March 5, 2014
A Conversation with Frank Bruni
Frank Bruni
The New York Times journalist discusses his op-ed column, his interests, and his restaurant reviews with Lanny Jones of the Old Guard.
A Conversation with Frank Bruni
Frank Bruni
The New York Times journalist discusses his op-ed column, his interests, and his restaurant reviews with Lanny Jones of the Old Guard.
Minutes of the 20th Meeting of the 72nd Year
Presiding Officer: Ruth Miller
Invocation lead by: Joan Fleming
Preceding week’s minutes read by: Harvey Rothberg
Guests and visitors [1] (see footnote)
Today’s attendance: 136 (one of the best-attended programs ever)
Next meeting: Wednesday, March 12, 2014, in the Carl Fields Center (corner of Prospect and Olden)
Next week’s topic: “Tiny Conspiracies: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria” / Prof. Bonnie Bassler
After gaveling the meeting to order at 10:15 AM, President Ruth Miller noted that with such a welcome abundance of guests at today’s Hospitality Time meeting, she would dispense with introducing them individually.
President Miller conveyed a request from membership secretary Ed Weiss that members revisit their biographical information as soon as possible and submit updates to Ed Weiss, to Bruno Walmsley, or to Roland Miller. [Members will have received an e-mail from Ed asking for these corrections.]
Today’s lecture was entitled: “A Conversation with Frank Bruni.”
Frank Bruni has been a regular op-ed columnist at The New York Times since 2011, appearing typically on Sundays and Tuesdays. From 2002 to 2004 he was the Times’s Rome bureau chief, then its chief restaurant critic until 2009. In earlier positions, he covered the White House, Capitol Hill, and George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, which he chronicled in his 2003 book, Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush.
Mr. Bruni has written two other books. In 2002, he coauthored A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church. His 2006 memoir, Born Round: A Story of Family, Food, and a Ferocious Appetite, chronicled how a man who struggled with overeating ended up in the most consequential job in the culinary world. He is currently working on a book about the fraught relationship between fathers and sons, and how our public and cultural life has been shaped by men working out their father issues.
The Discussion
Lanny Jones introduced our speaker and began the session with some questions for him.
Lanny characterized the op-ed role as something many might consider a dream job, to which Frank Bruni appended, “yes, and the nightmare part of it is that you have to hit your mark ninety-five times a year. When deadline comes around, you are not always ready with the perfect idea.” As an opinion columnist, he is not concerned about being balanced or fair. The goal is to be more provocative than that. He wants to start a conversation with every column. He sticks to subjects in which he has expertise, and is mindful of what topics his fellow columnists are already covering. Diplomacy not being his beat, for example, he is not writing about the man of the hour, Vladimir Putin. So we flash back to the food years.
Mr. Bruni debunked the “romantic and thrilling notion” that critics arrive at a restaurant incognito, in wigs and sunglasses. He, like most of his peers, has disguised himself “on only one or two occasions, and only when a restaurateur might otherwise not let him in the door.” He did use pseudonyms when making reservations, however, being sure to telephone preemptively to reconfirm before the restaurants dialed the made-up callback numbers he had given them. “It’s enough to prevent people from knowing you’re coming,” he said, “so they can’t lay on extra staff. Once you’ve arrived, it’s impossible—and not really necessary—to keep them from knowing you’re there.”
Mr. Bruni had prepared for stepping into that job at the Times by reading stacks of gastronomic articles and memoirs. He found them to be esthetic romances, with much swooning over flavors and textures. Once in the job, he saw that his fellow journalists were in fact incomparably meticulous eaters. “If they weren’t carefully limiting their portions,” he said, “it would be game over: Dining out six nights a week, they’d all be waddling around town.”
He also noticed how the literature generally exhorted people to indulge their appetites and painted a vivid fantasy of gourmandizing. He knew this wasn’t the full story, that while food is a wonderful celebration and a source of great pleasure, it can also take control of people, undo them, and be the agent of miserable health. He wrote his memoir, Born Round, because he thought his own story—“fat boy with an eating disorder ends up as restaurant critic,” as he put it —fitted him to step into this information gap, rounding out the picture by showing that there is a dark side.
