Today’s Trib is a big old snarkfest, just the way we like it. The lead article is Phil Vettel lashing out at recent lawsuits against food critics that put into jeopardy his (and all of our) ability to objectively criticize restaurants in print without fear of legal reprisals.
He writes a fake review of a fake restaurant (Phil’s Place) that highlights the potential consequences of this disturbing anti-journalistic trend, nervously praising crappy food and poor service. From our perspective, this is a major issue and we’re glad to see it addressed from Vettel’s soapbox.
But that’s only the beginning. Kevin Pang and Monica Eng each have a reporter-on-the-scene piece that address everyday issues: mall food and take out, respectively. Pang heads to the Bolingbrook Promenade, a three-month-old mall in the fast growing suburb, to find out what America’s eating these days. He goes course by course at a variety of chains, and discovers edibility and value, if not personality or sophistication. Meanwhile, Eng compares the takeout offerings of Trader Joe’s and sola, and not surprisingly finds sola’s product to be superior and quite doable for a family. Everything she picked up there was delicious, she reports, except for fries that had gone limp. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of crispy fries, and if that cannot be guaranteed, they’re simply not worth eating.
In other news, the new Andersonville Italian Il Fiasco is winning hearts with its superreasonable prices, and the salads at Starbucks leave a lot to be desired.
[Photo: Starbucks fruit salad, Very Good with Computers/flickr]
