The The NSW Writers' Centre

John Newton – On Food Writing

February, 2011

John Newton is a freelance writer, journalist and novelist. As a journalist he has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Art of Eating, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Slow and has a wine column in The Organic Gardener. His most recent books are Grazing: the ramblings and recipes of a man who gets paid to eat and the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Shopping Guide 2011. Other books include Wogfood, An Oral History With Recipes; Fresh From Italy with Stefano Manfredi; bel mondo beautiful world also with Stefano Manfredi; and The Foodies Guide to Sydney with Helen Greenwood. He was consultant editor on Food: the essential A-Z guide. He won the Gold Ladle for Best Food Journalist in the 2005 World Food media Awards.

Why food writing?

Because food is essential to life, and becoming a more and more complex subject politically, socially and environmentally. Also because gastronomy – the study of food – lies at the corner of thinking and feeling. Food is the only topic written about that becomes part of the writer. A better question might be – why have we ignored food as a subject for so long?

How did you become a food writer?

Well, first I cooked alongside a mother who was a good cook. Also with her I learnt to eat: she was Sydney’s first restaurant critic. And as I began writing almost as soon as I began thinking, it was one of the things that I thought to write about. Then what happened was I helped a friend who was a chef and had a restaurant finish his first book. He couldn’t pay me so he gave me free lunches. I’d just come back from living in Spain, had written two novels, but soon realised that wouldn’t be a living for the family (one child, one on the way) and I did not want to go back into advertising, so I took several editors out to lunch. They commissioned stories. It all began from there.

What advice do you have for writers looking to enter the field?

The first piece of advice I have always given to anyone wanting to write is – to write. But specifically about food, I’d suggest that they began to think carefully about what they ate, to taste every mouthful and to realise that one of the hardest things to write about is flavour. As for the eating, as my mentor Max Lake said, Taste, Train and Talk. As for writing about flavour, take note of what goes into your mouth and then work hard at describing it, at conveying the sensation in words.

Then there is the other side of food writing: politics. Get involved in the political arguments about genetically modified foods, the supermarket domination of the industry, organic food, biodynamic, urban agriculture and its problems, the oceans and sustainability – the list is endless.

As I have said probably too often, when the next thing that you put in your mouth can give you pleasure ,or make you sick or kill you – you’ll never run out of things to write about.

What, if any, expertise do you need to review a restaurant?

You have to be an experienced and discerning restaurater – my word for one who uses restaurants. You have to know how they work. You have to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the cuisines you are writing about. Surprisingly this does not seem to be a prerequisite for a lot of critics. For example, recently, in a Sunday newspaper, a critic opined that Taiwanese food is ‘very like Chinese’ – indeed so very like that it is Chinese food. Such breathtaking political and culinary ignorance is not unusual.

You should be some sort of a cook yourself. Not a professional cook, but at least be comfortable at the stove. And you should love food and cultivate knowledge of ingredients and techniques.

What’s one thing you love and one thing you hate about being a food writer?

I love that you can know the whole world from the farm and the kitchen. And I hate the uncritical chef worship that is rife at the moment. Chefs are really only one part of the equation – they can’t operate without good waiters, managers, farmers and suppliers.

Favourite Sydney restaurant?

Depends on what I feel like. For oysters, The Boathouse. For Italian, Cipri’s Italian. For Japanese, Koi and Yoshii. For Chinese Chairman Mao or Blue eye Dragon. And for tripe and white sauce, The New York.

But can I make a plea at the end about that question? There is an awful lot more to writing about food that writing about restaurants. Anyone interested in writing about food should read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma o get some idea and my forthcoming book Grazing: the ramblings and recipes of a man who gets paid to eat (New Holland) to get another take on the craft.