Lanny then opened the session to members’ questions, which alternated, rather like a tasting menu, between Mr. Bruni’s personal background and his two best-known beats—restaurant reviewing and his wide-ranging op-ed column.
Would he, at a remove now of more than a decade, revise judgments he made about President Bush in his book Ambling into History? Not really. Mr. Bruni still sees George Bush as an individual whose character made him as strangely suited to high political office as anyone he ever met. “If you were talking to him one-on-one, in a casual environment,” Bruni said, “Bush could come across as amply intelligent. But as soon as he stepped in front of a microphone, or to a podium in a debating format, he was awful. Everything that was best about Bush was casual, intimate, and one-on-one, and everything that was worst about him was ceremonial, in crowds. This made for an odd fit with the public demands of politics.” Bruni sees Bush not as a dumb man but as an intellectually incurious man. Journalists saw Bush during his campaign toting stacks of books recommended to him by Condoleezza Rice, as if he had to bone up on world events while seeking the nation’s highest office.
A question about his 2012 New York Times travel article, “To Ireland, a Son’s Journey Home,” opened up some childhood reminiscences. Mr. Bruni grew up in an Italian family. His mother was Irish. In his parents’ generation (his father is about to be 79), “Irish-woman-Italian-man was a very common coupling in this country, almost as if the Irish woman was the Italian man’s shiksa, and the Italian man was her dance with the dark side.” Because of the generation, and the sexism of the era, with men often calling the shots—although in his family his mother called all the real shots—the exuberant Italian side dominated his experience. And food was everything. Nothing made his grandmother happier than asking for fourths, or fifths. For a boy who had problems with his appetite, this spelled doom.
His mom’s side of the family was Irish-English-Welsh, but not very tied to their ethnicity. His father’s family was “all Italian all the time. There was no cooking in the home that was English or Irish or Welsh. (Some would say there is no cooking that is English or Irish.)” He grew up thinking of himself as Italian, period, because his father’s family was so emotionally and numerically expansive. “There were cousins and aunts and uncles all over the place.” So he took the 2012 trip to Ireland to connect with his unexplored maternal heritage, and wrote about it, having come to feel that “never having been to Ireland was not just an oversight but almost a betrayal.”
Mr. Bruni is currently teaching an undergraduate seminar at Princeton University, entitled “Writing with Appetite.” Forty-eight students competed for its sixteen seats by writing letters to the instructor. “If you ever want to feel great about yourself,” he said, “read letters from people vying to let them do something.” The course extends beyond culinary writing to the craft of journalism in general, even though only three or four of his students aim to become professional writers. Mr. Bruni has assigned them articles from newspapers and magazines, and four books: Nora Ephron’s novel, Heartburn; The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan; Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, described as a vegetarian’s battle cry; and Mr. Bruni’s own memoir, which will allow students to ask its author how it was put together.
Asked about the usefulness of composite restaurant reviews, such as those in Zagat’s guides and the anonymous ratings on Yelp.com, his advice was to sample many different sources—websites and blogs, newspapers and magazines, local guidebooks and ratings—then triangulate to see which restaurants are mentioned everywhere as pleasing both to the geek and to the mainstream consumer.
By way of contrast with these reviews based on consumer votes, where the ballot box can be stuffed by the best-organized restaurants, or poisoned by a chef’s mortal enemy, Mr. Bruni took us inside the practices of critics at respected publications. In the case of reviews by his successor, Pete Wells, in The New York Times, for example, readers know that the reviewer
Asked about the A-B-C ratings posted by New York City’s health department, he said he will eat in a “B” establishment if he already knows the restaurant and its standards. He is undeterred by the B in the window of one of his favorites in Greenwich Village, Tertulia, where the kitchen is open to view and the chef, Seamus Mullen, is a personal friend. He’s seen places with a B that he thinks are the victims of the wrong inspection at the wrong time. He’s also seen As that shock him. He is not keen to try a C, however.
Does he cook, now that he’s no longer eating out six nights a week? He’s generally too busy, and when he does, it’s something simple, typically just for himself and his partner. “I do make a faultless salmon filet, and I roast a mean chicken.” He has been on a meatloaf jag lately.
