Lori Pomeranz, co-owner of a furniture store a few doors down from Cafe Stellina on 12th Ave., takes issue in this week’s letters section with Bethany Clement’s review of Stellina in last week’s paper. After accusing Bethany of being ignorant, writing “drivel,” and attempting to “ruin the livelihood of Cafe Stellina’s owners,” Pomeranz makes a point that I hear too frequently about local ventures that don’t measure up: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
You said that it would not be difficult to write this drivel about a corporate eatery. You claim that it was difficult to write it about a “mom and pop” establishment whose owners are so obviously working their butts off (like you said, you can see them working behind the counter) but… you wrote it anyway. […]
I feel weird having to say it, but Bethany, you need to reread your article, interrogate yourself, and ask what, why, and how your overly opinionated editorial truly assists Cafe Stellina in strengthening its high points and improving upon its shortcomings.
See, that’s exactly the point. Editorials (technically reviews, but let’s not be picky) are supposed to be opinionated. The point of a review is to tell readers what to expect when they go to a restaurant (or performance, or art show, or movie)—and whether they should go at all. Hand-holding, pulling punches, is intellectually dishonest. It’s also a disservice. The idea that we have an obligation to grade local ventures on a curve insults our readers and trivializes the efforts of local businesses that are not only “working their butts off,” but actually doing a good job.
If anything, I thought Bethany was reserved. On my visit there with her, the best thing I had was a beet salad that was just so-so. The rest ranged from vaguely icky to downright stomach-turning (that would be the hominy tinged with the taste of burned Teflon.) The mussels with chorizo, while at least not brain-cell-destroying, couldn’t by any stretch be called good: A mayonnaisey sauce, squeeze-bottled hither and yon, sat uselessly on top of the shells or curdled into the chicken-y broth, giving the whole thing a clumpy, unappetizing texture. The chorizo was still in its casings, and chopped into unappealingly irregular bits: Some bites were barely a morsel, others were easily two inches long. (And it was, as Bethany mentioned, grainy.) The potatoes, meanwhile, had disintegrated into mush. Many mussels had sunk into the broth unopened, a sign of shellfish you don’t want to eat; reports from others’ subsequent visits confirmed that this was not a one-time occurrence. The rice, unflavored by so much as broth or salt and pepper, tasted like Minute Rice; the vegetables were, indeed, incredibly dry. The “warm spinach salad” was pretty much cooked throughout, as if the chef had turned her back on the pan while the spinach was wilting (which should be a two-second operation). And the desserts were, frankly, a huge disappointment. The milk-chocolate mousse, which Bethany described as a “mousse pile,” evoked exactly what that phrase implies; the blueberry tart was grainy and almost tasteless, except for the off-puttingly sour interior.
Need I go on? It’s your job to serve good food, Stellina. It isn’t a reviewer’s job to cover for you when you fail to do so.