validated their shit talking when they learned how āexperiencedā they were is crap behavior. Chalking a woman/person of color getting a break up to luck is even more crap behavior.
Yall got me out here agreeing with @PeonyWarrior
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Itās unfortunate false positives by the anti-spam tool I installed after getting blasted with hundreds of spam posts a day. I manually undo it the next time I log in.
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I enjoyed your writing at Timeout after @moonboy403 told me to follow you and that your opinions were relevant. I read the articles even though Timeout is cancer on mobile. It sucks your time there has ended, and I hope the time there springboards you to another gig. My endless sympathy for the state of the publishing world today.
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Itās incredible luck for a kid of any sex or race to get a first job out of college reviewing restaurants for a publication like Time Out in a place like LA. Itās amazing to me that it happened given the number of experienced reviewers they could have hired. There are few gigs like that and a lot of ambitious, proven writers so eager to get them theyāll move across the country.
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Patricia seems eminently qualified to me. (10) Patricia Kelly Yeo | LinkedIn
Regardless, she is here reading this thread, and she is hurt after losing her dream job, so it does not seem appropriate to be criticizing her credentials at this time.
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Iām talking about her lack of experience when she was hired at Time Out. In the second paragraph of her piece she herself said, āHaving a full-time position writing about food in this day and age has always felt like a stroke of dumb luckāa charmed and mildly implausible situation ā¦.ā
After 4+ years there sheās one of the most qualified candidates you could find for a restaurant reviewer and/or food reporter gig, particularly in LA.
Seems like she was being humble and sweet there. Anyway, seems this thread has run its course.
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I edited her work for Eater prior to her gaining the job at Time Out. I remember when I started blogging in 2008 people were skeptical that I had a voice or a reason to cover the Los Angeles restaurant scene. In some ways, those skeptics (who probably included Jonathan Gold and other more established journalists at the time) were right because I was in my 20s and inexperienced. I just had my curiosity and a lifetime of eating in places like Koreatown, SGV, and Glendale (where I grew up). Kelly had a grad degree from USC in journalism, whereas I only went to undergrad there for business, plus sheād written for publications like Eater and Eater LA before Time Out. She was much more prepared than I was going into this, but part of being a food writer is learning on the job. As I read Kellyās work in Time Out and her Substack, Iām honestly in awe of how great of a writer she is.
The people on this board have it easy. Many posters are anonymous. Most of the time youāre posting photos and writing a few lines about a restaurant you like or donāt like. Itās often very helpful and useful, but itās not food writing. I like this community and enjoy participating. Being a food writer and journalist takes a lot more, it takes smarts and organization and attention to detail that goes beyond posting on a forum. Itās very hard, and the market is naturally competitive for ideas, arguments, and perspectives. I think thereās a place for both, and I have long tried to credit this forum for restaurants I hadnāt heard about or tried. At the end of the day, I think itās more productive to provide feedback on the writing/work instead of the person behind it.
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Iāve written restaurant reviews professionally so I know how much work it is to do a good job. Personally I could never have done it full-time. Takes a lot of discipline to do it without ruining your health?
Looks like PKY is on board at Eater.
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As a freelancer.
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