How do critics choose which restaurants to review? They lean toward new ones that are opening, in which the chef is someone of some note and ambition; and places there is an intense public curiosity about. The focus is Manhattan and Brooklyn. Even the Times can’t afford to cover New Jersey or Connecticut with any depth, given time and money that needs to be devoted to being fair, because of the economic consequences.
Mr. Bruni is concerned about the effect on journalism of the social-media culture. Today’s readers have to wonder whether a writer is taking a certain tack in order to attract more attention. We’re in an era of counting Twitter followers and instant metrics, where online articles display a running total of how many people have liked, shared, commented, or retweeted. The goal of many journalist has become to develop a following and a brand, rather than to do the most objective work. This has contributed to the partisan intellectual environment, and to the polarization of our politics. The hosting websites promote extreme positions in order to build a loyal but, alas, homogenous audience. He sees this as a phenomenon we should be worried about.
Lanny Jones asked about the expanding role of social-media consultants in the coming congressional and presidential campaigns. Mr. Bruni expects an increasingly distracting focus on trivial moments, especially gaffes by candidates or their staffers made to go viral. Journalists on the campaign bus instantly tweet such ephemera in real time twenty times a day to stoke their Twitter feeds. The news-seeking public drowns in a cataract of noise about junior staffers baiting each other, and the public conversation is debased. Another huge concern.
Having written extensively about gay rights, Mr. Bruni was asked what evolution he foresees in public attitudes, and whether he expects transformative rulings by the Supreme Court. He does anticipate a decision, someday, comparable to Loving v. Virginia, but meanwhile, he sees federal and state legislatures and courts looking closely at venerable constitutions and failing to find the support they once assumed was there for the denial of gay rights. The Texas and Utah constitutions haven’t changed; what’s changed is the cultural context and social climate. Mr. Bruni said there’s no other issue in which one sees such a pronounced generational divide. Among the age group represented by the Old Guard, nationwide approval of gay marriage has not yet risen to 50 percent. But among people 21 to 30, approval is at 75 percent. Even in southern states, and among evangelical youth, the numbers run above 50 percent.
As conservative columnist George Will has said, “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying . . . It’s old people.” As for younger people, Mr. Bruni has eleven nieces and nephews. “They have known that their Uncle Frank is gay since they’ve known their Uncle Frank. They just don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with Uncle Frank. We are now twenty or thirty years into of a lot people who are gay and lesbian no longer hiding the fact.[2] With openness comes a whole generation that knows they love somebody before, or as, they know they’re gay. “
He has written about the new Pope, Francis, whom he finds fascinating, in many ways admirable and inspiring. He is waiting to see whether the Pope’s path-breaking words issue into action, and plans to keep writing about the Catholic Church.
Mr. Bruni was asked, finally, what he sees as the greatest deficiency in the paper for which he works, an opportunity he passed up because he was between paydays and really likes his job. The question did, however, prompt him to end by expressing, in affectingly heartfelt fashion, why he thinks The New York Times is a national treasure, one that he said delivers, for its cost of $2.50, extraordinary information and entertainment value. He spoke of bounty, hyperabundance; of the extraordinary worth of a single article by Natalie Angier or a dozen other reporters he could name; and of the nearly limitless byways of the extended online version.
President Miller adjourned the meeting of the Old Guard at 11.33, and an appreciative audience was left with the sense that henceforth, coming to the op-ed page and finding Frank Bruni featured there might feel, just a little, like opening a menu and knowing the chef personally.
Respectfully submitted,
Jared T. Kieling
[1] The following members signed in as hosting guests:
Member Guest
Jerry Berkelhammer wife, Sheila
David Egger wife, Audrey
Bill Burks John Kelsey
Martin Rome Rogie Rome
Marge D’Amico John D’Amico
Bruce Schragger wife, Irene
Reeves Hicks Joan Hicks
Ralph Widner Joan Widner
Helen-Keith Smeltzer husband, Bill Smeltzer
Henry King Lanny King
Henry Von Kohorn wife, Meredith Von Kohorn
Sybil Stokes Barbara Wright
Charlie Taggart Joan Hicks
Larry Parsons Jean Parsons
[2] [Mr. Bruni is the first openly gay op-ed columnist at The New York Times. –JTK]
Invocation lead by: Joan Fleming
Preceding week’s minutes read by: Harvey Rothberg
Guests and visitors [1] (see footnote)
Today’s attendance: 136 (one of the best-attended programs ever)
Next meeting: Wednesday, March 12, 2014, in the Carl Fields Center (corner of Prospect and Olden)
Next week’s topic: “Tiny Conspiracies: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria” / Prof. Bonnie Bassler
After gaveling the meeting to order at 10:15 AM, President Ruth Miller noted that with such a welcome abundance of guests at today’s Hospitality Time meeting, she would dispense with introducing them individually.
