I wouldn’t even put Kristie anywhere near my top 8 food bloggers I take seriously so yeah.
Woe is me to any food blogger who attempts to opine on anything Chinese food related among the FTC (née Chowhound) cognoscenti.
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true dat. you guys got that stuff nailed down (and we appreciate all of the knowledge/opinions)!
If the list decided where the best Chinese food was then we’d all be driving an hour West from the Eastside to eating at ROC, Bao Dimsum House, and Mr. Chow’s but only the opposite is true.
I don’t think you know the folks here very well.
At least not when it comes to Chinese food, and when it comes to anything “best”.
West, east, north, south or anywhere in between.
I don’t understand?
I was under the assumption that the old “Chowhound” mentality was SGV=Chinese food or bust. Anything outside of that geography is passable at best or has to be ok enough not to warrant a drive all the way to the SGV from LA proper.
That may or not be true, and is probably a generalization at best.
But that aside, my only point was that the peanut gallery here is so opinionated - and rightly so - about Chinese food, no matter where, SGV, SFV, OC, or wherever, that woe is me to anyone who tries to express an opinion and impose their own self-righteous personal hierachal ranking of Chinese whatever to the folks here at FTC.
that’s the point i thought you were making, ipse.
take the case of the writer, clarissa wu, who may or may not be a nice person in “real” life,
but who gets nothing but grief around here and on ch for her OPINIONS because
well, i’ve never quite figured out why.
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Start w/ the CH thread on her Kickstarter or GoFundMe or whatever it was and then work your way back…
the kickstarter thing was only the endgame and a completely
different topic than her writings/opinions.
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We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.
On-topic: since Hollywood isn’t super close to me, I’ll probably still go to the SGV (or 101 Noodle Express in Culver City) for my Chinese food fix.
Having appeared with Clarissa Wei 3 times on Chinese food discussion panels and been interviewed by her a couple of other times, I can say that she is genuinely a very nice person. Her issue is she writes everything that she feels, sometimes giving us too much information, and perhaps upsetting some people in the process.
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I don’t think the backlash towards Wei was because she was, or was perceived, as being not a nice person.
I think the hiccup she had with many folks here on FTC (and previously on Chowhound) was that she represented herself as a Chinese food savant without any verifiable gravitas to back it up, and oftentimes coming across as maladroit and obliviously entitled.
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I think it was her “Best Dim Sum” list (the rankings and self-confident remarks). And if that didn’t start it, it sure confirmed it.
Actually that goes exactly to my comment that she has an urge to write about any and everything the she feels. Just look at her non-food related writings. For example she once drove up the California coast and immediately writes how wonderful it is to drive up the California coast (as if that’s a revelation to most of us). Or she learned to scuba dive, which led to articles on that topic. And you have to hand it to her to find third party websites to publish these works. Like I said, I’ve done Chinese food panels with her and seen her respond to Q&As and no matter how she comes across in print, she does have a good grasp on Chinese food and Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles.
Like Quantum States the Overconfidence of Youth can be BOTH inspiring, AND just plain stupid.
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I don’t want to get ourselves into a rabbit hole and play Freud using someone else as a guinea pig, but just a couple of things I want to point out.
No one, certainly not me, is begrudging the fact that she enjoys writing about her experiences and then having them published. No, that’s not the issue. The issue is how she comes off in her writing. If she were even a bit more humble and modest, or even pretended to be just a bit self-effacing, her writing would receive a much wider reception, and a much wider receptive reception. Couple that sense of endearing entitlement, with her complete lack of self-awareness, makes her writing just a bad one-two combo. LIke egg tarts garnished with tuna sashimi. Ick.
And really, it’s not that hard these days to get published. Solicitations for content abound these days, the interweb, and social media, have almost made publication sort of meaningless.
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She really lost credibility by instructing her readers how to carefully drink all the soup first before eating the bun and filling in those giant XLB. The filling is mealy and exterior is tough and leathery. They aren’t meant to be eaten. I was instructed not to in Shanghai and chewed on them anyways to see for myself (before spitting it back out). If she had gone to Shanghai or done a little research or even if she had just watched the Bourdain episode on Shanghai she would have known you weren’t supposed to eat the filling or outside.
When notified that she was mistaken, she did nothing to correct it. Basically she is advising her readers to look like idiots when eating those oversized giant XLBs.
It’s like instructing her readers how to carefully eat sushi with a fork and knife.
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How many times do I have to tell you…pinky up so it’s classy like!
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