Between the Bubble and the Deep Blue Sea

On the media and losing our minds.

I felt like Lear on the heath, like the Duchess of Malfi bayed by madmen. –Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh¹

“The spirit of the age is feudal,” wrote American writer and editor Lewis Lapham in 1992;² while I couldn’t christen our current era (chaotic?), I can describe one of its predominant feelings: that of being gaslit. That is to say, it is to experience the relentless denial of your perception and reality, each and every day.

The most potent and pressing example: the genocide in Gaza. Backed and enabled by the United States and other allies, Israel is engaged in a campaign of mass murder, starvation and ethnic cleansing.³ We know this, because Palestinians show and tell us. We know this, because of the cases in the ICJ and the ICC, because of reports from civil-society organizations, because of first-hand accounts from healthcare workers who’ve been to Gaza. We know this, because we have eyes and ears.

And yet, mainstream journalists, columnists and commentators deny our perception and reality, and behave as if, to paraphrase a post by a Palestinian-Canadian friend, they are “living on another planet” and want to take us there. We, i.e. readers of conscience with some level of literacy, are left confused and in doubt, feeling mad and maddened, Lears on the heath.

Turning to food media, similar feelings regularly manifest. While many writers and platforms do the difficult work of contending with reality – e.g. labour, gender, immigration, animal ethics, the environment – some restaurant reviewers and food writers continue to operate as if food simply appears on their plates, perhaps by magic, without consequence or connection to the world around them.

Two years ago, I described this as “The Bubble”, a space outside “the many issues that intersect with what and how we eat”. It functions, I argued, to manufacture content that has the look and feel of reportage or documentary – without the substance or rigor. Akin to advertising in its purpose, i.e. promotion (think restaurant rankings or chef-worship), it leaves little space for the political; as I wrote last year: “The Bubble floats above the politics of how we produce, process and prepare food, refracting the world in its prismatic, rainbow-colored light”.

Like the mainstream coverage of Gaza, this can leave you feeling that same, exasperating sensation of being gaslit. Toss in the fact that, let’s face it, the Bubbly shit sells, and the serious writer questions not only their reality, but the whole point, with a capital “p”.

One of the main ways this shows up in food media is climate denial vis-à-vis meat – for example, I felt the sensation a few months ago, when a restaurant reviewer for a local magazine published a glowing blurb about a steakhouse, Moishes (a Montreal institution that, I should add, needs no press to thrive).

I felt it again a few days ago, on encountering a newsletter from food-writing icon and former reviewer Ruth Reichl entitled, “Make Mine Meat”. That piece comprised a bloggy hodge-podge of meat-heavy meals, expressed enthusiasm about a growing meat trend, and threw in a tip about making a “better burger” (hint: fancy beef at ten bucks a pound). The post said nothing, of course, about a planet on fire and the role of animal agriculture in those flames; it said nothing, of course, about the curious timing of a “nascent meat obsession” with ascendant authoritarianism.

In short, a dispatch from The Bubble, looking inward. But I don’t want to focus on that newsletter too much; for one, there isn’t a lot of “meat on the bone” (HEY 🥁) – but mainly because I already did this, over a year ago, in a reaction to an article by another former reviewer: Pete Wells and the Patty Melt Problem.

Also, this is not about Ruth Reichl, no more than that post was about Pete Wells; like the news industry, mainstream food media selects for status quo.⁴ That is to say, if it weren’t Reichl or Wells, it’d be someone else serving up the same stuff – a single-use product, ultimately disposable.

However, we shouldn’t excuse prominent writers, either. I mean, you might forgive a TikToker or YouTuber, for example, someone basically working for dopamine and the occasional comp or product commission; but anyone who calls themselves a writer in 2025? Yeah, I’m kind of over that – for I think Sontag put it best when she said “a writer is someone who pays attention to the world”.

Perhaps, in a world on fire, where families in tents and forests burn, people with substantial platforms and influence should feel a sense of shame for writing with their eyes closed. Perhaps they should step back and consider something other than pleasure and self-satisfaction, money and a meal well spent.

I mean, they are literate, no? They can read.

Or maybe we’re the problem. And perhaps we – that is, consumers of food-related media – should stop following, supporting and idolizing these writers. Perhaps we should turn our attention to the people and platforms doing serious, interesting work. (There are many.⁵)

Three years ago, I ended my rant about restaurant rankings, Best Lists are the Worst, by stating, “food media needs to grow up”. Perhaps we should grow up, too.

To finish, some flowers. The above, in particular the idea of meat consumption as climate denial,⁶ owes influence to American writer Alicia Kennedy. Despite everything I’ve stated and maintain about “best” lists, I’d argue that Kennedy is one of our best food writers – and, if we have a future from which to have a past, I expect she’ll earn her place in the canon.

My reasoning for this includes not only the quality and quantity of Kennedy’s work, or her generosity in the writing community, but also the fact that her book, essays and commentary are, to be blunt, reality-based. For this, Kennedy deserves credit and respect – and a paid subscription, in my view.

1. The Brideshead Theory: a hypothesis of mine that Brideshead Revisited, a great novel (1945) and the best television show ever (1981), offers up a quote for any occasion or subject matter.

2. In the essay “City Lights”, from Hotel America: Scenes in the Lobby of the Fin-de-Siècle.

3. Not to mention, the aggressive annexation of the West Bank, the bombing of and expansion into Lebanon and Syria, as well as the bombing of Yemen and Iran – it’s hard to keep track, frankly.

4. Consider the filters in the propaganda model for the news media by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman (1988) – proven correct, I'd argue, over the past eighteen months.

5. Of the top of my head, an obviously non-exhaustive list: Civil Eats, Vittles, Feminist Food Journal, Jenny Dorsey, Alicia Kennedy, Alice Driver, Apoorva Sripathi, Sarah Duignan, Devin Kate Pope, Millicent Souris, Bettina Makalintal, Ava Robinson, Jill Damatac, Zoe Yang, Hisham Asaad, Lama Obeid, Anna Sulan Masing, Claire Michaud.

6. cf. A Brief Note on Beef.