Getting to The Beginning
I don’t know what a “force de frappe” actually is. I read it somewhere. It definitely belongs on the menu of a military-themed coffee shop. I’ve been thinking about that every time I see the word frappe. Which isn’t often. But I’m looking at it now, on the sign of Berserker Brew stand at the farmer’s (farmers’?) market trying to fight a caffeine deficiency.
“Regular or iced,” the woman asks. Kind of strange to think that there’s a normative way. I wonder if there’s a movement among professionals pushing for non-biased terminology? I don’t bother her with all this—again, caffeine deficiency—I just blare an obnoxious “uhhhhh,” while I process.
”It’s a little chilly for iced.”
”You’d think so,” she replies with a robust O, letting out a steaming pour, “but I’m from North Dakota,” oh!, “they still drink it iced when it’s like this.”
”But it’s cold up there. This must be what their July is like.” That’s insensitive at best. Stupid caffeine deficiency.
Luckily she laughs. Otherwise I’d have to stuff the tip jar with all my cash and leave without any squash.
Cafe AWOL. That’d be a great name for decaf with milk. Decaf is such a stupid concept. I can already imagine the clarion call of non-bias baristas retweeting me into oblivion.
Which would be fair. I’m railing against caricatures of activists. Next I’ll be shouting about snowflakes in the comments, then I’ll be ratio’d into oblivion, which will make me beloved by the sorts of people who give white men an unwavering presumption of innocence.
But they still disown you once you start loudly disagreeing about anything. And that couldn’t take too long. With or without caffeine.
This is where the story pivots from Idyllic Saturday Morning Misadventure to There’s Something to Be Said.
The food world has been getting plenty of flack this year for the out-of-touch, fanciful habits of gourmands and self-proclaimed foodies. Either publications are bedazzling peasant dishes, fetishizing “ethnic” foods (Chef Edward Lee handles that one well), or the folks atop the mastheads are well-known sociopaths.
When I read Samantha Fore’s account of her run-in as the subject of a Bon Appetit article, two parts in particular hit home. The first:
You take a risk when you put yourself up in a publication. The tacit agreement for these pieces, one that involves jumping through a dizzying number of hoops, assumes that the payoff comes with exposure. While fulfilling demands and timelines, you trust the entity will fulfill the implied promise.
I recalled an incident—really a series of missteps—that occurred on the day of a photo shoot. The shoot, which would accompany a feature story of about the city’s new market, was set for 10am on a Saturday morning; a time noticeably ill-suited for the endeavor from the moment I tried to find parking.
I arrived early to make sure that the main staging area would be accessible and cleared. Ten minutes after my arrival, I got a call from my publisher.
[For this article, we’ll call him Carl. And the photographer will be Mike.]
“Call Mike’s phone and tell him where to meet you,” Carl blurted, “He’s lost. I’m running behind.”
A brief phone call revealed that the main issue was a wreck in front of the building. Mike lamented what an inconvenience it was to him as he explained where to meet and what equipment needed to be hauled. I met him by a side entrance in the alleyway and started grabbing gear. I made the mistake of replying “heard” among the laundry list of commands; a vocal tic inherited from working kitchens.
“It’s not heard,” Mike insisted, “I just got back from shooting a campaign in New York. All the chefs were trained in Europe. They say ‘hankers’ there. You ever worked in Europe?”
If I had, I thought to myself, would I be here playing pack mule?
Once Mike’s equipment was inside, I began asking the vendors for the dishes Carl had listed. It became clear that some of the larger vendors were experiencing a rush. Carl had a habit of choosing times that worked best for himself with no mind to the business. This shoot proved to be no different.
Within half an hour, the schedule Carl had naively arranged was in disarray. As Mike finished up a meandering story about a night of drinking spanning half the city, the conversation turned to our schedule. One of the vendors—belonging to James Beard Foundation-nominated Mexican chef—was behind the time Carl had allotted.
“Go tell them to hurry up. They’re 15 minutes behind schedule,” he barked. I had just come up with food from another vendor and noticed that the “late” food was behind several other tickets.
It was like a server complaining that ticket times were long during a rush combined with the feeling of a customer complaining that slow food best be hurried and free. It struck a nerve.
“They have tickets on the rail. I’m not asking them to make paying customers wait. We’ve got other things we can shoot.”
Carl sighed and told me to wait for it by their booth so I could bring it up straight away. When I returned five minutes later, interrupting another one of the photographer’s tales, they were appalled by one dish’s plating.
