Food Bloggers. Are They Qualified To Pass Comments About Food?

3 months. Come this 7th, this blog will be exactly 3 months old. 3 Happy glorious months, where I learned how to use a digital camera properly, met up with some of the funnest people in Kuala Lumpur, got to know a celebrity baker with his own fan club, and tasted so many yummy food at so many places. The protests on Saturday buried my plans to dine at The Restaurant next to The Lounge opposite The Loo, at The Club.

Human taste buds actually develop in the fetal period from the 8th week and gains full function at the age of 15th week. In Utero. That means while the fetus is still in the mother's wound. Studies have shown that what a woman eats during pregnancy can affect the taste of her amniotic fluid. Fetuses start swallowing amniotic fluid at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy (after 12 weeks old) and the amniotic fluid is excreted as urine by the fetus. Subsequently studies have shown that depending on what the mother eats, the fetus actually swallows at different rates. Amazing isn't it? After birth, studies have also shown that pacifiers laced with sugar are sucked more aggressively that unlaced ones. Even as babies we have already developed a keen sense of taste. Any mother who changed her baby's milk formula can tell you how the baby may refuse different tasting ones.

I went to a restaurant recently, and was requested not to take pictures of the food there by the restaurant manager. She was very apologetic about it. When I asked her why, she said because the chef did not like food bloggers commenting on the food there as some of the comments were uncalled for and made by unqualified people. She allowed me to continue photographing it if it is for my personal use. I gave my word that I will keep the photos private. I do keep a lot of photos of what I had eaten and post a blog if they are exceptionally good. I can't keep posting about my favourite joints like Neroteca or my blog will turn into their official website! And there are places that serve food so atrocious, I could not even write a post about it.

I started this food blog mainly to keep my friends and family up to date with what I am doing. And naturally, if something is good, I would like to share it with them. Unfortunately, they seem to be interested in what I am eating. What I am reading and what is playing on my ipod bores them to death. My fault, mea culpa... I don't know why I have such a weird taste in books and music.

So, i got back and did a google to uncover why anybody would pan the restaurant. Because when I was there, the service was excellent, food was divine and everything just fell into place so effortlessly. Their Panna Cotta was to die for. If there is a Panna Cotta heaven, I am actually floating on a cloud there! Who in their right mind would be so vicious to criticize them?

I did a google and found that all of the comments were actually positive. Some commented that the dishes were not salty enough. One complained about the dessert. Somebody did not like the pork skin. And one vicious comment, but about a restaurant with the same name in Albany, New York!

That set my head spinning. Again I began to think. Are bloggers qualified enough to make comments about food? What was the chef so sensitive about?

Here's my take.

1. Food/taste is very subjective. What is salty to one may not be salty to others. I don't think anyone should be too sensitive about it.

2. If I hate fish, and order fish, and complain that it does not taste good, I am not being fair. If I hate cod, but ordered cod, and it tastes good to me, then the chef is a genius.

3. A 30 year old would have had 32850 meals in his lifetime. I think he or she can compare what he/she had eaten before and make an informed judgment about what he or she likes or dislikes. After all, we are just doing what we have been doing since we were in our mother's womb. Discerning taste, making judgments about what we like to taste and what we don't.

4. Not being a native of the country of origin of the dish does not disqualify a person from making a comment on the whether he/she likes the taste of the dish. A German may say he likes Peking Duck in Malaysia more than the Peking Duck at Tiananmen, Beijing. It does not mean that he is wrong, or the chef in beijing is inferior. It's just his personal observation. Similarly, although I am not an architect, I can say that the Tangs building in Singapore looks ugly, or the Guggenheim's in New York looks good. Nobody can fault me.

5. Opening a restaurant means serving food to the public. Everybody has an opinion on food. Even mothers, who cook with full of love for her children receives comments about her cooking from them. Even if no pictures are published, a restaurant can still be panned in less than 250 words. Just read the New York Times.

Show me a customer satisfaction survey with 100% satisfied customers, I'll show you 2 employees with an IQ of 50 filling in the forms themselves. Either that, or the establishment has only one customer. The owner's mother. I'm sure when Da Vinci was painting Mona Lisa, he received a lot of flak about the crooked smile. Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. Just live with it, and be a happier person.

