The image that Sam Sifton chose for his Twitter page
Today’s review of a mogul-filled Manhattan restaurant, Marea, by the NY Times‘ fledgling restaurant critic, Sam Sifton (formerly the paper’s culture editor), shows that you can take the writer out of the Culture Department, but you can’t take the Culture Department out of the writer. It looks like he’s decided that food belongs on the arts beat. Sam writes:
Restaurants are culture as sure as music or paintings.
But apparently restaurants are better than certain theatrical offerings. At the end of his review, Sam gratuitously trashes my musical!
It [Marea] is not cheap nor meant to be. Art [there he goes again] in Manhattan can be like that. Life is balance. You read the notices for “Bye Bye Birdie” on Broadway? Better dinner here than tickets there.
I guess he never read Bloomberg‘s John Simon‘s appreciative notice for “Birdie.” And, in a late-breaking development, here’s the end of the just-published review by the New Yorker‘s John Lahr, who (like me) also saw the original “Birdie”:
Those who weren’t born when “Bye Bye Birdie” was first performed won’t
recognize a world without cell phones and cynicism, and won’t register
some of the popular references of the day. No matter: they’ll know a
good time when they see it.
Take my advice, Sam: Before you pan my musical (or another one, for that matter), see it yourself, instead of judging it based on Brantley’s rants. What’s more, you’d better enlist some of your theater contacts to help you with your costumes and makeup. (Or else, you should consult Gawker). Sifton writes:
I was dining anonymously, but was recognized at the door.
I guess he wasn’t actually “dining anonymously.” He just wished that he was. Is it any wonder that he found Marea to be “as welcoming as a luxe clubhouse” and its service to be “superb”? He blew this assignment at “Hello.”
Speaking of assignments, my husband this morning managed to get a reservation for six at Jean Georges for my (Very Big) upcoming birthday. It’s the kind of restaurant where you have to call at precisely 9 a.m., exactly one month in advance, if you hope to get a table.
Maybe he should have told them he was Sam Sifton!