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THE GOOD WORD Vol. 9: Trey Popp of City Paper
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THE GOOD WORD Vol. 9: Trey Popp of City Paper
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The Good Word is a new weekly Meal Ticket feature where we ask Philadelphia food people questions. We�re going to start by highlighting the city�s many excellent food writers and bloggers, with eventual plans to extend beyond the scribeosphere. The questions will be different every week unless we come across a really sweet one we want to reuse. Want to nominate a future Good Word candidate (yes, you can nominate yourself), or submit ideas for questions? E-mail drew.lazor@citypaper.net.
In this installment of The Good Word, we�re chatting with our very own Trey Popp, who's been reviewing restaurants for City Paper for close to three years. Readers who are fans of his entertaining, often-travelogue-like prose might wonder where his style and expertise stems from. Take it away, Trey.
So what makes you qualified to tell us what and where to eat?
Aside from my six-million-dollar bionic tongue? I'd love to have an answer as short and easy as that. But I�m not sure it would qualify me to tell anyone else what to eat or drink. I guess what I try to do is convey why I like or dislike the things I taste � how harmonies and contrasts of flavor and texture add up to something that's greater or lesser than the sum of the parts. As far as what qualifies me to sit in judgment, I think I�m lucky in that I have a broader experience as an eater than most people I know.
The way I first tried to break into restaurant reviewing was as someone who could bring a little more knowledge to bear on so-called "ethnic foods." I spent most of my mid-20s traveling around the world. I spent a year tracing a route Mark Twain described in his 1897 book Following the Equator. I spent another trying to go from one end of the Indian Ocean to the other with a no-airplanes-allowed rule. I only made it to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, where I got typhoid fever from what I believe was a mango-ice drink from a street stall in Lahore. I spent some months in the former Yugoslavia. Anyway, it adds up to a lot of eating in a lot of places. And in a lot of people's homes. One of the best things about traveling without much money is that you discover again and again that your brother really is your keeper. So I ate dried fish and chilies for breakfast with people who put a roof over my head in southeast Sulawesi. I've had heirloom rice that's kept for special occasions by farmers in Bangladesh. I snuck into Bhutan with villagers who killed a chicken for me after the eight-hour hike through that began in an Indian tiger preserve. But it went from homes and truckstops to the kinds of places where bankers have lunch in Bangkok, or where the well-heeled go for dinner in Istanbul. I also have parents who love to eat and have taken their kids everywhere from Gary Danko and the French Laundry to some of the culinary temples of France and Spain.
But it's not like the mere act of chomping a bull-testicle sandwich in Morocco, or saying you ate downstairs at Chez Panisse, makes you a worthwhile critic. Television has a way of reducing dining and cooking to a series of dares or testosterone-fueled chef duels, which is something I hate. It reduces one of the most intimate and sensual manifestations of human culture into a mere fetish. I love the way careful cooking can forge a profound connection between the person making food and the person eating it. When that happens when I'm in a restaurant, I try hard to reflect it in my column.
Your review of Tommy Up's P.Y.T., which came out yesterday, has stirred up controversy among some local food bloggers who felt you were being critical of them.�Can you clarify your position?
Judging from Wednesday night's post on Phoodie, and a few other murmurs people have passed along to me, my main impression is that Tommy Up is an unparalleled master of promotional jujitsu. I think Kirsten Henri, at Grub Street, wrote what will probably be the sanest and most astute commentary that anyone's going to offer on this teapot tempest. My review simply pointed out that one of the many ways Up pumped up buzz for P.Y.T. was to invite food bloggers for free meals. And some of them took him up on it. It's a great way for Up to whip up publicity and good will, but if bloggers who took advantage of his generosity think they're not influenced by it, they're kidding themselves.
I don�t know Collin Flatt over at Phoodie, but I was surprised that he didn't even acknowledge, much less address, the fact that Up had invited bloggers for freebies, preferring instead to launch straw-man and ad hominem arguments. It sounds like he didn't personally partake of the comped burgers, which is all to the good, but he might have at least tackled the issue head-on, as Kirsten Henri did. Instead he punted, and opted to defend his purity and integrity � which I had never challenged in first place.
If Collin had engaged the issue, he might have found some cogent things to say. For instance, I do pay checks at the end of my meals, and I haven't used my name for any reservation in the last three years, and I don�t attract attention by pulling out a camera to snap photos � but City Paper does reimburse me for (at least most of) my expenses. One might argue that since my meals are subsidized � even if not by the restaurants I�m evaluating � my perceptions are skewed in favor of pricey items whose full cost burden I don't have to bear. As it happens, I tend to get more complaints from people who accuse me of stressing value-for-money overmuch, but I think that argument has some merit. And there are probably others. The fact is that every system has its drawbacks and vulnerabilities. And I think that Philly's more thoughtful bloggers can recognize their own.