President Miller conveyed a request from membership secretary Ed Weiss that members revisit their biographical information as soon as possible and submit updates to Ed Weiss, to Bruno Walmsley, or to Roland Miller. [Members will have received an e-mail from Ed asking for these corrections.]
Today’s lecture was entitled: “A Conversation with Frank Bruni.”
Frank Bruni has been a regular op-ed columnist at The New York Times since 2011, appearing typically on Sundays and Tuesdays. From 2002 to 2004 he was the Times’s Rome bureau chief, then its chief restaurant critic until 2009. In earlier positions, he covered the White House, Capitol Hill, and George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, which he chronicled in his 2003 book, Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush.
Mr. Bruni has written two other books. In 2002, he coauthored A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church. His 2006 memoir, Born Round: A Story of Family, Food, and a Ferocious Appetite, chronicled how a man who struggled with overeating ended up in the most consequential job in the culinary world. He is currently working on a book about the fraught relationship between fathers and sons, and how our public and cultural life has been shaped by men working out their father issues.
The Discussion
Lanny Jones introduced our speaker and began the session with some questions for him.
Lanny characterized the op-ed role as something many might consider a dream job, to which Frank Bruni appended, “yes, and the nightmare part of it is that you have to hit your mark ninety-five times a year. When deadline comes around, you are not always ready with the perfect idea.” As an opinion columnist, he is not concerned about being balanced or fair. The goal is to be more provocative than that. He wants to start a conversation with every column. He sticks to subjects in which he has expertise, and is mindful of what topics his fellow columnists are already covering. Diplomacy not being his beat, for example, he is not writing about the man of the hour, Vladimir Putin. So we flash back to the food years.
Mr. Bruni debunked the “romantic and thrilling notion” that critics arrive at a restaurant incognito, in wigs and sunglasses. He, like most of his peers, has disguised himself “on only one or two occasions, and only when a restaurateur might otherwise not let him in the door.” He did use pseudonyms when making reservations, however, being sure to telephone preemptively to reconfirm before the restaurants dialed the made-up callback numbers he had given them. “It’s enough to prevent people from knowing you’re coming,” he said, “so they can’t lay on extra staff. Once you’ve arrived, it’s impossible—and not really necessary—to keep them from knowing you’re there.”
Mr. Bruni had prepared for stepping into that job at the Times by reading stacks of gastronomic articles and memoirs. He found them to be esthetic romances, with much swooning over flavors and textures. Once in the job, he saw that his fellow journalists were in fact incomparably meticulous eaters. “If they weren’t carefully limiting their portions,” he said, “it would be game over: Dining out six nights a week, they’d all be waddling around town.”
He also noticed how the literature generally exhorted people to indulge their appetites and painted a vivid fantasy of gourmandizing. He knew this wasn’t the full story, that while food is a wonderful celebration and a source of great pleasure, it can also take control of people, undo them, and be the agent of miserable health. He wrote his memoir, Born Round, because he thought his own story—“fat boy with an eating disorder ends up as restaurant critic,” as he put it —fitted him to step into this information gap, rounding out the picture by showing that there is a dark side.
Lanny then opened the session to members’ questions, which alternated, rather like a tasting menu, between Mr. Bruni’s personal background and his two best-known beats—restaurant reviewing and his wide-ranging op-ed column.
