Hannah Goldfield - Pandemic Update
September 22, 2020
Over the years, this interview project has helped me understand the myriad ways in which work defines a life, shaping it for the better and sometimes for the worse. A job can be a lifeline. It can be a dream stretched long and taut into a career. It can be a set of constraints. It can energize, demoralize, exhaust, and empower, sometimes all at once. When the coronavirus began to upend life in the United States in early March, work as we know it was disrupted. People abruptly lost their jobs, employees were told to turn their apartments into offices, and whole industries went dormant. Other previously overlooked workers became “essential,” though their low pay did not suddenly grow to reflect their new importance. In this period of crisis, I wanted to speak with some of the women featured in past Conversations to find out how the pandemic has affected their daily lives and identities.
The protests against police brutality and racial injustice that swept the US this summer also forced me to consider the ways I have failed to address race and racism both in private conversations and through this project. These updates offered a chance to ask better questions and rectify past omissions. I’m grateful for the opportunity and thankful to the women who shared their time and thoughts with me. This series has often felt like an exercise in map-making. When so many things feel uncertain, these real-time updates have helped me imagine new paths we might chart forward.
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Hannah’s son Otto has been the (mostly silent, occasionally babbling) third party present at all our interview sessions, pre-pandemic and during the crisis. When Hannah was without childcare in the early summer, Otto provided background noise on the voice notes she recorded in response to my emailed questions. (There was no time, with a tiny person around, to sit at a computer and type back to me.) In August he accompanied us on a walk through Prospect Park, where we threaded through streams of socially distanced joggers and shouted out a conversation over street noise.
This spring, the question of how (and whether) to do her job as restaurant critic during a pandemic took on double meaning as business and “non-essential” work, which included most childcare, ground to a halt in New York. How does one write about a restaurant industry that is mostly shuttered? How does one write anything at all while caring for a child full-time? Those questions and their relationship to privilege and race framed much of our dialogue over the last few months. I have long appreciated the way Hannah doesn’t shy away from interrogating the most basic facts of her job. She’s always asking what — and who — restaurant criticism is for. As the protests of this summer forced white people to confront their complicity in white supremacy and anti-Blackness, her line of thinking expanded to include a further existential dimension. Who should be doing her job? What if the answer is: not Hannah? I am thankful to Hannah for the candor and rigor she brought to our conversation.
This interview took place over several months via email and in person; it has been edited and condensed. I photographed Hannah in Prospect Park and on her front stoop in August.
July 2020
Georgia Hilmer: Broadly speaking, how has the pandemic affected your ability to do your job?
Hannah Goldfield: At first I thought it was going to render me completely unable to do my job. For a week or two it did because The New Yorker pulled the Goings on About Town section initially, when all the theaters and restaurants and anywhere you had to go out to closed. So I suddenly wasn’t writing a Tables for Two and thought that would continue indefinitely. Then they decided to bring it back. I was doing it again and having to figure out how to cover restaurants in a pandemic-friendly way, if you will. At first we weren’t sure if we were going to cover restaurants at all, we were asking, “What can we do about food?” Then we decided to give ourselves the constraint of continuing to cover restaurants in their time of need. It felt weird to write about something food-related that wasn’t restaurant-related when restaurants need support more than ever.
I would say my columns are reported more than they have been before; they’re not so much reviews as they are snapshots without judgment — there is inherent judgment in the fact that I’m picking places that I think are really good and doing something interesting but I’m not assessing the food in the way that I once would have. I feel like my role is to be really supportive of a strapped and dying, to be frank, industry. I’m now doing something that I would only rarely do before, which is interview chefs or owners.
When I do interviews I usually do them on weekday mornings. The writing I have basically been doing on weekends in one day, sometimes two days, sometimes it bleeds over into Monday morning. At first I felt sort of desperate about my job, like “How am I going to come up with something to write about every week, this is so hard, is it even worth it?” And now I feel like, again, the idea of constraint has been really good for me creatively. I have less time to wring my hands existentially and I’m just trying to push ahead. I feel a great sense of accomplishment every time I come up with an idea and execute it, like I am helping in some small way.
Every week feels like the last one because I think, “What else can I say that is interesting or new, what else can I cover?” and then amazingly, the restaurant industry and the people who work in it keep coming up with things for me to cover. I feel fairly good about work right now, which is weird to say.
What kind of conversations have you had with your editors about the ambitions and tone of the Tables for Two column going forward? In our initial interview, we talked a lot about what the function of food criticism is and what the political dimensions of writing about restaurants is. How are you feeling about your role as a restaurant critic now?