This is where the second part of Fore’s story hit home: “a photographer was sent…but one with no reference point for shooting ethnic food.”
The dish was a sandwich cut in half and opened at an angle toward a small serving of mashed potatoes.
“Why is he hiding the hero?” Mike groaned.
“Take this back to him and tell him to plate it right,” Carl followed.
Again, a nerve was struck.
“I'm not telling the chef that he plated his food wrong. I'll ask for an extra plate and we can rearrange it.”
Truthfully, I didn’t want to change anything about it. Arguing about the plate’s composition because you didn’t know how to photograph it was abhorrent. But I worried leaving them to their own devices would only make things worse.
I was proven right twenty minutes later when the last plate arrived. A Venezuelan chef was showcasing his caprese arepa. Another sandwich dish, this one with only four elements: arepa, tomato, cheese, and pesto.
The photographer thought it was lacking flare, so he picked a piece of rosemary from another vendor’s cheese board and added it to the sandwich. Having done so, he turned to the Venezuelan chef and said, "good? good?" as if the man who had been speaking perfect English just moments ago couldn't understand him.
The chef's face winced, but he nodded. He couldn't win in this situation. Unlike the other chef, he needed the boost in recognition. But the look of discontent that comes over a chef’s face when something isn’t right is unmistakable.
The sandwich, now with a flare of rosemary, was shot straight on. Exhilarating, to hear Mike tell it.
Once the still shots were finished we started a walking tour on which I had two primary duties: carrying the standing flash and taking down names of everyone photographed. The endeavors were at odds with one another. While I was busy confirming the spelling of every shopkeep’s name and what items were photographed, Mike would stray a few booths down. Eventually he or Carl would beckon for the flash (which had been going off incessantly) and I’d have to weave between people.
As we moved from the core of the space to its outer booths, the photographer interrupted his tour to get pictures of a man opening the door for guests while also asking them for change. The older gentleman obliged to coaching that led his gaze and after a dozen rapid-fire shots Mike said, "great, perfect" and resumed his tour. By the time I caught up to the two, Carl was waving me on impatiently. His patience had worn out from following Mike.
Once the shoot concluded and we started packing up gear, a smoothie vendor came up to ask for a copy of their menu back. Carl dismissively told them we’d find it in our papers and get it back to them.
“What’s the deal?” he laughed as she left, “like one menu’s going to break them.”
A month later, while we were finalizing the layout of the issue, the photographer goes on about using a shot of the doorman so it could be entered for a competition. Carl reasons “a panhandler isn't a good look” for the business or a good use of space in the magazine.
"I've got a better question," I interjected, "what's his name?”
They didn't know, of course. It didn't matter to them. What mattered was furthering their interests, using all these people as props and happily snacking on the free products that they requested. The only real disagreement in that moment was whether a photo of a stranger served one or both of their interests; he was a prop to one and an obstruction to the other.
After the issue was printed, the smoothie vendor called. I was at my kitchen job when the call was forwarded (who’d expect a publisher to be responsible for it?).
“I just don’t understand why we’re not in the article. Everyone else is there at least once. And there’s pictures of people in here that have nothing to do with food,” she said, pointing to dog treat vendors and soap makers, “I mean, I know we’re not clients or anything, but we made food for you all to use and it’s not anywhere in here.”
I apologized to her, agreed it wasn’t right, and assured that they’d be mentioned and their picture included in the digital edition of the article. I’d be the one to transpose the article for the website, replacing a sentence that got cut for print wouldn’t take much effort at all.
When I talked to Carl about the incident, he was quick to wave it off.
“We don’t owe them anything. Like she said, they’re not a client.”
His philosophy lay bare in that moment. He regularly lamented to both prospective subjects and advertisers that we didn’t operate under a pay-for-coverage model, but always found a way to make things happen for clients.
But if you can’t afford an ad buy and don’t look like big news at first glance, to hell with you.
I hate that line of thinking. If your reputation rests on the success of a scene, why wouldn’t you invest in the little spots early on? Everyone wants to read about something new; why wait until they’re big?
I stewed on these questions for awhile. But it was one of my other bosses—in the kitchen—that pointed out my chance to change it.
“You should stick it out a little longer,” she told me, “Make sure you get your name out. If he won’t change, go do your own thing and prove him wrong.”
Prove him wrong? There’s a lot that needed to change. I gotta address all of it? I’ll take some time to think that over, boss.
It took a year to start, but now I have. It won’t progress quick. And it definitely won’t be steady. But if it seems worth egging on, subscribe.
Concept art and logo by @audrenochrome