It’s been five years since Alan Richman’s infamous hatchet job on the food and people of New Orleans. It seems like a good time to revisit the piece, not only because of the changes in our city since Katrina, but also because of interesting news about Mr. Richman.
Mr. Richman remains the food critic at GQ, a nice-smelling magazine which, from a glance at the current cover, caters to well-heeled, urban, young men who want to look like Leo DiCaprio. It also tells you how to eat, drink, and have sex, without which advice its readers would presumably be hungrier, more sober, and celibate.
In 2006, following Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, Mr. Richman decided to pay a visit to our city in search of good food. Now, it is worth noting that he had never liked the food here. Such an expedition can be compared to a vegetarian arriving in 1946 Berlin and whining about the lack of outstanding currywurst joints. Showing up here after a disaster which flooded 85% of the city and bitching about food he doesn’t really want is a cry for professional help.
So, what can be said about Mr. Richman’s screed? Regarding his notorious inability to discern the difference between roux and corn starch, I offer my services as his personal Googler. Even if he had not had access to a computer (I’m sure there must be a few lying around the GQ offices), anyone who cannot differentiate the textures and flavors of dishes prepared with the two has no business being a food critic.
But maybe Mr. Richman realized this and thus turned his unwanted attention to the people of New Orleans. Not content with deriding the populace as lazy, fantasy-obsessed drunks, he laments that he has never met a Creole. Perhaps, during a period of disorientation brought on by eight hours of traveling without the benefit of a decent Peking duck, he missed New Orleans and wound up in Disney’s Port Orleans ersatz French Quarter, for I can assure him that he has met Creoles; they have probably cooked and served the food he ate here. Some of them sweep the streets of the astounding amounts of debris left behind by his fellow tourists. Far from being the “faerie folk” of his disturbed imagination, they are everywhere.
It is entirely possible that he habitually puts on blinders in the presence of the little people who serve him. He didn’t see any Creoles because they weren’t important enough. After all, a Penn education and a position writing for a publication like GQ probably allow for little meaningful contact with hoi polloi.
The only restaurant Mr. Richman liked during his grumpy rampage through the Crescent City was August, John Besh’s flagship establishment. Yep, that’s it. Only one place in town offered food that pleased his lofty palate. You would think even the most curmudgeonly of food writers could have managed to find at least a few good meals in a city of 600+ eateries.
If you’d had a relative come to New Orleans for a visit and he didn’t like any of the three places you took him to eat, you’d write him off as a crank. Mr. Richman, with all the resources available to him, surpassed this to the point of a pathology.
He’s much more comfortable in New York and San Francisco, places which accord him the fear and respect that he feels he deserves. I can imagine chefs and maitre d’s defecating in terror when he walks into their dining rooms. “Alan Richman’s here,” they whisper to everyone, quivering at the very thought of GQ‘s resident snark artist savaging their meals, service, uniforms, napkin folds, wall décor, china, and haircuts.
That didn’t happen here. You see, in the coastal metropolises favored by Mr. Richman, people actually take him seriously; his review can make or break a restaurant. Those with money but no confidence in their own palates can take refuge in his pronouncements, scurrying off to the latest place to receive his accolades. It makes life easier, I suppose, and so much less risky; their friends will have read the same reviews and will undoubtedly praise their good taste.
Here in flyover country, he’s not that important. The famous eateries of New Orleans will continue serving meals year after year to happy customers despite Mr. Richman’s rants. It must gall him to think about that. After all, he is, as his blog grandly informs us, “the most decorated food writer in history.” Yet here in one of the most popular food meccas in the world, his word holds no weight; the lazy faerie folk do quite well in the face of his damnation, serving excellent and unique food to adoring crowds, including many New Yorkers fleeing the tyranny of agenda-driven (see below) restaurant critics.
Mr. Richman wrote an unapologetic response to those who took issue with his original New Orleans piece, in which he displayed levels of hubris previously achieved only by Greek tragic heroes. His astounding statement that he was offering rebuilding advice to New Orleans shows how far he has strayed from his assigned job. If we had wanted rebuilding advice from a food critic, we would have…well, we wouldn’t have. But in the future, if we need useless disaster recovery tips from a pompous, ill-informed, hostile elitist, we’ll give him a call.