This has been a sort of seat-of-our pants sort of thing. Can we do this? Should we do this? What does this look like? Just putting one foot in front of the other and doing it every week. My role at this point really is to help restaurants. I’m not just doing that willy nilly, I’m trying to cover a really broad swath of interesting places and give coverage to people who are being especially creative and resourceful. I’m also thinking about the reader and want the reader to know about particularly interesting or exciting things that might bring a little bit of extra joy to their lives at a time when that is in short supply. In that sense it is not entirely different from what I was doing before.
Maybe I’m being less of a harsh critic? I’m still a critic in that I am making decisions and sharing my thoughts and my view of the world. But if something was delivered to my house that I was writing about and I didn’t like it, I would not call it out in the way that I once would have. Whereas before I felt like there were restaurants that could take that, I now see that in this moment there are really not any restaurants that can take that. They’re all struggling to survive, even the big chains, to some degree. It’s also made me realize that maybe in the past I was a little cavalier about which places could take negative criticism. There are obviously restaurants that have more investment money and backing than others, and the margins differ from place to place, but it seems like, overall, the margins are just varying degrees of thinness — thinness throughout, basically. I feel like I didn’t totally understand the world I was covering the way I do now. It doesn’t seem like anybody did, so I don’t feel like that’s a personal failing, more like a collective failing, which opens up a lot of other questions as to why that is.
I think ultimately it’s a failing on the part of local and federal governments for not protecting restaurants and small businesses by having regulations around rent and things like that. A lot about the industry needs to change and will be forced to change. There’s no way things are going to go back to the way they were before. Whether things will change for the better or for the worse depends a lot, I think, on policy and the way that small businesses and larger restaurant groups are protected. I think that part of my responsibility is to report on that, which I have done a little bit in my column but I could do more of. I think, in terms of The New Yorker, a lot of that coverage will fall to my colleague Helen Rosner, who is more of a broad-ranging correspondent and is really politically savvy and super knowledgeable about the industry at large. I am relieved, in some sense, to know that she will cover that much better than I can in Tables for Two.
How has having a child and limited access to childcare changed the way you get your work done?
I have a one year-old child and it is hard to get any actual work done with a baby. I am doing my work in even less time than I was in the initial time period after I got back from maternity leave, which I talked to you about. Before the baby I was doing my work in five days, then doing it in three days with the baby, and now I’m realizing I can do it in one to two days. It doesn’t feel great, necessarily. I don’t know that the work is suffering but my mental health is probably suffering. It is not perfect. I would prefer to have some childcare. On the other hand, I do feel amazed that I am able to continue to have a career and spend so much time with my child. It’s kind of astonishing how little time, relatively, I was spending with him before, at least during the week, and in general how modern life is (for most people) built in such a way that if you have kids you don’t really spend that much time with them. It is striking to me that I am now spending all day with my kid, which is delightful and, you know, exhausting. Mostly, I feel really grateful. He’s at peak cuteness. (He is right now putting his face down in a pile of beans on his highchair table.)
It’s so unclear what the future of restaurants will look like in the wake of COVID-19. Do you think there is any sense in which some changes going forward might be positive for the industry?
I don’t know what the restaurant industry is going to look like when this is over, if it is ever really over, because I feel like this has just changed the course of the world in ways we don’t even realize. The industry will necessarily change; I don’t know if that will be good or bad. Some places are never going to open again and that sucks. I think a lot of places are going to adapt in really creative ways.
In terms of policy and protection, it seems like having to pay insanely high, jacked-up-by-greedy-landlords rents is part of why restaurant margins are so razor thin. There is no reason why the government can’t control that and make that illegal. I’m hoping that that will change. There should be all sorts of protections around the minimum wage and healthcare and how businesses are required to take care of their employees. I think in most cases it is not the restaurants’ greed that is driving them to pay their restaurant workers less — maybe it is in some cases — but I think it is the fact that their rents are so high. That does seem to me like a good starting point; maybe it is one of several ways in. I think the most optimistic way to put it is to say that the change will be interesting. I think there are enough resourceful people who care and know how to make things happen that something new will emerge from this. I don’t want to believe in a world where we can only eat at Applebee’s. I have faith that that will not be the case. I could be wrong; I hope I’m not wrong.
August 2020
Could you describe what the life of most restaurants has been since the shutdown began in New York? Is there a pattern or a phenomenon you’ve seen recurring across different establishments?
Most restaurants shut down in some capacity at first. Some of them still haven’t opened, some of them have gone out of business, and a lot of them have adapted, whether that means figuring out how to do take-out in a safe way or totally new formats or outdoor dining. Responses have varied widely.
What has been the most exciting adaptation to you?
I wrote a column about restaurants becoming grocery stores and diversifying their businesses in a way that I find very inspiring. It seemed like those restaurants decided, “We can’t do what we normally do but people need food so we’ll figure out a way to give it to them.” It was so amazing to basically raid a restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator and amp up my cooking and eating a home in a way I had never imagined. That was a new thing for me as a diner that I felt like enhanced my life.
