At last, there's a new guide in town.
An A-Z guide to over four hundred New York restaurants, from A&C Kitchen to Zum Schneider, from Nathan's Coney Island to Per Se. One voice, one critical view. Plus some of the highlights from the Pink Pig 2009 - reviews of Maialino, MinettaTavern, DBGB and more - and previously unpublished pieces on everything from offal to the subjectivity of taste.
Two hundred pages, original illustrations. Buy now and make a pig happy. Go to the next post for information about special savings on digital donwload.
From the pages of Eating The Apple:
On the Objectivity of Taste
If taste is not subjective, can it be objective? Many would say that the objectivity of taste is, for the most part at least, self-evident. Just as it is at some level idiotic to suppose that Andrew Lloyd-Webber writes finer orchestral music than Beethoven, so it could only be ignorance or some kind of aesthetic blindness which might lead someone to asset the superiority of William McGonagall’s poetry to that of William Shakespeare. It is equally clear, many gastronomes argue, that the achievements of a Robuchon or a Gagnaire in the kitchen outstrip the best efforts of Ronald McDonald. Case closed, one might suppose, even allowing for many more closely contested cases (is Henry James a better novelist than Joseph Conrad, or is Wendy’s better than Burger King?).
But diligence asks us to consider more closely what “objective” means here. In fact, it’s a rather vague tag. At the very least, it simply might refer to a matter which reasonable people can discuss in hope of agreement. This emphasizes the publicity of the “objective” as opposed to the privacy of the “subjective.” No-one, the thought is, can look inside my head and approve or disapprove my subjective reactions; but anyone can examine something which is publicly available. In other words, in the case of food, emphasis shifts from internal reactions to what is out there on the plate. Fair enough, but does it mean something more? I think that for fervent objectivists (small “o”), it refers to the belief that questions of taste can be finally decided by examination of what is in the public realm. In other words, there are facts – tangible, publicly observable facts – which make it true (or false) to say that this is a great dish, here is excellent meat, I am drinking a superior wine. And so on.
This is important to fervent objectivists, as it seems to provide the promise of a solid foundation to say to someone else, “You are just wrong about this.” It is more satisfying to them than just to be able to say, “I understand you like it, but shut up.” (excerpt)