Since you grew up in South Carolina, we're curious where you've found some of the most accurate representations of Southern cooking in Philadelphia.
I was sad to see that Erin O'Shea had been lured away from Marigold Kitchen. I really liked her contemporary Southern menu there, and I thought she executed it superbly. But Southern cooking is a two-headed beast. There's the veggies that are cooked to death, which I've never liked. There are soul food restaurants around town where you can get oversweet yams and such. But then there's the recent renaissance happening in places like Charleston, where some high-end chefs have their own farms and are resurrecting stuff like heirloom pole beans and pickled ramps. That's a little more in line with what O'Shea was doing.
Nobody does South Carolina barbecue up here that I know of � it's mustard-based � but Bebe's collards are pretty damn great.
You and your wife have a young son. What restaurants have you found to be especially child-friendly? Also, any general tips for those who love to eat out, but have kids?
First, a piece of advice to anyone who's about to have a baby: Take that newborn out to eat with you as often as you can, because you've got about four months before her lungs are big enough and her bedtime firm enough to make family meals out a total disaster.� If you're as blessed as we were in the first four months, your tiny baby will sleep through dinner and not even know the difference.� This will change radically when she develops her own ideas about when and what she wants to eat.
Our son was barely a week old the first time we took him to Sidecar for a sidewalk meal, and that was our go-to place the first few months. Sidecar's always done a great job with food and beer, and sidewalk tables are key if you want to protect little ears from noisy interiors. I actually testified at City Council in favor of the city granting a permit for Sidecar's sidewalk tables, on the grounds that they�re not just good for neighborhoods, they�re family-friendly. But these days he's too active to and prone to jump into traffic, and we almost always get a babysitter when we�re going out to eat now.
That said, there are a few places that have been more than gracious toddler hosts. Hinge Caf�, out in Port Richmond, was great. They even had toys. Earth Bread + Brewery is a great place to take active kids � but probably best for kids who can navigate steps. The roof terrace at Continental Mid-town was an easy place to have a beer with a baby who could stand but not yet walk. Smokin' Betty's needs to work on some things, but it is pretty kid-friendly.
Probably the best thing a toddler's parent can do is to cook a wide variety of things at home, hoping that by the time she's got some table manners down, she'll be able to make it through a nice meal and appreciate some parts of it. Just be ready for a bumpy ride. I will never forget the first thing � beyond single-ingredient pur�es � I cooked for my son. It was a mild lentil curry, and I doubt I've ever felt better than when he lapped it up like it was chocolate sauce. But a more recent memory is of him nonchalantly spitting out bites of lentil burgers that I'd not only slaved over, but made in bulk for freezing.
So I guess if Tommy Up or anyone else thinks I've been too critical of them, they can take satisfaction knowing that what goes around comes around.
I'm glad this interview came out right after the PYT review. No, I did not partake in the blogger lunch and I have had inconsistent food @ PYT. I did feel as though my, and our integrity was lumped into the category of 'people who keep a food diary and get free food because of it'. Philebrity might be well read and popular, but trust me, we're broke. (HI JOEY!!! Crabs on me this weekend) Phoodie is run on the hard work of some talented interns, our tireless and fearless leader and a few of us 'writers' who have other jobs. I never gave a good review to someone who didn't earn it, and have slammed friends and giveouts. If it sucks, it sucks. And truly, its all subjective, and none of us ever agree. (except on Bibou, which is the s*hit) We have advertising that keeps the doors open and the servers runnin'. Were lucky to have that and grateful. But it has never skewed our view as a team. Payola, or sustenance-ola, can be tempting, and is often flattering to the gratis writer. It is a legitimate problem, I agree with Trey. But someone much smarter than me once said, 'when you score a touchdown, act like you've been there before'. We've had bones tossed our way before, I don't mind paying for mine. But I know the folks who said Tommy's burger was great truly believed that. And I just found it irksome that they would tell falsehoods in exchange for burgers, that if they were lying about the quality, sucked anyway. P.S. Bebe's is also amazing.
Way to backpedal. Obviously you have realized what an overreaction your rant was.
[...] But even when P.Y.T does get press in the city�s alt weeklies, he tries to make the most of it. After receiving a negative review by the Citypaper�s Tray Popp, P.Y.T. said it would offer a discount to anyone who brought the review in leading Popp to crown Updegrove the �unparalleled master of promotional jujitsu.� [...]
[...] a great guy and we couldn’t be more proud of his accomplishment. For more from him, check out the September ‘09 Good Word Q&A with our critic. Praise for City Paper food critic Trey [...]
[...] Trey Popp, who’s been our restaurant critic here at City Paper since 2006, is moving on to Philadelphia magazine � but not before we got him to highlight his five most memorable CP food review experiences during his tenure here. We’ll miss you, Trey! Take it away. [...]
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