Is there a certain kind of restaurant that hasn’t been able to bounce or pivot or understand itself as useful beyond the classic restaurant conception?
Yes, that’s evident in a lot of high-end places that haven’t opened. They really relied on the model of people’s butts in seats and selling them alcohol in particular. Some of those places are doing other things; Eleven Madison Park became a sort of soup kitchen.
We talked in our earlier conversation about the ethics of extreme fine dining and whether that was inherently interesting anymore or if, as a fancy restaurant, you have to make a more convincing case for your existence. How are you thinking about that now?
I’m sure fine dining is not over but right now it feels over. I keep thinking about the fact that I wrote — about Veronika, the last fancy restaurant I covered — that I didn’t think it would survive the coming culture wars. It wasn’t the culture wars that closed the restaurant, it was the pandemic, but I do feel like those things are related. A place like Veronika seemed fragile because of who it was for and how it functioned.
I think that a lot of people are hoping that this rupture will be an opportunity for things to change and other people find the chances of a shift unlikely.
Rich people are still going to want to eat at restaurants that they feel are made just for them. In terms of that being mainstream and not a dark, shameful secret — I feel like that might change.
I’ve been thinking, in the wake of the recent protests and as a magazine like Bon Appetit implodes, about the limitations of historically white institutions, particularly legacy media publications. What are potential paths forward for places like The New York Times and The New Yorker? Why has it taken them so long to heed the call for better representation and broader coverage? I do feel that, as a critic, you do a good job of capturing the diversity of the New York restaurant landscape in a way that other publications have not succeeded as well at. How have you been thinking lately about whiteness in your role as a restaurant critic and specifically at The New Yorker?
I’ve been thinking so much about it and haven’t necessarily had very many clear or productive thoughts — at least I haven’t reached any conclusions. In terms of your comment about covering a broad landscape, I’ve always tried to do that, that has always been part of my stated goal.
Lately there have been some responses to Padma Lakshmi’s new show Taste the Nation that criticize as too optimistic the idea that being familiar with lots of different foods actually translates to being less racist. There’s a sort of disconnect there, like “All we need to do is teach each other about food” and “Food is the universal language.” There was a lot of smart criticism pointing out that’s not quite how real life works. I’ve been thinking about that and the work that I’m doing in trying to make restaurant criticism and The New Yorker’s coverage less white. I think The New Yorker has a good legacy of covering — I’m hesitant to use the word “diverse” because it has been so disparaged as a word that has lost its meaning — a wide variety of stories. A big part of the problem is not just who’s being covered but who’s doing the coverage. I don’t think there are enough people of color who work at The New Yorker — but I do think that’s changing.
So what I’ve been thinking about but haven’t yet made any decisions on or sorted through my feelings about is: What about the fact that I’m white? Is there a limitation to what I can do just by virtue of me being white? I want to keep doing my job but I also think that someone who doesn’t look like me should get to do my job. It’s complicated. I’ve been congratulating myself for being a woman who is doing my job because there have been so few women in this role. But also what is this job? The status of the restaurant industry at large is so unclear, let alone restaurant criticism or food writing. If there’s one thing I need to think more about it is: How can I affect change from the side of the industry that I’m on?
More and more pieces about the relationship between food media and the restaurant business are being published these days. Like in Hollywood and other creative industries, there’s a symbiosis in the food world between journalism/publicity and the actual business side of things. That dynamic seems to have allowed stories of abuse and harassment to go untold or ignored. I wonder how you think about your role as a critic in relation to a sort of moral imperative to hold people accountable?
I don’t know how to do my job (as it has existed) in a way that doesn’t account for what it’s like to eat at this restaurant, who is making the food, all of the normal framework of a restaurant review. Would it then also ask: Is this person abusing their staff? I’ve heard the question posed: Does it fall to the restaurant critic to make sure the food is being obtained in a sustainable or responsible way? If a restaurant is claiming that everything they serve is locally grown or organic, do you have to check that? Those issues are related: What lies behind the curtain? Are people being paid fair wages? Are people being abused?
I guess the question for the critic becomes: How much are you reporting your own experience and how much are you reporting a broader story?
Those feel like two such different things, at least in terms of how criticism has operated in the past. I wrote a review of a restaurant called Crown Shy last year. I had read in Kwame Onwuachi’s memoir that he worked with James Kent, the chef who opened it. Kwame spoke about Kent in glowing terms and used him as an example of a counterpoint to toxic kitchen culture. Here was a person who was incredibly gifted and a culinary genius and made a point of being a mentor, was incredibly kind, and didn’t yell — a mensch. I made that a point in the review. But as for incorporating testimony in the other direction, there have been times when I didn’t even think about the behind-the-scenes experience at all — and other times when I just ignored the fact that a chef seemed like the kind of person who might at least be worth investigating from that standpoint.
