E-Mail Interview with Toby Young

Happy New Year.  Here is my one-off e-mail interview with Toby Young. Mr. Young is a funny and insightful author and journalist, with a long and storied history in the U.S. and U.K. publishing worlds. He catalogs his journalism and blogging efforts here: http://www.nosacredcows.co.uk/blog/index/2/, and you may follow his Twitter feed at @toadmeister http://www.twitter.com/toadmeister. -- JS/tse


Jason,


I'll try and answer most of your questions below, but reviewing restaurants is only a small part of what I do. I'm not a food writer in the sense that Frank Bruni is. In my time I've been a movie critic and a drama critic and I review books fairly regularly for the Wall Street Journal. In addition, I've co-written three plays, all of which have been produced, and I co-produced the film version of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People based on my book of the same name. Earlier this year, I co-wrote and co-produced a 90-minute docudrama for British television called When Boris Met Dave and I'm currently making a three-part television series about my efforts to set up a charter school in West London. In truth, writing and talking about food takes up about five per cent of my working life.


--Toby

JS: Did you ever think you'd become a food critic, reviewing restaurants, when you were getting into writing for periodicals?

TY: No, I didn't. I was offered a restaurant column in the Evening Standard in 2002, not because I knew anything about food, just because the editor liked the way I write. In Britain, restaurant columns are plums handed out to editors' favourites.

JS: How did any early experiences, as in your relationship with food as a kid, or as a young adult, help inform your food writing?

TY: The editor who gave me my first restaurant column told me I couldn't write more than a paragraph about the food because "food writing is boring". She wanted me to write about the sociology of restaurants instead.

JS: And what might be a formative food experience for you, something that elevated food from fuel for the day to something special?

TY: I went on a driving tour of France with my parents as a teenager and we plotted our route with the aid of the Michelin Red Guide. That's the first time I became really interested in food.

JS: What did you think about food writing as you began to do it?

TY: As I say, I never wrote much about the food whenever I wrote about a restaurant -- and still don't.

JS: Did you just review restaurants or were you able to bring your style or your social sciences education into play?

TY: Yes, I'm more interested in what makes a restaurant "hot", why certain cuisines are "in" and others "out", what dictates a restaurant's lifespan, etc. Restaurants are the stage on which a lot of contemporary issues are played out, particularly issues of class and status, and understanding them involves more than just understanding the food. How individual dishes are prepared, what ingredients are used, where they're sourced, etc ... that's maybe 10 per cent of the story.

JS: Now you have worked for a number of television programmes.

TY: I've done a few guest spots as a judge on British food shows and I was a contestant in a food reality show that -- rather surprisingly -- I won.

JS: What was it like working with Marco Pierre White?

TY: I've never worked with him, but I've reviewed a few of his restaurants. He's very conscientious about schmoozing food critics and I was given the full court press on one occasion -- he came and picked me up in his Range Rover, drove me to a pub restaurant he'd just opened in Newbury, told me I was the most important critic in London, invited me to come shooting with him at his estate in Berkeshire, then dropped me home again. I've never heard from him since.

JS: Has being on television changed things for you, as in have you been afforded with celebrity status in your own country?

TY: Nope. In fact, I'm recognised much more in America than I am in my own country because of Top Chef. There's no doubt that people I encounter who've seen me on the programme are much nicer to me as a result -- and that's very pleasant, obviously. But it's probably a good thing that I don't live in America as all the attention would go to my head.

JS: And of course I'd like to know how things have changed since you took on the Top Chef gig. My own comment on that is that you've relaxed into your role. You seem comfortable and it's nice to see a good rapport with Gail, Padma, Tom. How deep do those judges table discussions go?

TY: Yes, I think that's right. I approached it very much as a British food critic in season five, cracking wise about the food, being outrageous, etc. Because that's not the way food critics conduct themselves in America -- your critics tend to take their job much more seriously -- I came over as a bit of a twat. I tried to tone it down a little in season six, conduct myself with more decorum. I also get on well with Tom, Padma and Gail -- we have a good rapport. They've all been very nice to me, not at all stand-off-ish, which helps.

JS: I wonder if Gail's education, a BA in Anthropology from McGill and graduated summa cum laude, figures into the way she sees the proceeds.

TY: She's smart, that's for sure -- whip smart. And she's a very down-to-earth, unpretentious, warm-hearted person. She's just a great girl all round.

JS: Likewise I'm wondering how your pretty remarkable CV informs what you see around you on the Top Chef. When you first started, there was a quippy or epigrammatic quality to your TV character that is still present but we see more of a human side or simple reactions.

TY: I've tried to be a bit more simple and direct. I don't think fans of the show like it if you're too obviously trying to show off.

JS: Do you take a lot of shit from people here? Like people yelling stuff out of windows if they see you driving? You seem to get into it a little bit, as in you have a sense of humor about it--like you retweet people's hostile remarks for example...

TY: People are mean about me in their blogs and on Twitter, but no one's said a harsh word to me in person. Most Americans are very polite, particularly when confronted with a guest in their country -- it's one of the things I love about visiting.

JS: And how has your enjoyment of food or knowledge of it changed since you began? Can you still enjoy dinner out and hang up the critic hat? (I used to drive my girlfriend absolutely crazy, like she didn't want to go out to dinner with me, because I had enough front of the house training to be able to see everything going on in the room... It was only last year that I decided to just give up and enjoy myself. It was a combination of going to Per Se, and also reading a comment from Marco Pierre White about how he is the perfect customer, he just eats and leaves and doesn't make a fuss (I suppose he means at restaurants he doesn't actually own).

TY: Because I write about food in a newspaper, my friends are very quick to volunteer their opinions about the restaurants we're eating in. They hand down judgments as if they were food critics, using all the jargon: "I thought the Sea Bass dish was very well-balanced, but I could have done with more crunch." I can't get a word in edgeways.

JS: Finally, what do you think about food criticism in general? Is anyone writing as well as Frank Bruni across the pond there, and who do you like as far as non-fiction writers, food science, cook books, history, just areas/authors other than restaurant critics?

TY: I don't read many American food critics I'm afraid, but I like most of the ones we have over here, particularly AA Gill, Giles Coren and Matthew Norman. My favourite contemporary American author is Tom Wolfe.