Food blogging: A cardinal sin

I’m going to take a break from reviewing and discuss with you all the State of our Food Blogging Union.

A certain tweet and a certain blog post, both from Singapore, crossed the Pacific last night and made some waves in the food blogging community on both sides of the (much bigger) pond. Here’s the lowdown from my colleague in the Lion City, written in the form of an open letter to the blogger who’s, allegedly, reprehensible actions may bring the art of food blogging into disrepute:

Dear B,

It has come to my attention that you had visited a certain restaurant today for their Sunday Champagne Brunch in the Joo Chiat vicinity today with 3 dining companions. The brunch would have cost S$68++ per person. You had informed the restaurant that you were a food blogger and assumed that by telling them so, the bill for all 4 of you would be waived.

This was not to be the case, as highlighted to you by the management. Further, I understand that upon being informed by the staff that out of goodwill, the restaurant would waive the costs of the meal for your partner and yourself. However, the costs of the two other diners had still to be borne by your dining companions. Upon hearing so, I put it to you that you threw your credit card at the cashier, while you glared at the staff who handled your bill.  This was quoted from the operations manager of the restaurant and thus may be skewed.

The management of the restaurant in question was, in my opinion, more than kind enough to sign off the bill of both yourself and your 1 dining partner as goodwill.

Let it be known that most of us food bloggers (yours truly included) simply cannot condone your acts today.

Dated 22nd August 2010
Glenn
Author
HungryEpicurean.com

Indeed, we cannot condone such acts and let me be perfectly clear. Food blogging has risen in prominence in recent years. As we have become more widely read we have also become more influential, we have been picked up by PR companies and restaurants alike as they jump on the new media bandwagon to promote their establishments. And that’s fine, that’s ok, that’s market-driven capitalism, ladies and gentlemen, and we love it. BUT you food bloggers will know that we are constantly attacked by certain other members of the hospitality establishment – be they prominent journalists or restaurateurs – for being random hacks who (often) don’t have any experience in either hospitality or journalism and are just contributing noise to an already noisy internet.

I vigorously defend food bloggers and food blogging against these charges, as do many others, because the food scene is about democracy, demand and supply. The food scene is, first and foremost, for the common punter and if we food bloggers are representative of the common punter, with our underdeveloped palates and our quirky use of the English language, then we are the best ambassadors for said food scene. So if a food blogger didn’t have a good experience at your restaurant, or didn’t understand the finely honed, complex, nuanced dishes that were presented due to his membership of the boorish, unwashed masses that normally frequent your hell-hole, and the food blogger pans it and influences public opinion… well too bad. Make sure your customers have a better experience next time and don’t complain, you grade A ass-tard.

BUT what does bring food blogging into disrepute is not bad writing (and there’s a lot of it, and it hurts me) and it’s not supposedly untrained palates being let loose on an unsuspecting kitchen, it’s the alleged actions of the food blogger mentioned above. Food bloggers, you are not entitled to goddamn free meals! You are not entitled to anything, in fact! How a food blogger could have the gall to actually walk into a restaurant and demand free food just because he sits behind a laptop and churns out (poorly written, simplistic) reviews of restaurants is totally beyond me.

I would never even announce that I’m a food blogger at a restaurant. The whole point of being able to write an objective review is that you should be served as would any member of the general public. We’ve talked about how restaurants probably realise that we’re food bloggers once they see DSLRs and pads with pens, and that’s a tough one to get around, but at the very least don’t waltz up to the maitre’d and say “I’m a food blogger, bitches, now give me and my friends free food and handjobs or I will pan your restaurant to smithereens, muahahahaha!” Seriously.

So, unlike my colleague at Hungry Epicurian, I am not going to be so cautious as to not name names. The allegations are being levelled at one Brad, from Lady Iron Chef. Now I will say as something of a disclaimer, these are just allegations, I have not seen any evidence of course, and I will straight out inform you that this is hearsay. Brad did tweet that he was at brunch at the restaurant at the time, so those facts do match up… But this isn’t about Brad, this is about what THOU SHALT NOT DO AS A FOOD BLOGGER. I for one would like to see a post on LIC clarifying Brad’s position, or at the very least some tweets. The allegations have not as yet been acknowledged.

