In praise of Sam Sifton

I want to echo Nico Muhly’s comments from a few days back about how much pride we ought to take in the New York Times’ brilliantly irreverent new chief food critic, Sam Sifton.

This morning, over a steaming wedge of ever-so-satisfying swiss chard and bacon quiche at the Farm on Adderley, I exploded into such violent laughter whilst reading Sifton’s appropriately enthusiastic review of Prime Meats that the entire staff of the restaurant came to check on me. I assured them that everything was fine and showed them this winning paragraph:

There are really no other downsides to eating at their newest restaurant. The staff is exceptionally well trained and efficient, a crew of handsome men and women dressed as if ready to ride horses back home to Bushwick, where they trap beaver and make their own candles. And a meal in the restaurant proceeds with all the jollity and good manners of something scripted by Laura Ingalls Wilder and scored by the Grateful Dead. It is an extremely pleasant place.

Suffice it to say— wouldn’t it be fresh if critics in other disciplines allowed their enjoyment to ooze out of their prose as much as Sifton does?

The following is definitely going to make my publicist cut me, but I couldn’t help but think today: I wonder if a lot of classical music critics haven’t been lulled into writing more or less pleasant, complimentary, but ultimately flavorless reviews because a lot of composers are writing music that shares some of those qualities. Did I mention that I initially considered calling this blog The Rude Polemicist?

Or is it that these critics are responding to the whole death-is-nigh attitude toward classical music by being overly-enthusiastic and supportive of all things new? I wonder if we wouldn’t be better served by the presence of a little bit of the libidinal in criticism, if the average reader would be led more toward investigation by brash and critical prose rather than by the white-washed pleasantries of the all too common mad-lib style reviews that dominate this, the subsidized Year of the Gustav Mahler sesquicentennial. And this is not to say that folks need to be serving up Dale Peck-style polemics by any means. Daniel Mendelsohn over at the NYRB is writing some thoughtful, dialectical, funny and moving criticism that is at the heart deeply ethical. Huh.

I don’t know why I’m so hopped up about criticism right now.

Whatever, everybody go eat some weißwurst over at Prime Meats, long lines bedamned.

As for me, a friend is coming over bearing guanciale and English peas… I have a suspicion that linguine, pecorino, and pasta water will be involved in the guest chef’s creation. More on that later.