Scholars take on a delicious beat

One-on-one -- yum -- with food writers Smokey and Wright

By Johnathan L. Wright
Reno Gazette-Journal
and Sadie Jo Smokey
The Arizona Republic

Posted: July 3, 2003

Alums Johnathan L. Wright and Sadie Jo Smokey interviewed each other about food writing.

Question: Was food writing something you sought out, or did you fall into it by accident?

Johnathan Wright: I have been interested in food for as long as I can remember -- not only its taste and preparation but also the social and cultural context in which food is eaten. Restaurants are great theater. I still remember the taste and texture of an avocado salad I ate when I was 7 and being seated next to the governor of Hawaii in Orson’s in Honolulu. For years, that’s the only place I wanted to go on my birthday. When I went to journalism grad school after a couple of post-collegiate years doing other things, I did so with the intent of becoming a food writer.

Sadie Jo Smokey: When I started at The Arizona Republic, I was a general-assignment entertainment reporter for The Rep, our weekly entertainment guide -- things to do, places to go, etc. So I did some mini-food reviews on cheap places for dates. One day I met with my editor, who told me I was being shuffled with about 10 other people in the office. I still would be in features, but I would be covering home, food and drink.

Q: What special food training, if any, do you have?

Wright: I’d say I’m an experienced amateur. I grew up all over the United States and the world because my father was in the military, so I’m comfortable with a lot of different foods. I’ve traveled a lot in jobs and with my family and that provided great opportunities to try new foods. My hobby since I was a teen-ager has been going to restaurants, and that was and continues to be a way for me to educate my palate. Plus, I’m surrounded by a whole culture of food -- my parents eat Asian and Hawaiian foods, my brother-in-law is in the restaurant business, another friend is a wine broker, my sister and I travel to try restaurants and my best friend has lived all over Europe and is an expert on Spanish food.

Smokey: I bake Christmas cookies and enjoy cooking and baking, but I have no special skills or know-how. I don't eat out much. I don't drink, period. I'm a vegetarian and have a limited grocery budget, so I just do my own thing here. I'm a good voice for the "I'm just out of college, I can't afford the dream kitchen/tools/menus, so let's make this simple" crowd.

Q: What is your favorite old and crusty item in the kitchen that you just won't part with?

Wright: I have a rice cooker that's 37 years old. My parents got it for a wedding present when they first lived in Hawaii. That cooker made every bowl of rice I ever ate at home until the day I left for college. It has only two settings and it's on its last legs, but I can't bear to get a new one. Too many memories are tucked under its lid. Plus, it makes the perfect, slightly sticky rice, the way rice is made in Asia -- the kind of rice I grew up eating. White rice isn't supposed to be tiresomely fluffy or fall, grain by grain, from the fork.

Smokey: This warped, beat up, very much loved paring knife I stole from my mother's house when I was there two years ago. It's the last of a set she and my pops bought in the early 70s. I wouldn't pay 10 cents for it at a garage sale or thrift store, but I can't get rid of it. I brought it with me to work for peeling oranges or apples or spreading peanut butter or cream cheese. I figure every journalist needs a trusty knife in her drawer.

Q: What do you do on your beat?

Wright: The food staff includes me (the writer), my editor and a couple of free-lance columnists. We were just notified that our Food & Drink section placed in the top three in the best-section category for newspapers under 200,000 circulation in the Association of Food Journalists’ 2003 awards competition. Each week I write one centerpiece and an inside story. I also write all the briefs and the chef-of-the-week column. I do restaurant reviews twice a month. I schedule the photo shoots and work with the photo and design staffs on the concept for the art for that week. A couple of nights a week, I attend food-related events or hit the bars and restaurants to keep up on trends and develop my sources. I always have my notebook with me, even when I’m just a “civilian” and dining for pleasure. My friends tease me because I’m always scribbling down notes on what I eat, drink or see.

Smokey: Right now I write the weekly cocktail column. I call a bar and ask what's popular, write a story, send a photographer and include the recipe for the drink. I also write the Favorite Food feature. You guessed it: I harass readers to tell me their favorite dish or meal, then produce interview, photo and recipe, all in eight inches. A lot of people like fried chicken or mashed potatoes.

I also write a Good To Go feature, which is roundups on anything and everything. We have to have 52 of these in a year, so we'll do downtown, a specific menu item, a category like soup, island food, anything to be creative. I'm writing my first centerpiece on bacon. Why my first? Because I'm also a home writer and columnist, and it's hard to juggle all these beats.

Q: What are your favorite foods?

Wright: I have several: Foie gras; smoked salmon; papardelle with some kind of cream sauce; and char siu bao, which are Chinese steamed buns with a savory red pork filling. I also adore a really thick and juicy grilled cheeseburger with everything on it, especially mayo. I love my father’s scrambled eggs, which always strike the right balance between fluffy and creamy. I love my own tuna-salad recipe, which has red onions, relish, a little salsa, Dijon mustard, and ranch dressing mixed with the mayo. Anything Thai, which is one of the world’s most flavorful cuisines. Really good champagne. Really crisp French white wines. I also absolutely revere the many cuisines of China for their simultaneous simplicity and complexity, for the deep cultural meanings that underlie them and for their long history. If I have my choice, I eat French or Asian.

