My decision to opt out of the macho food-writing movement.

via Slate Magazine

Or consider when I went to Macau to eat a Cantonese dog dinner for the Wall Street Journal. I wrote that “the meat had dark skin attached to it, was quite fatty and looked like pork … chewy, and had a very strong, though not disagreeable flavor.” Today’s foodie-writing fashion would demand that I confess that I’d never seen anything more repulsive than Rover’s skin. I’d need to itemize what happened to the tongue, brain, and genitalia of the—it turned out—stolen dog (and I’d need to go into grisly detail about the dog-napping itself, as well as its butchery).No, today’s market does not allow for food writing that aims to be allusive, playful, or elegantly simple. The prevailing style is like polenta or steel-cut oats: coarse.