Mr. Richman pontifcates in his reply that he does not want his taxes going to help New Orleans hold more parades. Well, he needn’t worry: all those parades which his fellow Manhattanites swarm our city to see are paid for with private money. In fact, if he had bothered to research the issue, he would have discovered that all the federal funds sent to New Orleans since Katrina are but a pittance compared to the massive spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he also opposes. Apparently, Mr. Richman’s real issue is that he cannot control how his taxes are spent. Welcome to the club. I object to the billions of dollars being lavished on bailouts so that the rich, ethically-challenged New York bankers who screwed up the economy in the name of greed can continue getting decent tables at five-star boites.
Let’s put up all the wasted federal money in New Orleans against all that on Wall Street and we’ll see who comes out on top. I would rather see taxes going to decent housing and schools than to…well, who knows what it’s going toward in the financial sector. From what I can tell, it’s back to business as usual among the banking elites.
Earlier this year, Mr. Richman made a guest appearance on HBO’s Treme. Naturally, he portrayed himself. The scene involved a displaced New Orleanian chef working in a hell-hole of a New York restaurant tossing a sazerac into his face. Isn’t that cute? He’s such a good sport, that Richman guy. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.
Right. He made much of his appearance on the show in his blog, noting how he was concerned that the scene was written by Anthony Bourdain, his mortal enemy. Ooh, how brave! One wishes the scene involved a pot of gumbo instead, thrown by a representative group of ‘lazy’ New Orleanians who let it get too hot. The dramatic possibilities are endless: as Mr. Richman lies on the ground, writhing under the scalding liquid, he could punctuate his agonized screams with pithy comments on the lack of seasoning and such. Pure comedy gold and Emmy-bait.
Mr. Richman caused quite a stir in 2008 when he savaged the New York restaurant Les Halles in his blog. He later revealed that he went to the restaurant with the intent to get even with Mr. Bourdain, who serves as a consultant there. One must wonder how GQ can continue to pay a ‘journalist’ who not only visits restaurants with malicious intent, but actually admits it publicly. I think that finishes off the magazine and Mr. Richman as pretenders to serious writing.
Mr. Richman’s recent write-up of his dismal performance in a sommelier competition offers some useful insights into his psyche. He reveals:
- how much his suit cost ($3,000.00, if you’re interested). He nearly sets it on fire.
- that he has never smoked a cigar. Nor does he know what a cigar punch is.
- that he has never worked in a restaurant. I think that’s rather obvious.
The episode involving the suit’s price is the most curious. Why mention its cost? First, it is a nod to GQ readers, who presumably wince at the thought of the destruction of such a fine article of clothing. Second, it lets us all know that Mr. Richman’s taste in clothing is as impeccable as his taste in food. Third, it pre-emptively informs us that even in the event of a fiasco in the competition, he still has a more expensive suit than the rest of us. Congratulations, sir; you may have screwed the pooch in the contest, but you clearly win the prize for being a pompous ass.
Mr. Richman also got into a bit of trouble recently for allegedly groping a young lady at a New York restaurant (which, by the way, he liked…at first…sort of). It’s worthwhile to read his pained and overwrought denial of the dirty deed; you would have thought he’d been accused of pairing riesling with a filet, probably a much more serious charge among the GQ crowd.
I have no idea if he patted the woman’s butt or not. It is, however, a short step from verbally raping the cuisine, culture, and people of an entire city to handing out unwanted taps on the derriere.
Five years after his original New Orleans column, we can safely say that Mr. Richman has not changed much. The pomposity and condescension are still on display in his columns, as well as his astounding inability to acknowledge that he might have been wrong about something.
There is always hope that he will see the light and reconsider his nasty, uninformed attack on New Orleans, but I doubt it. He’s making lots of money doing what he does; repentance is not part of his shtick. But if he returns to our city, perhaps he will find that the only establishment welcoming his business will be a Lucky Dog cart on Bourbon. Then he’ll be sorry.
