"Mr. TS from Wash post just left the house. Suprised us on our second night."

In last week's Young & Hungry column, "Critical Distance," Sietsema dished a bit about his policy on reviewing new restaurants. While the city's senior-ranking food critic says he tries to abide by the standard one-month wait when working on his starred reviews for the Post magazine, he sometimes takes an earlier peak for the paper's separate "First Bite" column: "I feel free to visit new establishments as soon as their doors open to paying guests, although I’m not big on going the first night, when the paint is still drying.” He said nothing about going on the second night.

Photo by Greg Powers

I will be joining the Post on Monday, Dec. 6.

What will this mean for me and for the Washington City Paper? Well, for me it means I can no longer use the word "fuck" in print.

Fuck!

But it also means that I get to work with Joe Yonan, Bonnie Benwick, and the rest of the Post's Food section staff, which just happens to hold the James Beard Award for the best food section in the country. Am I thrilled join these pros?

Fuck yeah!

It also means I'm leaving behind a job that has thrilled me, challenged me, and exhausted me — sometimes all on the same day. I have loved this job. It has been the best one I've ever had up until now. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Erik Wemple for first hiring me back in 2006 and to Andrew Beaujon for keeping me on track for years.

My current editor, Michael Schaffer, has been a dream to work for, and I know, given his love of both food and good journalism, he will find the right person to fill this chair. But until that time, the column will be written by a number of freelancers, including some who may be vying for the gig. Let the boss know what you think of them. The blog will be edited temporarily by Michael Grass, who will no doubt appreciate any tips you want to send his way at mgrass@washingtoncitypaper.com.

The Post has more on what my role will be in the near future. All I can say is...

Fuck yeah!

This is my fridge.

As a  food lover and sometimes food writer, I have not bought groceries from a Harris Teeter or Whole Foods, let alone a farmers market, since late July. This empty shell reflects the sorry state of my kitchen.

How did I get here? Having found myself at a work-life crossroads, I decided to take a break from my teaching career to follow my passion for food, restaurants, and cooking by embedding myself in the four-star world of Restaurant Eve.

For the past six weeks as a server, I've been memorizing mother sauces. Sampling veloutes. Learning about aigre-doux, nage, and elixer. I've been admiring tarte tatin. Sneaking bites of mission fig or ciabatta bread and sampling habañero sauces on the side. I've been wishing I could sharpen my own knives with a stone, like the chefs on the line.

I am also learning more about wine without tasting it. And I'm being trained on how to "coddle the guests," as mixologist and General Manager Todd Thrasher requires of the people who work for Meshelle and Cathal Armstrong's Eat Good Food Group.

I've also met a crew of extremely hard working people who are so passionate about food they've dedicated their lives to it, for 60 hours or more a week. There's Justin, a server making his own cheese in his spare time. There's Jeremy, the chef de cuisine, who moved to the area after working at Per Se. There's Amanda, a server whose knowledge of food and farmers and trends is encyclopedic. There's the unflappable Leonard, who just passed the first sommelier exam along with Guy, a server who got hitched on a Sunday, his day off. There's Chrissy, the manager whose library of food books might not fit in an 800-square-foot apartment.

And of course, there's Thrasher and the Armstrongs. You may have heard about them. They are everywhere in food news.

On a personal level: Since my working hours have changed from days to nights, I've found it a little isolating, since it's challenging to keep in touch with friends. Dating seems next to impossible. I can't get used to not waking up at 7 a.m., yet I'm going to sleep at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. I drink an eighth of the booze I used to. I'm always standing.

And I wolf down beautiful staff meals. Instead of luxuriating over food as I had the privilege of doing in my past life, eating has become a furtive act. It's fuel. It's nourishment. Food has become a work of art, as evidenced by guys on the line who stack and assemble, dress, and garnish. I fantasize about my old relationship with dishes and drinks. I am constantly hungry. It is humbling.

Maybe someday I'll visit the farmers market with the intention of cooking. Or maybe I'll hit up a Whole Foods to stock my fridge. In the meantime — with the blessing of the Armstrongs, who have granted me permission to write with candor — I'm learning about food in a new way and passing some observations along.

Allow me to begin this letter with an apology: I'm sorry for not writing earlier. Over the weeks, I've become a huge fan of your renegade editorial approach of poaching other people's content and reposting it on your Web site for fun and profit. You are leading food writing bravely into the 21st century, proving that a business model in which you actively sabotage and exploit the working media can lead journalism out of its Dark Ages.

I'm specifically writing to applaud your recent attempt at investigative reporting, under the headline, "Anonymous Restaurant Critics: A Field Guide." It was a masterstroke of public service journalism. I can't think of a better way to help diners in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington D.C. than to arm restaurateurs with photos and inside information on critics so that owners can game the system and ensure that customers continue to pay hundreds of dollars for meals and service that only Sam Sifton and Jonathan Gold can receive.

Even better, your unmasking of the public's trusted sources of independent food criticism was an expansion of your earlier, fumbling attempts to give the hospitality industry an upper hand in this terrible economy. What started as a sloppy kiss to Dallas restaurateurs has turned into an orgy where you play the submissive bottom for the entire country's well-heeled restaurant owners. Could a Beard Award be far behind?

