Eating My Words An Appetite for Life Chapter One Like Mother, Like Daughter "Today you're a maven of dreck ..." "Good morning, Mother." It is 8:10 A.M. and I know that my mother has been aching to talk since 6:30, when the New York Times arrives at her door. Unable to contain herself any longer after reading one of my most negative Friday restaurant reviews, she finally calls, certain that I will be awake. "You think what you do is so nice?" she begins. "A man invests a lot of money and builds a beautiful restaurant and has a family to support. He has customers and everything is fine, until one day, in walks Big Mouth. Then you write and say that this was too salty, and that was too dry, and this was too that, and pretty soon nobody goes there. Who cares if people eat in a terrible place? If you don't like it, go someplace else. Do you think everyone knows what good is? And even if you're right, what business is it of yours?" It would have been futile to explain that my business was exactly that, and, furthermore, that I was building a gratifying following. Just as pointless would be the information that I had won an award, or that I was told by several restaurant owners that they were able to get bank loans on the basis of my two-star rating. I knew why the review had earned me the accolade maven of dreck -- a connoisseur of crap in Yiddish. The subject was an Italian restaurant where I reported on the mussels, snails and eels I had eaten, foods my mother never would touch and so regarded as unfit for all humans. It was a strange line in the sand drawn by a woman who not only ate but prepared raw and cooked clams and oysters, every kind of fish, innards like brains, sweetbreads, heart, liver, kidneys and lungs and who, when making pickled herring, mashed the spleen (miltz) to add creaminess to the brine. "We don't eat mussels, snails and eels," she said. By "we," I knew she meant Jews. "I don't know about we," I answered, "but you haven't a kosher bone in your body and the we you're talking about don't eat clams or oysters, either. You also say we don't eat olive oil, but that will be news to Sephardic Jews and many Israelis. So who are we?" "A sane person can't talk to you. You'd better speak to your father." Many readers of my Times columns shared my mother's opinion of me as nitpicker and busybody, questioning not only my aesthetic judgments but my morals and my sanity. Among such was a Brooklyn minister who wrote, "If Mimi Sheraton were invited to dinner beyond the Pearly Gates, she would probably complain that the light was too bright." To which I replied, "If it were, I would." When I described a tiny, succulent soft-shell crab as looking like an infant's hand, a reader warned the editors, "Be careful. Your critic is becoming cannibalistic." Similarly, in a review of a very authentic Japanese restaurant, I reported on first being shocked to see lobster sashimi presented as a split lobster, still energetically writhing on my plate. Recovering quickly, I dug in and so was able to praise the meat's silken texture and airy, sea-breeze flavor. "Your restaurant critic has lost her mind," came the first of several irate letters. "She is now eating live animals." My answer now, as then, is that it is arguable whether any creature that has been cut in half is really alive just because nerves are twitching. Or to point out that devotees of clams and oysters on the half shell better be eating them live if the eaters want to stay that way. Perhaps bivalve mollusks arouse little sympathy because they have less personality than crustaceans and their stubborn fight for life is apparent only to shuckers. In any event, I assured readers that even I had humanitarian limits, citing my refusal of a dinner invitation in Hong Kong in 1960, when the special treat was to be monkey brains, served as a dip in the chopped-open head still attached to the live -- or, at least, quivering -- animal. One of my most persistent critics through the years sent postcards to the Times , sometimes addressed to me by name, other times only to "Maven af Pork Ass," a sobriquet that did not stump the mail-room staff at all. Whether neatly typed or handwritten in a wild sprawl, these picture postcards came from various restaurants whenever I reported on eating pork. Each was signed with a different female name, once that of the legendary actress Molly Picon. Having obviously read me for some time, the writer knew that my grandfather had been a rabbi, who, I was warned, must be turning in his grave. I was admonished to think more about my ancestral heritage and less about pork ass, and was advised, as a parting thought, "You have too much to say in general, anyway." My mother couldn't have said it any better. Although my parents were proud of my working at the New York Times , they hated my role as a restaurant critic, my father mainly because he feared I might be harmed by an irate owner. Fortunately, he needn't have worried. I was never even threatened, no less harmed, nor was I ever offered a bribe. My mother, although my fiercest defender, expressed her unconditional love through unrelenting criticism that she clearly meant to be constructive -- for my own good. And not only with food. In summer, she said my dress looked too warm. In winter, she said my coat did not look warm enough.When I told her I was taking a second trip to Europe, she advised, "Take a really good look this time, so you don't have to go back again!" And when I had my apartment walls painted white, she chided, "For the same money, you could have a color!" Eating My Words An Appetite for Life . Copyright © by Mimi Sheraton. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life by Mimi Sheraton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