Would he, at a remove now of more than a decade, revise judgments he made about President Bush in his book Ambling into History? Not really. Mr. Bruni still sees George Bush as an individual whose character made him as strangely suited to high political office as anyone he ever met. “If you were talking to him one-on-one, in a casual environment,” Bruni said, “Bush could come across as amply intelligent. But as soon as he stepped in front of a microphone, or to a podium in a debating format, he was awful. Everything that was best about Bush was casual, intimate, and one-on-one, and everything that was worst about him was ceremonial, in crowds. This made for an odd fit with the public demands of politics.” Bruni sees Bush not as a dumb man but as an intellectually incurious man. Journalists saw Bush during his campaign toting stacks of books recommended to him by Condoleezza Rice, as if he had to bone up on world events while seeking the nation’s highest office.
A question about his 2012 New York Times travel article, “To Ireland, a Son’s Journey Home,” opened up some childhood reminiscences. Mr. Bruni grew up in an Italian family. His mother was Irish. In his parents’ generation (his father is about to be 79), “Irish-woman-Italian-man was a very common coupling in this country, almost as if the Irish woman was the Italian man’s shiksa, and the Italian man was her dance with the dark side.” Because of the generation, and the sexism of the era, with men often calling the shots—although in his family his mother called all the real shots—the exuberant Italian side dominated his experience. And food was everything. Nothing made his grandmother happier than asking for fourths, or fifths. For a boy who had problems with his appetite, this spelled doom.
His mom’s side of the family was Irish-English-Welsh, but not very tied to their ethnicity. His father’s family was “all Italian all the time. There was no cooking in the home that was English or Irish or Welsh. (Some would say there is no cooking that is English or Irish.)” He grew up thinking of himself as Italian, period, because his father’s family was so emotionally and numerically expansive. “There were cousins and aunts and uncles all over the place.” So he took the 2012 trip to Ireland to connect with his unexplored maternal heritage, and wrote about it, having come to feel that “never having been to Ireland was not just an oversight but almost a betrayal.”
Mr. Bruni is currently teaching an undergraduate seminar at Princeton University, entitled “Writing with Appetite.” Forty-eight students competed for its sixteen seats by writing letters to the instructor. “If you ever want to feel great about yourself,” he said, “read letters from people vying to let them do something.” The course extends beyond culinary writing to the craft of journalism in general, even though only three or four of his students aim to become professional writers. Mr. Bruni has assigned them articles from newspapers and magazines, and four books: Nora Ephron’s novel, Heartburn; The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan; Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, described as a vegetarian’s battle cry; and Mr. Bruni’s own memoir, which will allow students to ask its author how it was put together.
Asked about the usefulness of composite restaurant reviews, such as those in Zagat’s guides and the anonymous ratings on Yelp.com, his advice was to sample many different sources—websites and blogs, newspapers and magazines, local guidebooks and ratings—then triangulate to see which restaurants are mentioned everywhere as pleasing both to the geek and to the mainstream consumer.
By way of contrast with these reviews based on consumer votes, where the ballot box can be stuffed by the best-organized restaurants, or poisoned by a chef’s mortal enemy, Mr. Bruni took us inside the practices of critics at respected publications. In the case of reviews by his successor, Pete Wells, in The New York Times, for example, readers know that the reviewer
- is knowledgeable
- doesn’t have a conflict of interest
- has been to the restaurant at least three times.
- has been accompanied by other people, and has made a conscientious effort to sample the full range of the menu
- has ordered certain dishes on multiple visits, to judge consistency
- and that the review has been more scientifically, earnestly, and deeply done, than anything we’ll find in Zagat’s or Yelp.
Asked about the A-B-C ratings posted by New York City’s health department, he said he will eat in a “B” establishment if he already knows the restaurant and its standards. He is undeterred by the B in the window of one of his favorites in Greenwich Village, Tertulia, where the kitchen is open to view and the chef, Seamus Mullen, is a personal friend. He’s seen places with a B that he thinks are the victims of the wrong inspection at the wrong time. He’s also seen As that shock him. He is not keen to try a C, however.
Does he cook, now that he’s no longer eating out six nights a week? He’s generally too busy, and when he does, it’s something simple, typically just for himself and his partner. “I do make a faultless salmon filet, and I roast a mean chicken.” He has been on a meatloaf jag lately.