Please comment and let me know how you feel about food bloggers commenting about food in the cybersphere, but do not name the restaurant if you know which one I mean. The purpose of this post is not to humiliate them, but to give what we enjoy doing so far some thought..

Taking a short break to see what the philosophers have to say about food. 'm not sure if it is covered in Philosophy of Aesthetics or not???

Here's to 3 months of adventure!

A really witty Interview with A.C. Grayling. Philosopher.

A very interesting and humorous interview I read @ Guardian website. The Chap with Einstein's straightened, rebonded hair ( who is also in desperate need to see LL's hair stylist ) is AC Grayling, Professor of Philosophy @ Birkbeck and a Fellow at St. Anne's, Oxford.

Author of numerous books, only of which I have read two, regrettably i.e. The Meaning of Things and The Reason of Things. The Guardian Website has a very active blog section focusing on the Arts and Current Affairs. Very informative.

A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.

The democracy of blogging and tweeting is absolutely terrific in one way. It is also the most effective producer of rubbish and insult and falsehood we have yet invented.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.

I spent the first 13 years of my life in Zambia. In Africa you can't walk in the countryside and think. You might be eaten by a lion. You have to read instead.

My mother was a straight-up-and-down racist of a very marked kind. She used to laugh at the shopping lists the cook would try to copy out. It would never have occurred to her to teach him to read.

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

I'm a vegetarian, but I wear leather shoes. Some people say that's a contradiction; I say I'm doing my best.

I used to be a terrible hypochondriac when I was young and a great reader of medical dictionaries. One day I realised that I was not actually frightened of terminal illness but of not getting done the things I wanted to get done.

I recently retraced on foot a famous journey that William Hazlitt made from Shropshire to Somerset to visit Wordsworth and Coleridge. I spent two weeks slogging through nettle beds before I realised the bastard had taken the coach.

When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff?

I'm passionately in favour of legalising heroin and cocaine. But I despise people who depend on these things. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

I don't believe in killing animals, but I think President Obama did a justifiable thing in swatting a fly. Flies spread disease.

Christian churches and Muslim groups have no more right to have their say than women's institutes or trades unions. The government has actively encouraged faith-based education, and therefore given a megaphone to religious voices and fundamentalists.

I have enough faith in statistics to know there must be conscious life on other planets.

Initials can be useful to hide behind. I once heard Jonathan Ross on the radio asking Kirsty Young who she had coming up on Desert Island Discs. When she mentioned "AC Grayling" Ross replied: "Oh, I know her."

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

I'm not sure it is possible to think too much. You don't refresh your mind by partying in Ibiza.

Life is all about relationships. By all means sit cross-legged on top of a mountain occasionally. But don't do it for very long.

Every professor of philosophy needs a nine-year-old daughter. Mine has a habit of saying, "Daddy, that is a very silly idea." She is always right.

• Liberty in the Age of Terror, by AC Grayling, is published by Bloomsbury, £12.99

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/05/a-c-grayling-this-much-i-know

Chasing your dreams, and the power of the Internet

Stuck in Terengganu with swollen gums and stitches in my mouth, thanks to the reincarnation of Dr. Josef Mangele from Auswitchz. Living on a staple of Porridge and extra soft instant noodles. Unable to chew/masticate. Had some time finally to catch up on some reading, and reading the blogs. 

Nigel has opened his new cake boutique at Jaya One, creatively named A Slice of Heaven. Congratulations! Noticed that a lot of creative people have been pursuing their dreams and passions, helped and spured by their supporters from the internet Fraternity/Sorority of food lovers. Su Yin, with her new outlet is another example. 

One big, very noticable difference when I enter these shops is that it exudes passion. From the very warm and friendly greeting from their assistants, to their product knowledge and to their demeanour I can't just help admire how infectious this passion is. Certainly softens the blow of parting with my smakeroos for their pastries... 

To Nigel and Allan, Su-yin... Congrats.