Politically, Eater.com is on the cutting-edge of modern thinking, standing arm-and-arm with the country's best minds, like Sarah Palin and members of the Tea Bag Party, who believe the media cannot be trusted and their power must be neutralized by any means necessary. Your steadfast beliefs even filter down to the humble food blog community, those misguided souls who write about cooking and restaurants for the sheer love of it. Bravo to you for taking your jackboot and stamping out this democratic surge of public commentary. This is a great purge worthy of Stalin.

I can only hope that we will see more of this anti-populist work in the future. Might I suggest a take-down of lowly independent food truck operators who litter our streets with their pathetic attempts to feed us affordable snacks? Or expose a working critic while trying to do his job? Or maybe pushing moribund independent restaurants over the edge by publicly cataloging their struggles?

I know I'm not alone in saying this: But I hope that we'll one day live in a world in which Web aggregators with a desperate need for cash dominate public discourse.  It will no doubt raise our collective journalistic standards to Eater.com levels, and that's good for everyone — unless you're a food critic, restaurant diner, or blogger. And who cares about them?

Yours,

Tim Carman

Young & Hungry

How so?

Five of the 50 essays included are from D.C. area writers, including Joe Yonan, Monica Bhide, Jane Black, Todd Kliman, and yours truly. Not to make too much of this showing from local scribes, but let's do a quick comparison of how the D.C. market fares against those cities with long-established food cultures, like Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. (Forget New York City; we don't stand a chance.)

Here's the break down of Best Food Writing 2009 contributors from each city (based on a quick scan of the 50 essays; errors may occur, as they say):

San Francisco: 3

Chicago: 2

Philadelphia: 1

Seattle: 3

New Orleans: 0 (though John T. Edge does contribute an essay about how the city's restaurants manage to bridge the gap between social classes).

Houston: 1

New York City: I gave up counting after 10.

So what does this say about D.C. as a food city? Maybe nothing. Maybe our writers are just more aggressive about submitting essays to the editor for consideration. Or maybe we live in a town of overly ambitious writers and food has just become a more attractive target on which to focus their considerable skills?

Or maybe D.C. is finally coming into its own as a food town, and the writers are merely reflecting that. That's my working theory at this point. Care to shoot it down?

Pho: One of the great dishes that D.C. has to offer

Y&H is really getting to like Terrence Henry, who serves up regular commentary for the Atlantic Food Channel. I think I'd say that even if Henry didn't call me a "great food writer," which is a stretch but which I nonetheless enjoyed seeing in "print" as if it were an objective, verifiable fact. (I've already forced Wemple to read the piece, but he said nothing, refusing to take the bait.)

So what I like about Henry is this: He's passionate. He's honest. He's knowledgeable. He's a homer without embarrassment. He's the kind of eater every city needs.

After my quasi-take down of Henry's declaration that D.C. is a great food city, he came back strong with a longer essay better stating his case. I hate to disappoint anyone, but I don't feel like ramping up this argument with another rebuttal.

First of all, it's a fool's errand because the answer is subjective. Second of all, I have no interest in bashing the D.C. dining scene by constantly comparing it to those in other cities — and finding it lacking.

The fact is, I'm pretty happy with the offerings in my current home. Can the District do better? Yep, of course. There are still vast stretches of this city where I can't find a great place to eat. You don't even have to point a finger at Ward 8, which doesn't yet have a white-tablecloth restaurant to call its own. Chevy Chase and Adams Morgan are content to slide by with mostly mediocre offerings as well.

Frankly, it's part of my job to help nurture a restaurant scene here by rewarding its best players—and chiding those who want to skate by on grim plates of second-rate food.

The bigger question in this discussion, I think, is this: Can anyone who lives in the District be objective enough to determine if it's a great food city or not? Frankly, I think that's a job better suited for qualified outsiders after spending a couple/three weeks here sampling our restaurants and take-outs and street carts.

Those of us who have lived and worked and eaten here for years are somewhat myopic when it comes to the "big picture," and that includes the major food critics who have something of a vested interest in calling their coverage area a "great food city." I think it's easier for critics to judge restaurants one at a time than it is for us to make sweeping statements about our cities as whole; our judgments on the latter are bound to lean toward overstatement since overstatement will make us and our readers and sources feel more important.

No, I will continue to focus more on my day-to-day job, content that I live in a city that satisfies almost all of my cravings. I think I will leave the grand designations to others, like New Yorkers who revel in such pronouncements.

Until, that is, somebody asks me what I think about D.C.'s food scene.

Along with his reviews, his Tweets, and his weekly chat, Rojas now adds a daily blog, Gut Check, which launched today. He will share writings duties on the blog with an intern. At this point, I think you have to call Rojas the unquestioned authority on Northern Virginia eats.

So what will Gut Check cover? E-mails Rojas in response:

No set formula, really. I anticipate we'll use it to extrapolate on our regular dining coverage. But also envision it as a multimedia canvass for chef q&a's, video collages (a la today's mealtime mayhem round up) and other interactive content better suited to the web than the static pages of the monthly pub.

We're shooting for daily posts to start, but eventually hope/plan/expect to update throughout the [day] with breaking hospitality news, last-minute dining deals and any other hot button issues that come across the food desk.