How do critics choose which restaurants to review? They lean toward new ones that are opening, in which the chef is someone of some note and ambition; and places there is an intense public curiosity about. The focus is Manhattan and Brooklyn. Even the Times can’t afford to cover New Jersey or Connecticut with any depth, given time and money that needs to be devoted to being fair, because of the economic consequences.
Mr. Bruni is concerned about the effect on journalism of the social-media culture. Today’s readers have to wonder whether a writer is taking a certain tack in order to attract more attention. We’re in an era of counting Twitter followers and instant metrics, where online articles display a running total of how many people have liked, shared, commented, or retweeted. The goal of many journalist has become to develop a following and a brand, rather than to do the most objective work. This has contributed to the partisan intellectual environment, and to the polarization of our politics. The hosting websites promote extreme positions in order to build a loyal but, alas, homogenous audience. He sees this as a phenomenon we should be worried about.
Lanny Jones asked about the expanding role of social-media consultants in the coming congressional and presidential campaigns. Mr. Bruni expects an increasingly distracting focus on trivial moments, especially gaffes by candidates or their staffers made to go viral. Journalists on the campaign bus instantly tweet such ephemera in real time twenty times a day to stoke their Twitter feeds. The news-seeking public drowns in a cataract of noise about junior staffers baiting each other, and the public conversation is debased. Another huge concern.
Having written extensively about gay rights, Mr. Bruni was asked what evolution he foresees in public attitudes, and whether he expects transformative rulings by the Supreme Court. He does anticipate a decision, someday, comparable to Loving v. Virginia, but meanwhile, he sees federal and state legislatures and courts looking closely at venerable constitutions and failing to find the support they once assumed was there for the denial of gay rights. The Texas and Utah constitutions haven’t changed; what’s changed is the cultural context and social climate. Mr. Bruni said there’s no other issue in which one sees such a pronounced generational divide. Among the age group represented by the Old Guard, nationwide approval of gay marriage has not yet risen to 50 percent. But among people 21 to 30, approval is at 75 percent. Even in southern states, and among evangelical youth, the numbers run above 50 percent.
As conservative columnist George Will has said, “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying . . . It’s old people.” As for younger people, Mr. Bruni has eleven nieces and nephews. “They have known that their Uncle Frank is gay since they’ve known their Uncle Frank. They just don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with Uncle Frank. We are now twenty or thirty years into of a lot people who are gay and lesbian no longer hiding the fact.[2] With openness comes a whole generation that knows they love somebody before, or as, they know they’re gay. “
He has written about the new Pope, Francis, whom he finds fascinating, in many ways admirable and inspiring. He is waiting to see whether the Pope’s path-breaking words issue into action, and plans to keep writing about the Catholic Church.
Mr. Bruni was asked, finally, what he sees as the greatest deficiency in the paper for which he works, an opportunity he passed up because he was between paydays and really likes his job. The question did, however, prompt him to end by expressing, in affectingly heartfelt fashion, why he thinks The New York Times is a national treasure, one that he said delivers, for its cost of $2.50, extraordinary information and entertainment value. He spoke of bounty, hyperabundance; of the extraordinary worth of a single article by Natalie Angier or a dozen other reporters he could name; and of the nearly limitless byways of the extended online version.
President Miller adjourned the meeting of the Old Guard at 11.33, and an appreciative audience was left with the sense that henceforth, coming to the op-ed page and finding Frank Bruni featured there might feel, just a little, like opening a menu and knowing the chef personally.
Respectfully submitted,
Jared T. Kieling
[1] The following members signed in as hosting guests:
Member Guest
Jerry Berkelhammer wife, Sheila
David Egger wife, Audrey
Bill Burks John Kelsey
Martin Rome Rogie Rome
Marge D’Amico John D’Amico
Bruce Schragger wife, Irene
Reeves Hicks Joan Hicks
Ralph Widner Joan Widner
Helen-Keith Smeltzer husband, Bill Smeltzer
Henry King Lanny King
Henry Von Kohorn wife, Meredith Von Kohorn
Sybil Stokes Barbara Wright
Charlie Taggart Joan Hicks
Larry Parsons Jean Parsons
[2] [Mr. Bruni is the first openly gay op-ed columnist at The New York Times. –JTK]