So that’s it from me and back to reviewing, folks, and remember. Those bloggers that do engage in this kind of activity are a minority. The rest of us aren’t doing this for free food, limelight or anything else. We do it because we love food and we love to write about our experiences and share them with the rest of you. Please don’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

PS. Hey Brad, you should probably fix the horrendous spelling error in your blog header. “Past-time” doesn’t mean anything. #JustSayin

UPDATE: The news has now hit Yahoo! Singapore. See what I mean about disrepute? H/T to HungryEpicurian once again:

A young food blogger who demanded that he and his three companions be given free meals at an upscale restaurant in the Joo Chiat area has sparked a huge furore online.

The group of four had walked into Private Affairs, a small but exclusive eatery in Joo Chiat, for its Sunday champagne brunch promotion that costs S$68++ per person.

The blogger in question, Brad Lau, who runs a food blog called Ladyironchef, had informed the management on Friday that he would be coming down to review the Sunday Brunch promotion.

On the day itself, he and his partner came down at about 130pm, followed by his two other companions, each of whom came down half an hour apart.

The four of them had brunch until 430pm, even when the restaurant’s official brunch hours was from 1130 am to 330pm. Brad and his partner also enjoyed two glasses of champagne each.

When presented with the final bill of $435, the blogger initially refused to pay and repeatedly told the restaurant’s chef, “I never pay for food in any restaurant.”

The restaurant eventually offered to waive off the cost of the meal for him and his partner as well as the cost of the champagne out of goodwill, thus lowering the bill to $159.

Still upset but finally relenting to pay, the blogger then threw his credit card onto the bar counter in front of the cashier before storming out.

Note: Yahoo! Singapore has confirmed the incident with the restaurant’s management, click on that link above to see their statements. So one side of the story is confirmed, will be interesting to see if Brad posts with his side, whatever that side may be.

UPDATE 2: Lady Iron Chef’s website appears to be down. DDoS error? (h/t to Billy from Half-Eaten) Or has the website been taken down?

UPDATE 3: The website now states that “This account has been suspended”.

UPDATE 4: Brad has now replied with a full post and explanation on his blog. It’s lengthy and seems to still go down once in a while. I won’t reproduce it here because I’d have to pretty much quote the whole thing in full plus pictures, but the gist of it is, that he had been invited by the restaurant to attend a “tasting” which he sees as fundamentally different to visiting as a usual punter. Moreover, he was told that he could bring a friend and both their meals would be on the house. Brad wanted to bring three friends, had notified the PR rep for the restaurant that he was doing so but did not get a response. The rest is, as they say, history.

I don’t really understand this PR-invited food tasting culture in Singapore personally. As I said above, I believe that in order to properly review an experience at a restaurant it’s important to be incognito, much as one of the general public would be, so as not to receive special service and special perks. In my opinion, that leads to a “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” arrangement that destroys the objectivity of food blogging and reviewing. But whatevs. In any case, I think it was somewhat presumptuous of him to assume he could just bring along as many people as he wanted. Moreover, it was something of a professionalism fail by the PR company to not even dignify him with a response. Can this be attributed to that aspect of Chinese culture known as ‘saving face’? Would it be normal to, instead of saying ‘no’ and thus the person making the request losing face, to just ignore and hope that they get the message? I’m not sure, maybe someone can comment.

I’m sure Brad and everyone else will be happy to see this sordid affair behind them. Brad and the restaurant both got some publicity, both were maligned for a while and I’m sure no one will even remember what this was in a month. However, the focus behind this post was to start a discussion about food blogging and where we should draw lines in terms of ethics. I hope I’ve done that.

Update 5: Yahoo! Singapore has posted a fresh one reporting on Brad’s response, this might be a good avenue for those of you who still can’t get access to his blog.

Although he did not clarify at the time if he and his partner would be expected to pay, he wrote, ”This was an invitation to a food-tasting session. There is no hard and fast rule stating a plus one for a food tasting. However, having attended previous food tastings before, I assumed that the meal would be, at the very least, on the house for myself and one dining partner.”