I wasn’t going to comment on this. But then Mike the Musicologist put some stinky old bait on a hook, dangled it in front of me, and I bit:
Food and Wine‘s “The 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Past 40 Years”.
- “…others on the list opened as recently as 2017 and have already become canon.” NO. If you’ve been open for a year or less, you are NOT “canon”. Indeed, I’m not even sure “canon” makes sense in this context.
- What is that under “The Inn at Little Washington”? It looks like a pear sitting on a wrapped Ding Dong with an upside-down glass over it.
- Frack Shake Shack. I’ve eaten at the one in the Domain and it was mediocre. I’d eat at Five Guys, Mighty Fine, The Back Porch, or about a dozen other burger places before I’d go back to Shake Shack.
- “…he launched a gourmet seed company that optimizes seeds for flavor and the earth.” What do these words mean?
- What does Kogi serve? I get that it is a food truck, but what kind of food does it serve? Pretty much all of the other entries on this list give you some idea of the type of food the establishment serves, even if it’s something vague like “fine dining”.
- “Is a truck a restaurant? We offer a resounding yes…” No, you morons: a truck is a truck. That’s why we call it a “food truck”, not a “restaurant”. Do food trucks have value? Should they be considered for a list like this? Sure. But a thing should be called what it is, not something else.
- If that’s a burger under the entry for Husk, it looks singularly unappetizing to me.
- Likewise that bowl of whatever it is under the entry for Vedge.
- “The chef behind Charleston’s treasured Rodney Scott’s BBQ, which earned him the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast this year, is the new-wave barbecue hero we need. (He’s the first-ever BBQ-focused chef to win a JBFA, no big.)” Hey, Rodney Scott may be the greatest thing since pulled pork, and I’d love to eat at his place. But “first-ever BBQ-focused chef to win a JBFA”? Aaron Franklin won in 2015.