My First Review for the NYT Is...
Chateau Royale in the West Village! Related: Mahira Rivers and Ryan Sutton join the NYT as contributing critics!
This Sunday newsletter is free, but if you have a few extra bucks, consider a cash donation to your favorite local food bank or hunger charity.
A lot of folks — including restaurant workers — are struggling in the wake of the government shutdown and the SNAP funding crisis. Here’s a good list of organizations providing help from the NYC Public Advocate’s Office.
In other news: On Monday (tomorrow!), you’ll get a writeup of some of my favorite new sandwiches from an East Village hotspot, and I’ll talk about some good food writing by Luke Fortney, Robert Sietsema, and others.
The many problems with SNAP
Hopefully, you all follow the good work Meghan McCarron, my former Eater colleague who’s been writing about the intersection of food, affordability, and food policy issues for the New York Times.
This week, McCarron takes a deep dive into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food relief plan that was a temporary casualty of the government shutdown (as I reported earlier this month). SNAP helps tens of millions of low-income families purchase groceries through funds deposited onto EBT cards. But as the shutdown dragged on, quite a few Americans had to skip meals as they waited for their overdue benefits — which are finally starting to resume.
McCarron’s article takes a broader view, however, detailing longtime flaws in the program. Do read the full column — with notes on why hot items like rotisserie chickens are generally excluded from SNAP — but here are a few key lines:
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has long used an esoteric formula to determine how much people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program get to spend on groceries each month. Experts say the calculations, which are based on a subsistence-level diet, rely on unrealistic and out-of-date ideas of how Americans eat.”
Recipients often end up using 80 percent of the benefits within the first half of any given month, McCarron reports.
NYT taps Mahira Rivers and Ryan Sutton as contributing critics!
Alright! A little personal and professional news.
The New York Times announced in June that it was appointing not one but two new chief restaurant critics, a first for the paper.
I was a big supporter of that development. There’s so much eating to do across the country and there are so many restaurant stories that deserve to be told.
I was also a big fan of the hires: Tejal Rao and Ligaya Mishan! You’ve seen me cover their early reviews here on The Lo Times, including their smart takes on I Cavallini and Sunny’s Steakhouse.
But those who follow the New York restaurant scene will recall another tidbit from this summer’s NYT announcement: The paper stated that it was planning to debut shorter, starred reviews from other writers.
Well, on Monday, the Times Food section named two journalists who’ll be writing those columns as freelance contributing critics.
One of the new Times critics is Mahira Rivers. She’s a former Michelin inspector who’s been writing about our dining scene for years at outlets like Resy, Eater, and The New York Times. If you want to get a sense of Rivers’s dedication to the craft, spend some time with her epic croissant list and her companion piece that delves into the rigors of criticism. Here’s one of my favorite lines from that “Times Insider” column:
“For us restaurant critics, scouting and eating is just half the job. After that comes the daunting task of translating an experience into words in a way that is relatable and useful. I ended up with a list of 21 excellent croissants; the most formidable challenge was simply coming up with new ways to say ‘buttery.’”
Rivers also publishes the excellent Sweet City newsletter on Substack, where she writes about the city’s bakery and pastry scenes. I’ve been eagerly following her work for quite some time, and I hope you’ll do the same.
The other new Times critic is Ryan Sutton.
That’s me, lol.
Our short reviews will run in the NYT’s “Where to Eat” newsletter on Tuesdays (you can sign up via that link). They’ll also appear on the Times website and in the pages of the paper on a monthly basis.
I’m stoked!
My first NYT review: Chateau Royale!
Here’s my debut review for the NYT: Chateau Royale! I awarded one star to the restaurant, a venue that specializes in throwback French fare.
One star means “good.”
Chateau Royale’s cooking directly references the great Gallic restaurants of our city’s past. And so I thought it would be fitting, in my piece, to quote a prominent critic of yesteryear: the late, great Craig Claiborne, a writer who had a few thoughts about older restaurants paving the way for new ones.
