Ah, the struggles of being an Upper Midwestern food writer. I blew my stack when a former New York Times writer committed gross malpractice on Wisconsin cheese history; and Dara lost her cool last Friday when the book Opinionated About US Restaurants 2011 made the profoundly ignorant statement that “while the Twin Cities offers successful versions of many different cuisine, Vietnamese doesn’t seem to be one of them.” The back and forth between the author, Dara, and readers in the comments is fantastic. Kiss a chunk of your Monday morning goodbye. UPDATE: The spat makes Eater National.
The Twin Cities: Have We No Vietnamese Food?!
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I sent this along to LTHForum in Chicago where there has been considerable back and forth with Mr. Plotnicki (http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=31936). He has some history at that site and is friends with a couple of frequent posters. The last time there was controversy with him on that board, he and his dining companions walked in to L20 and decided to not eat off the menu, instead insisting chef Laurent Gras make him whatever he felt was good that night (http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=17702&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=150) – starts 8/31/09. Awesome.
Without actually being able to see how he did the surveying, it’s difficult to say how “wrong” the results are. Perhaps his sample size wasn’t sufficient, or it wasn’t a random sample of the Twin Cities population, or conversely, perhaps Twin Cities foodies are a vocal minority. It’s difficult to say what’s “right” without being able to scrutinize his methods.