Beef

Sietsema to Ozersky: Who Paid for Your Wedding Feast?

Photo: Patrick McMullan

The Voice’s Robert Sietsema took down Josh Ozersky today for a June 15 column the erstwhile Grub Street editor wrote about his wedding for Time.com. In “Great Wedding Food: Tips From a Newly Married Critic,” Ozersky praised the star-studded chef team (Michael White, Michael Psilakis, Jim Lahey) who catered his wedding. Ozersky’s essay already won him some enemies in the catering community, who took umbrage with his notion that “most caterers aren’t really good cooks.”

But in a straight-for-the-jugular open letter, Sietsema tells Ozersky that he doesn’t “make clear in the article how or if you paid for all this booty … Since the function of a critic, anonymous or not, is to eat food and render an unbiased opinion, you seem to have failed on that account with your unstinting praise for your own wedding banquet.” Even worse, says Sietsema, is that Ozersky gives readers “the false impression that food journalism operates via palsy-walsy contacts among chefs and the journalists who write about them.” Unfortunately, that impression isn’t always as false as it should be. [Fork in the Road/VV]

Update:
Ozersky Reponds
Ozersky Gets Public Spanking, Keeps Job

Sietsema to Ozersky: Who Paid for Your Wedding Feast?