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I’m as surprised as you.
Probably more so, actually. The few people I told ahead of time seemed entirely unsurprised.
It’s been official for a few weeks, and as of today it’s a matter of public record. I’m taking over as the (freelance) dining critic for Phoenix New Times, and my first review drops tomorrow. (Sorry, no hints!)
Anybody
who’s followed this newsletter knows that the challenge for me has been
to balance my limited bandwidth with my inability to sit on the
sidelines. So when I started to feel like maybe I had a little breathing
room to work with, I reached out to some old colleagues to see if
they’d be interested in taking me on in limited fashion. My goal was to
write one review per month, and that’s it.
In a bit of serendipity, that’s (almost) precisely what my old pal Tirion was looking for over at Phoenix New Times.
Not
gonna lie... the fact that this means I’ll have written dining reviews
for all three major Phoenix publications is kind of cool. But I feel
like PNT is the right fit at the right time.
First, because Tirion — the food editor — and I get along great, and I’m looking forward to working with her.
Second,
because they were willing to take me on in my somewhat limited state. I
*may* help out with a side project or two, but basically, one review
per month. That’s it. Enough to keep my toes in, but not so much that I
don’t neglect my family or eat myself to death. (This job is harder on
your body than people realize.)
Third,
you all know why I do this. Partly because I can’t help myself, but
mainly because I feel this weird compulsion to do whatever I can to help
good folks who make good food find their audience, and to help people
who like going to restaurants explore avenues they might not otherwise
and get as much out of our dining scene as they can. And while I’m not
knocking paywalls — everybody does what they have to do to keep things
going — a publication without one feels more in keeping with that ethos.
And
lastly, I kinda just dig NT’s style. When I first moved here in 2010, I
wasn’t considering writing professionally, but if I had, it would have
been for NT. They’re the scrappy, irreverent underdog of the journalism
scene, and right or wrong, that’s kind of how I’ve always seen the work I
do. Somehow I ended up writing for everybody else first, but this feels
like coming full circle. Of the three majors, I think this is the one
where it’ll be easiest for me to be me, just with a bigger megaphone.
But
since I always want to do everything, and also because I think it’s the
most interesting direction dining criticism can go, my NT reviews are
going to be a little different than what I was doing over at The
Republic. And maybe a little closer to what you’ve become accustomed to
here at Something to Doux.
I
talked about it a little bit in the intro and Q&A that posted at NT
today (which I urge you to read... support my new overlords!), but the
crux of it is that I want these to be recognizable as reviews, but I
also want them to reach beyond food/service/atmosphere and really spend
some time digging into the context. The way I’m thinking about it is
that if food/service/atmosphere is the plot, every review also needs a
subplot or two — a discussion of cultural influences, a related
contemporary topic in the restaurant industry, a deeper dive into the
technical aspects. Good reviews generally touch on these tangential
themes, but they rarely spend significant inches exploring them, and I
want to give those themes a little room to breathe.
So, we'll see how it goes, but the first review is in the can ready to go, and I’m feeling very good about this approach.
As
for Something to Doux, well... this newsletter’s explicit purpose was
always to give me a way to keep my hand in and stay in touch until
another gig popped up. Took a liiiiiiiittle longer than I anticipated,
but with my new position, I think it’s time to nudge this fella to the
back burner.
But
it probably won’t go away! You never know when I might want to chuck a
quick article out there that doesn’t have a good home at NT. Or when I
might want to curse a lot about something. So it could be a week or a
year before Something to Doux invades your inbox again. Which I guess
means that nothing has changed after all.
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