Smokey: I'm a big fan of two things: Pies and rice. Ask any Chipster who has lived with me or worked with me and they know I eat a lot of rice. In the Summer, it's rice with soy sauce, garlic salt and avocado. In the Winter, it's rice (wild or basmati) with roasted pumpkin seeds and peas or corn and garlic salt. Sometimes it's Rice-A-Roni or Spanish rice, or rice, black beans and salsa, or rice, sliced mango and coconut. Rice is a fave. This is going to sound lame, but I'll eat cereal any time of the day. Big for me is Frosted Flakes with frozen berries. I prefer marion berries, but blue berries or raspberries work well, too. I spent $27 at an Indian grocery store one recent Sunday and bought a 10 pound bag of basmati and about 13 different spices and ingredients. I was eating Indian for a while.

A favorite find that hardly anyone knows about: Jell-O’s fat-free white chocolate pudding. To die for! And I am by no means a chocolate fan.

After eating in China, I can't handle fake American-Chinese food. I miss real Chinese food.

Q: What food writers inspire you?

Wright: M.F.K. Fisher, of course. (Author of The Art of Eating and With Bold Knife and Fork, among others.) She’s pretty much regarded as the greatest food writer ever in English. Also Ludwig Bemelmans. He wrote these witty short stories and novels where food and restaurants play a central role. They’re set in New York and Paris in the 1920s through the 1960s. Truman Capote meets Gigi kind of thing. (Mad about Madeline: The Complete Tales) Of course, my hero is Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine and the former restaurant critic for The New York Times. She makes the subject of food really accessible and compelling. I also make sure I read everything by William Grimes, the current Times critic. His writing has a nice edge to it. He uses the best verbs -- I sometimes pinch them for my own writing!

Smokey: I don't read many food writers. My biggest complaint about food writing is most of us "writers" have never worked in a restaurant, run a restaurant or had to hire or fire employees. Food is a business (this might be my business-reporting background speaking). I figure real people (i.e., readers) will drive to wherever is closest, fastest, most reliable, with courteous staff. I know I do. My favorite Indian restaurant is by my old apartment. I'm not driving 20 miles to eat at a different Indian restaurant when I like the one I go to.

Q: Come clean: How much of this job is glamour and how much is work?

Wright: It’s mostly work. When I’m out trying a new dish or reviewing a restaurant, I’m working. I’m observing how the house treats people, how smoothly the front of the house runs. On my way to the bathroom, I sometimes pretend to be lost so I can “stumble” into the kitchen and grab a quick peek or overhear back-of-the-house gossip. I’m also trying to identify and judge the flavors of what I’m eating. Trying to see how well they’re articulated, how well they work together (or don’t). I’m judging decor, the buzz in the room, all the 10,000 things that make up a dining experience, even in very casual places. When I go to meet new chefs or restaurateurs, I’m genuinely interested in what they have to say, so that’s usually pleasant and light, but it’s not like I can hang out all afternoon drinking wine. I mean, I'd love to do that all day, nibble smoked salmon, sip champagne, but the newsroom is usually calling.

Smokey: It's work. I'm not a food critic. The food critic here, Howard Seftel, said what people didn't understand about food reviews was that he had to go to the same restaurant three times. Good or bad. When it's a five-star restaurant, it's a joy. When it's one star and god-awful, he still has to go back two more times. I'm mostly in my office. My interviews are over the phone. I play a lot of phone tag, a lot of handholding and cajoling. I send a lot of e-mail to PR companies explaining for the 12th time this month that I already did a story on a bartender at their clients’ restaurants!

Q: What's missing from your food section you'd like to cover more but don't have the time, resources or availability in your region to do so?

Wright: San Francisco, one of the world's top food towns, is just over the Sierra, about three hours away. I wish the Gazette-Journal had the staff and resources to enable us to do field reports from there. Also, I wish we had the staff to attend all the wine tastings and wine dinners around town (although I've tried to do some of this). It’d be great fun to combine food and social reporting a la dispatches from the social front. Kind of Gourmet meets localized Town and Country. Finally, a professional food stylist would be pure heaven, although I've enjoyed learning how to style food and contribute to a food photo shoot. Shopping for food items, though, takes time away from my reporting.

Smokey: I'd like to see more ethnic cooking represented -- Native cooking. I remember one meeting, I said I wanted to do a story on preparing and cooking deer or elk meat. One reporter looked shocked and said, "Who would eat Bambi?" I said, “All the people on my reservation. Anyone who hunts. Anyone who gets a slab of meat wrapped in butcher paper on their desk and doesn't know what to do with it.” We need to do more on the huge Native population and subsistence hunters in Arizona. I get tired of the frou-frou cooking shows and restaurants. But I guess I'm in the minority. Reader surveys say they want these things -- cooking and eating is a lifestyle -- and they want to enjoy themselves when they do it.

I know a lot of people my age can't afford to eat at these places we write about. I know growing up the only time we ate lobster or shrimp was at a casino buffet. Eating fast food was a treat, and most of the time we were eating leftovers four nights a week. That's the food reality for a lot of readers. We don't address their needs, concerns or issues. Instead, we write a story about four little plastic cubes that glow in a drink for eight hours that cost $32. Yeah it's neat and it's new, but that doesn't tell a single mom how to make mac and cheese healthier or exciting for the kids.

Reach Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@rgj.com. Reach Sadie Jo Smokey at SadieJo.Smokey@arizonarepublic.com.

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