We’ve talked about the role of the negative review in the past and the fragile nature of the restaurant ecosystem. We’ve discussed how much value there is in writing something negative about a place and whether a restaurant can “take it” or not. At the beginning of the pandemic we talked about how your understanding of who could survive a negative review shifted when you realized how precarious a position all restaurants were in. I wonder if that perceived precarity, combined with the insularity of the industry, influences people whose job it is to more straightforwardly report and investigate. In such a small world maybe you can take a critical swing only a few times before you become ostracized?
I feel like taking a swing as a critic is different than taking a swing as a reporter who is actually uncovering misconduct. Maybe the solution is that we just need more food reporting.
Is the moral imperative the same in both roles? They’re different jobs.
If the food reporting was happening more fervently and faster, I wouldn’t be writing about those restaurants because they wouldn’t exist. I will never not think about this dynamic again — that’s something. I will be more open to the possibilities that the people who are achieving success and seem like empire builders are probably stepping on someone’s neck on the way.
You can’t build an empire without there being implicit harm.
I think it’s also motivation to push further in my goal of covering more family-run restaurants and women-run restaurants and restaurants run by people of color.
If more of kinds of people in the restaurant industry were being covered, one restaurant wouldn’t have to bear the load of representation for an entire identity group. The Eater piece by Navneet Alang that addressed the Alison Roman fall-out ended on a related note: the industry would be better if there were more people from different backgrounds involved in the food world overall.
I think that’s true. I think that it would naturally help.
Can you talk a little bit about your decision to not review places that you would go to sit and eat at — to only review places that offer a take-out or distanced option?
I feel like it seems like limiting face-to-face contact — even outside, even with masks — with strangers, is a pretty good thing to do. I recognize that restaurants want to stay open and having outdoor dining is the difference between meeting their bottom line and not, and also that people really, really want to eat out and find even the abridged version of it satisfying. But to me it just doesn’t seem worth it. Especially given that I’m finding a lot of interesting alternatives that seem to be keeping other places afloat, though I don’t know if that’s actually true. A lot of people I talk to say, “We can keep going like this … for a few more months. If this continues into the fall and we don’t get relief of any kind, that’s lights out for us.” Maybe I’m being naive in that sense, but I think that’s true for the places that offer outdoor dining too. If people want to offer that and people want to take advantage of it, that’s fine, but it feels irresponsible of me to promote that right now.
From an aesthetic point of view, it also just doesn’t seem fun to me. I’m most confident in making that judgment, interestingly enough, which is more traditional criticism: That doesn’t look fun. I don’t want to have to keep pulling my mask up and down, I don’t want to think about the other people around me except to notice what they’re wearing or what they’re talking about. I don’t want to be worried when someone coughs.
How has negotiating childcare changed since we talked at the beginning of the pandemic, when you were squeezing all of your writing for the column into a single day?
In the beginning I was basically writing the column on weekends. My husband and I got into a routine with that where I was getting my work done but I felt pretty miserable. As soon as we started to have childcare again, my whole body had a physical reaction of relief. Now that I have had the experience of doing my job without childcare, I never want to do that again. The future of childcare for us remains unclear though: when the school year starts again, if the public schools do classes mostly online or suddenly close for quarantine, our nanny will have to take care of her own daughter during the day.
We have talked a little bit about what it means to write your column when the stakes have changed for restaurant owners and chefs. You also noted that it feels like during the pandemic the stakes for your readers have intensified. Maybe the expectation would be that in a time of crisis, readers wouldn’t be concerned with pleasures like going out to eat at a restaurant or reading about restaurants, but instead you’ve felt a hunger from readers for your column to continue.
I think in general everything feels cut off. Things are closed, you cannot do most of the things you could do before. When you are doing them, you’re doing them in a very limited way. I feel like my mandate has become to show people how to do food-related things in a way that doesn’t feel limited — that feels good and exciting. That’s a very different goal. It’s such a specific thing in a specific context. It’s given me a greater sense of purpose. The stakes are higher in that before there were so many options available to you and a question of not whether you were going to go out to eat but where. Now it’s so much more fraught. There are so many fewer options and way more confusing decisions to navigate. The service journalism aspect of my job is brought into sharper focus.
You’ve also said that constraints for you are more like a godsend than a frustration.
Yes, exactly, so in a way I’m thriving as a writer even though I still hate writing and find it really hard. My sense of purpose is clearer. Even though I sit down at my computer and go, “Aaah what am I going to say?” I don’t ask myself, “Is this a stupid job?” Right now I think it’s not a stupid job! I think people are grateful for the fact that I’ve continued the column . At a time when most things have been interrupted, I think people are kind of astonished that you can still read Tables for Two. It can still be useful to you. I’ve gotten some feedback from readers that it’s good news, it’s a little bit escapist, or at least permission to feel excited about something and to seek out pleasure.