ottawa foodies

I received the new look Citizen this morning and it is seriously disappointing. In this city you would think that the local paper would focus on our vibrant food scene with expanded coverage of our great restaurants, gold plate winning chefs, and awesome farm produce. Or how about some coverage of or hugely popular local craft beer scene? If there was any local content in the new look Citizen then I couldn't find it.

Harsh tokes. Maybe they're sticking with food stuff on Thursdays? I don't know. Pretty high expectations if you want that coverage in every day's paper.

I just finished reading The Citizen and it rather reminds me of the National Post both in content and looks. As Citizen readers know, Thursday is the "food section" day and it will be interesting to see if it is any different. I find both the size of the food section and the quality has markedly declined in recent years. The only thing worth reading is the restaurant reviews and the recipes, few though they are, are designed for people who believe any recipe calling for more than 5 ingredients is complicated or they have very elaborate cheffy recipes that the average person would never tackle. I get food a section delivered by e-mail from a paper in San Jose of all places and they know how to produce a food section. I don't know why the Citizen can't or won't do the same. But hey, maybe I will be pleasantly surprised tomorrow morning. One can hope.

So today's food section was very disappointing. Boiled eggs, a two ingredient shrimp dish, a 3 ingredient tomato sauce, and a 4 ingredient cookie recipe. I did find the restaurant review interesting in that I really like World Burger and Peter Hum did not. I thought Prime was good but I still prefer World Burger. Next time I go there I will ask for a gluten free bun but only because I agree with him on the bun - it is too soft and hopefully the gluten free one is sturdier. I have not been to Burgers N' Fries Forever but will rectify that soon. What are other people's impression of today's food section?

I'm really not surprised - I can't remember when the Citizen food section was anything more than a time-killing page flipper.

The resto review are awful. It isn't uncommon to see exalted and fresh literary terms such as "melty goodness" or "hipster vibe" used with abandon. Ugggh, so hacky, so provincial.

More controversially I am sure, is that last week had a review of "exciting new creations from local chef (redacted)" and each recipe was heavily cribbed if not shamelessly plagiarized from either "Jerusalem" or "Plenty" - with nary a mention of the author, Yotam Ottolenghi, only the most influential international food personality of the last few years. Inexusable if it was out of ignorance and unprofessional (or worse) if it was done knowingly.

Somewhat on topic, it seems that all the national-ish newspapers in Canada have really bad resto reviewers as well. A. Pataki (Toronto Star), C. Nuttall-Smith, A.Gill (both G&M) are all borderline unreadable - Pataki is particularly bad. Not as sure about the Gazette, Nat.Post, Herald or Vancouver Sun.

Why don't these news papers reprint well done reviews from peoples' foodie blogs (and pay the author).

Wouldn't this:
1) Save having to staff the paper ?
2) Obtain quality reviews ?
3) Keep the standards high by selecting from multiple bloggers ?
...... and 4) generate delighted readers ? .... and retain customers ? and/or generate ad sales ?

Just an idea.

Newspapers have enough problems with bloggers, foodie and otherwise. Don't expect the corporations to start recruiting them any time soon.

I like the Ottawa Citizen Style food section: ottawacitizen.com

Oops, I guess they've rebranded that too and it's no longer in their separate "Style" blog. Hopefully the content is still good.

I am really struggling with the diminishing coverage of local issues. The City section of past was the first thing that I would read and it was what kept me buying the Citizen. Now the paper is not much different than a lot of the others content wise and is still not as good as the Montreal Gazette which has way better local food coverage and recioes.

Agreed The Gazette does solid food coverage. I esp like the different price point reviews every week, covering a high end, a diner, and usually something in between.

I suppose there's an argument for scale, since Montreal is a bigger city with an almost Darwinian turnover rate to its restaurants, but even so, anyone with a stomach and a semi-decent income is aware that Ottawa is steadily upping its foodie-ism... how does the Capital of Canada's major newspaper not step up its game rather than down...

Because Ottawa is a well-known city of tightwads who would rather not shell out good money for the newspaper? Lower income for the paper means that they have to cut corners any way/where they can. I mean, they're going to do that anyway, but if they absolutely HAVE to ... then the content is going to suffer.