Letter to the Editor

Pardon me, regular readers, while I go public for a sec.

 

Khao San Road, a restaurant in Toronto that I consider a friend was recently reviewed by one of the national Canadian papers.  This reviewer visited on the seventh day of business at this particular restaurant, and wrote this review on the basis of one (and only one) visit.  For those of you not familiar with the general ethical code for those who have an inordinate amount of power to impact a business such as a restaurant, the general idea is this:

1.  Do not review a restaurant until it has been open at least a month.

2.  Visit multiple times before posting a review, so that you can:

3.  Sample most, if not all, of the menu items.

4.  Pay your own way.

 

This particular reviewer did…um…one of those things.  I think.  But let’s be honest, she is KNOWN for doing this sort of thing – she would rather write a review with no credibility than be the…<gasp>…SECOND person to review a new place!  So I will not take too much issue with this particular bad habit of hers…everybody knows she does it, and most people whose opinions matter put little stock in her reviews for that very reason.  But her review offended me on a completely different level, one that has nothing to do with my desire to see this restaurant succeed, and thus I wrote my very first…Letter to the Editor.  Since there is no guarantee this letter will be published by the paper in question, I am posting it here.  I even started using Twitter in order to make sure it gets seen by a few people, and you KNOW how much I hate the Twitter!!!  So without further ado…

 

In a world where print journalists have to battle for face time with online bloggers and message board riff-raff, print reviewers are constantly fighting to prove their relevance and status as the true tastemakers.  So why, exactly, is Gina Mallet going to such great lengths to set this battle back?  In her review of Khao San Road, she has committed two cardinal sins of restaurant-reviewing: 1) she reviewed a restaurant that had been open only a few days and 2) she only visited once before publishing said review.  These alone would be unforgivable - or at least wildly damaging to her credibility as a reviewer in most circles (although Ms. Mallet’s track record would indicate that she cares more about beating bloggers to the punch than about her own credibility) - but what truly disturbs me about this review is the racial comments made, aside from the food.  

“Our server, who wears a black teeshirt with a glittering skull and crossbones, laughingly owns up to being Chinese.  The server at the bar is Filipina, but the kitchen is all Thai.”

In a city as multicultural as Toronto, what does it matter if your Thai food is brought to you by a waitress of Chinese descent, or your tea is brought to you by a Filipina?  Her implied criticism of this establishment for having a multicultural staff is astounding.  Does the waitstaff have to be Thai in order for the food coming out of the kitchen to be authentic?  When one of the world’s most respected students of Thai cuisine is a white man from Australia, why do I need a Thai person carrying my noodles to believe that they are made correctly?  Does the authenticity somehow evaporate off of them when handled by a person born in Canada?  If this is the case, I guess I have never had authentic takeout of any ethnicity other than my own.  Does she inquire as to the ethnic heritage of her servers in an Italian restaurant as well?  David Lee never seems to come under fire for making Continental food, so in this day and age, I have a hard time understanding why the ethnicity of a chef, let alone of a server, bears any relevance when judging the food.  She notes that the kitchen staff is, indeed, all Thai, but proceeds to blame errors in her order on a language barrier:

“It’s awfully good, but we’re sure we ordered it with shrimp — and we don’t much care for the beef. Uh-oh. Seems the server doesn’t speak Thai and the kitchen doesn’t speak Chinese. We wonder whether we shouldn’t give the server a refresher in Morse Code and tap out SOS.”

This comment is condescending, rude, ignorant…and flat-out racist.  The waitress in question, while being of Chinese descent, is a native English-speaker, with absolutely no trace of an accent, let alone a problem understanding other English-speakers.  The entire kitchen staff also speaks English.  Any brand-new restaurant makes errors in order processing in its first week - miscommunication happens with a new staff trying to find its rhythm - why should ethnicity be brought into the discussion when it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand?

I have never thought highly of Gina Mallet’s writing before, as she has a long documented history of racially-loaded comments...dripping with sarcasm, yet having nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the restaurants she reviews.  To wit, from a 2007 review:

“They didn't speak much English; we spoke no Chinese. To them, we undoubtedly all looked alike. We joked about being hungry again in an hour, a quip that has since been amended by the avalanche of cheap Chinese products. Now it's "I hardly finished eating before my made-in-China sweater started to unravel."”

Offensive racial stereotypes such as these have no place in a national paper.  As someone who values responsible print journalism, I am starting to find the bloggers and riff-raff much more credible than Ms. Mallet’s tabloid-style sensationalism.