Won’t eat out if you pay me

Where’s the wisdom in throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the cake with the conked oven, you ask? Well, what if it’s the fly with the soup or the scumbag boyfriend with his scumbag friends?

Sometimes, it’s best to make a clean cut. To give up hope. To flee. To accept defeat. To stay defeated. For after an evening spent dressing up, driving willingly in the wrong direction in peak-hour traffic, dead faint with hunger and with months of expectations cartwheeling in the stomach for The Best Meal Ever, disappointment is a hard pill to swallow. And once you do that a handful of times, or until you hit your credit card limit, the prospect of dining out is not that palatable anymore. Cooking or ordering in to eat in your pajamas — the scent of garlic on your sleeves and House MD for company — is infinitely more exciting. Now, I may not be a chef. Or even the best cook in my block. But hey, at least I like my own cooking.

Recently, in a rare moment of weakness, after shunning any place with a white tablecloth for months, I ended up at New Delhi’s newest deli. But even the best insurance against a bad meal — a good companion and chilled beer (elsewhere, since they didn’t have a liquor licence yet) — couldn’t save the day. If anything, it made it worse. Why didn’t we just head out to our favourite watering hole and make an evening of it — at half the price and thrice the satisfaction? Sure, their pub grub is greasy and the fries single-fried, but at least their menu doesn’t promise a (mustard-sodden) Philly cheesesteak or pulled pork burgers (that make sachertortes blush). And god knows — and so would the waiter, if he had paid attention — we nearly ordered a jackhammer to ‘break bread’ that night.

Admittedly, it’s in bad taste to kick a place when it’s down. And the deli has had its share of blows to the gut — mostly by people whose opinion matters (and no, we don’t mean paying customers). But must you part with your empathy and your hard-earned money, all at the same time?

Let’s take a moment here to pause and consider if all this regurgitated anger is really misdirected self-aggrandisement. Or, worse, ignorance. A trait I may have in common with the two kinds of people who usually feel entitled to criticise anything on a plate.

The first kind, of course, are ‘people whose opinion matters’. People who bandy about words like unctuous and umami, texture and decadence like they invented them. Those most likely to say “too much truffle” or “sumac is the new jeera” when all they really want after junket number 450 is dal chawal and pickle. Pillars of the I-scratch-your-back-with-celery-while-you-scratch-mine-with-asparagus club, they walk the ethical minefield that is the meeting ground of chefs, PR machinery, food writers, reviewers and bloggers, with a practiced ease all Elvis. In this cesspool of incest, eschewing anonymity and creating a ‘buzz’ for ‘friends’ is the only way to stay afloat, to get invited to the next big launch, to clink single malts at ‘exclusive’ tastings — and to beat everyone with an iPad and an opinion on thepla and caviar.

Ethics, by definition, are fluid. If national dailies can have rack rates for reviews, why should their employees have compunctions about comped room nights and minibar bills? Surely, recession-proof Dom Perignon hampers for Diwali are par for the 12-course ‘free’ lunches they burp about on Twitter all year. How then, can anyone who spells sauerkraut right take restaurant reviewers seriously?

Perhaps, the only people more suspect than professional reviewers are their illegitimate frogspawn — the growing tribe of unpaid do-gooders who thrive online. The Masterchef-watchers and Mark Bittman groupies who hop from restaurant to restaurant, review site to review site, writing reviews they read out to themselves on the pot and to friends at dinner parties. Some even graduate to starting a blog or a group for ‘foodies’, once they’ve cracked the self-serious critic’s code: say something unsavoury, say it long enough, and people will believe you. Others still have carved a second career off it. Prolific — with hundreds of reviews — star-ratings and followers of their own, they stand to get paid for positive ‘user reviews’ and for dissing competition. A lucky few may even snag a Dom Perignon hamper!

Last month, I had the privilege of acquainting myself with just such a specimen of the critical mass online. At the receiving end of his venom — over 700 words in two instalments — was a first-time restaurateur and friend who now knows, hell hath no fury like a self-proclaimed Malayali (or Bengali or Tamil) foodie scorned. One who was convinced the moilee’s sauce was too thin, the aviyal not Mallu enough, and yet he decimated every plate of food that swung through the kitchen door. What else could he do, poor fellow? If you feed a Mallu at a Mallu restaurant that his mother doesn’t run, surely you’re asking for it.

Former New York Times writer Regina Schrambling — also the alleged owner of the Twitter handle @RuthBourdain, a “parody mash-up of (ex- Gourmet editor) Ruth Reichl and (author-TV celebrity) Anthony Bourdain” — once described a book by the latter as “puke on a page”. Zomato’s tropical upchuck is only a million shades greener.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire independent, critical voices that add to the white noise online, just as I admire parents who take their Happy Meal-loving kids to ITC Bukhara. Free will ought to be exercised at all costs (even when you’re forced to pay 10 per cent extra as service charge). Food must be celebrated. On Facebook. On Instagram. On credit card bills. #Sunday #brunch at #five-star #again — insert family picture here, photobombed by surly waiter — is worth every paisa of ₹10,000, not inclusive of taxes. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to my dinner and to dishy Dr House.

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