“In the Beginning Henri Soulé begat Le Pavillon and La Côte Basque. Le Pavillon begat La Caravelle and Le Poulailler…” Claiborne wrote in 1969. And now, we have Chateau Royale. You can and should read Claiborne’s column in full, right here.
My work at The Lo Times will continue.
I’ll keep bringing you tons of fun stuff in this newsletter, including detailed restaurant guides, original reviews, deep coverage of New York’s Red Meat scene, guides to consumables, notes on the city’s art scene, and occasional essays on local and national issues. And I’ll keep highlighting the work of my fellow critics and food writers from across the web.
That last part is key. We’re all better off as journalists and diners when we’re listening to each other, when we’re trying to grapple with what our friends and colleagues are saying. That’s especially true in an era where there are just so many lists out there — service-y products that aren’t always conducive to quoting folks from other publications.
But more personally, few things give me greater pleasure than sitting at a good bar with a strong daiquiri and reading smart criticism. So, I try to share some of that joy in this space!
Who wants a Sutton interview?
Since a few of you are new this week: If you’d like to learn a little bit more about me, you can check out this very fun Sweet City interview that I did with Mahira Rivers in April. I talked about the importance of good criticism, the excellence of Reunion Bread in Denver (so good!), and the pleasures of a certain Colombian doughnut (from Masa 81 in Bogota).
Neither Rivers nor I knew we’d be working together at the time of the interview!
On anonymity…
The New York Times announced the debut of short reviews in a newsletter that included pics of Rivers and myself! Colin Clark — who also shot my Chateau Royale review — snapped some great photos of me at Superiority Burger and Carnitas Ramirez.
I’ve laid pretty low on the photo front for quite some time, but it’s time to move on.
Honestly, it just feels so nice to show folks what I look like!
That’s a selfie of me (Scruffy Sutton!) alongside some good crew. On the left is Ankur, whom I’ve known since elementary school. In the middle is Marcela Avelar, a Brooklyn-based visual artist. We were drinking a few NA beers during a U-Haul move in August…and we found some good light!
More relevant to my job: I’ll continue to make reservations under pseudonyms to avoid giving restaurants advance notice of my arrival. And when paying, I’ll keep using my favorite tool to stay as anonymous as possible over multiple visits: Apple Pay. Most restaurants accept NFC payments these days!
Also: Shout out to Elazar Sontag on his new role as The Washington Post food critic, and to Raphael Brion, the new restaurant critic for the Minnesota Star Tribune!!!
Let me just say: I’m incredibly humbled and grateful to be writing alongside so many amazing NYT journalists, folks that I have so much to learn from!
I’m particularly thankful to both Brian Gallagher and Emily Weinstein for thinking of me to do a little writing!
I tend to keep my emotions to myself, but I’m quite excited about the new gig — and a little nervous too (in a positive, “first day of school” way)! I’ve been doing a ton of reading and cooking lately to brush up on, well, everything, lol. Though I’ll admit that, over the weekend, I allowed myself a tiny bit of celebration.
Just last night, I spent a few hours at my favorite performing art salon, Art Bath, run by my buds Mara Driscoll and Liz Yilmaz. And a nice moment happened near the end of the show when La Manga — an all-female and extremely percussive Afro-Colombian music collective — invited everyone onto the floor.
So we all got up. And we danced and sang so loud and raucous they could hear us across the bridge in East Secaucus. As some (fictional!) New Yorkers like to say.
Of course, it was more a celebration of life, of the weekend. Of the fact that my hardworking friends put on another amazing show.
Afterwards, we all went upstairs and had a few Modelos.
And I was just very happy and relaxed.
Ryan!!!
Wait, one more thing!
Since I’ll continue to write about my fellow critics and reporters across the food media landscape and beyond, you’ll see a note about my affiliations at the bottom of most of my columns here. Sometime to the effect of: Ryan Sutton is the editor of The Lo Times and a contributing restaurant critic for The New York Times.
Many congratulations! I will enjoy the NY dining scene vicariously through your reviews!
Ryan!!! this is such wonderful news! I’m delighted more folks will be exposed to your thoughtful and nuanced writing 💫 Keep up the hard work, my friend!