A Restaurant Review That Will Never See the Light of Day
I never wrote about my first experience as a restaurant critic, so now is as good a time as any.
A couple of weeks ago, my class went to a Persian restaurant, called Cafe Natasha, on the Loop. It was a small establishment that was painted in pastels and trimmed with Middle Eastern designs. The lighting was dim; the music was subtle; and the servers were friendly. The owner was even there to answer all of our amateur questions.
We ordered six appetizers on a sampler platter, tried the soup and salad, ordered individual entrees that were passed around, and finished the meal with three desserts. The cost of the meal was $21 a person.
I enjoyed most of the food, especially the lamb chops ordered by the guy who sat across from me. They were served medium rare and perfectly marinated in a teriyaki-style sauce. Yum! My entree was chicken that was served in a pomegranate and walnut sauce, which received mixed reviews. I actually liked it but probably wouldn't order it again. The dish that I disliked the most was one of the appetizers: a spinach souffle called KooKoo. Our professor ordered it as her entree, though, so I tried not to say anything too negative about it.
In order to do this assignment, I had to get past my inability to write about food and my anxiety over reviewing ethnic food about which I knew nothing. I figured that I had as much knowledge as the average reader of restaurant reviews and it was my duty to tell them whether or not it was worth eating there.
Still, I had a tremendously difficult time coming up with a lead, a hook and a point for my review and didn't write it until about 90 minutes before my class began. I ended up using a most mediocre introductory paragraph just to have one. This introductory paragraph was about the restaurant's location among other restaurants that specialize in ethnic cuisine, such as Thai and Ethiopian. It was pretty lame, but the only thing that screamed out to me about this restaurant was that the food was really good (but I didn't want to gush and seem like an amateur) and that it was Persian. So I took the Persian approach.
The assignment was handed back to me, graded, on Wednesday. I received a B+, which I didn't let upset me, because this professor has yet to give an A. She, much like my film studies professor, believes that an extraordinary paper is a rarity and doesn't feel like handing out As to the next best thing. I have received the occasional A-, and that's good enough for me.
Anyway, I only have a theater review (my specialty!) and a final paper on a trend in entertainment to turn in before the end of the semester in just a few weeks. I really want to use these opportunities to impress my professor, as she is the entertainment editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I have these silly fantasies of her printing my final paper in the Post-Dispatch if she deems it credible.
...Of course, this fantasy may not be so silly, after all. Last spring, I took another journalism class, in which one of our assignments was to write a news story on something that we investigated. The goal was essentially to find something worthy of a few short paragraphs and make an intelligent judgment about what should be in those paragraphs.
One of my classmates interviewed workers at the Science Center, where they were cleaning and preparing for display a beautiful dinosaur specimen. She told the class that she had stumbled upon something much bigger than the average blurb, and, a few weeks later, her story was printed on the front of the entertainment section. I was incredibly envious but slightly pleased in that it made careers in journalism and freelance writing seem all the more attainable.
Nevertheless, I know journalism will seem at my fingertips if my professor would consider my final project for publication. After all, I'm a semester away from graduation and hopefully my writing is polished enough to catch her eye. I should have a decent shot at this, just as long as I don't write my final paper on food.
A couple of weeks ago, my class went to a Persian restaurant, called Cafe Natasha, on the Loop. It was a small establishment that was painted in pastels and trimmed with Middle Eastern designs. The lighting was dim; the music was subtle; and the servers were friendly. The owner was even there to answer all of our amateur questions.
We ordered six appetizers on a sampler platter, tried the soup and salad, ordered individual entrees that were passed around, and finished the meal with three desserts. The cost of the meal was $21 a person.
I enjoyed most of the food, especially the lamb chops ordered by the guy who sat across from me. They were served medium rare and perfectly marinated in a teriyaki-style sauce. Yum! My entree was chicken that was served in a pomegranate and walnut sauce, which received mixed reviews. I actually liked it but probably wouldn't order it again. The dish that I disliked the most was one of the appetizers: a spinach souffle called KooKoo. Our professor ordered it as her entree, though, so I tried not to say anything too negative about it.
In order to do this assignment, I had to get past my inability to write about food and my anxiety over reviewing ethnic food about which I knew nothing. I figured that I had as much knowledge as the average reader of restaurant reviews and it was my duty to tell them whether or not it was worth eating there.
Still, I had a tremendously difficult time coming up with a lead, a hook and a point for my review and didn't write it until about 90 minutes before my class began. I ended up using a most mediocre introductory paragraph just to have one. This introductory paragraph was about the restaurant's location among other restaurants that specialize in ethnic cuisine, such as Thai and Ethiopian. It was pretty lame, but the only thing that screamed out to me about this restaurant was that the food was really good (but I didn't want to gush and seem like an amateur) and that it was Persian. So I took the Persian approach.
The assignment was handed back to me, graded, on Wednesday. I received a B+, which I didn't let upset me, because this professor has yet to give an A. She, much like my film studies professor, believes that an extraordinary paper is a rarity and doesn't feel like handing out As to the next best thing. I have received the occasional A-, and that's good enough for me.
Anyway, I only have a theater review (my specialty!) and a final paper on a trend in entertainment to turn in before the end of the semester in just a few weeks. I really want to use these opportunities to impress my professor, as she is the entertainment editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I have these silly fantasies of her printing my final paper in the Post-Dispatch if she deems it credible.
...Of course, this fantasy may not be so silly, after all. Last spring, I took another journalism class, in which one of our assignments was to write a news story on something that we investigated. The goal was essentially to find something worthy of a few short paragraphs and make an intelligent judgment about what should be in those paragraphs.
One of my classmates interviewed workers at the Science Center, where they were cleaning and preparing for display a beautiful dinosaur specimen. She told the class that she had stumbled upon something much bigger than the average blurb, and, a few weeks later, her story was printed on the front of the entertainment section. I was incredibly envious but slightly pleased in that it made careers in journalism and freelance writing seem all the more attainable.
Nevertheless, I know journalism will seem at my fingertips if my professor would consider my final project for publication. After all, I'm a semester away from graduation and hopefully my writing is polished enough to catch her eye. I should have a decent shot at this, just as long as I don't write my final paper on food.