Ladies and Gentlemen the Winner is…
Ridin’ down the highway
Goin’ to a show
Stop in all the by-ways
Playin’ rock ‘n’ roll
Gettin’ robbed
Gettin’ stoned
Gettin’ beat up
Broken boned
Gettin’ had
Gettin’ took
I tell you folks
It’s harder than it looks
We created this little award called the Golden Pen award. Specifically to honor those in the media that are killing it, it’s local and it’s for real. We made a sincere effort to talk with a lot of folks about what they thought,and we spent time going through the work of these bad ass food writers, all three are bad ass. At the end of the day the award goes to the kid at the head of the class with her hand up at every question, all the while charging a vig on the money you borrowed, and generally being awesome, yep, I am pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 Shefzilla.com Golden Pen Award is Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl.
It’s a long way to the top
If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll
It’s a long way to the top
If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll
If you think it’s easy doin’ one night stands
Try playin’ in a rock roll band
It’s a long way to the top
If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll
When we conceived of the idea, a few months back, to honor the folks that work so hard to cover the world of gastronomy. It seemed to us that these folks are handing out awards to us, but don’t always get the recognition for their hard and often inspiring work, work that without our lives would be significantly less interesting.
The votes tallied in the final round came along with some impassioned arguments. Arguments aside this came down to votes, and Ms Moskowitz Grumdahl, senior editor, and food writer of Minnesota Monthly Magazine, receiving the majority from a panel of distinguished industry insiders.
Hotel, motel
Make you wanna cry
Lady do the hard sell
Know the reason why
Gettin’ old
Gettin’ grey
Gettin’ ripped off
Under-paid
Gettin’ sold
Second hand
That’s how it goes
Playin’ in a band
I hope you will join me in extending your congratulations to Ms Moskowitz Grumdahl. She is invited to dine at my restaurant at the Chef’s Table for an Omakase Tasting menu, wine parings included with three guests. As well Frank Thorpe, my business partner at Heidi’s will create an original work of art to commemorate the occasion.
It’s a long way to the top
If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll
It’s a long way to the top
If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll
If you wanna be a star of stage and screen
Look out it’s rough and mean
It’s a long way to the top
If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll
We will designate that day on the blog to honor her, and highlight some of her extra ordinary work from the year, again congratulations.
19 Comments to “Ladies and Gentlemen the Winner is…”
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Has anyone checked out her wine blog on Youtube? Dara rocks!
Btw, it’s omakase.
Congrats to Dara!
well deserved
Dara has no class. She won’t even respond. She must think she is the center of the world. What an obnoxious and disgusting person.
dara’s video on youtube is so great!!! i really want more of those videos. here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30hGYc69n_E
she sure has the demeanor of a hollywood vet. her descriptions! haha! oh lordy the image of burt reynolds and steve mcqueen brawling…….that was perfection!
congratulations dara! i’m itching to read your book.
Greg, that’s not nice.
We didn’t create this award for her, we created for us. It’s not about her. This is our opportunity to evaluate and honor a cross section of work.
Frankly she and plenty of other folk in the media are having a hard time with the idea that their work is going to be evaluated, by the great unwashed masses. Many sound no different than young chefs. “who are they to criticize me, or evaluate my work?” And like young chefs they’ll learn that that is the wrong question.
It’s been true that some media folk need to Lord over other people, thankfully the future is much brighter, and the evaluation process will go all ways. It’s going to be hard for some to come to terms with that, but it won’t happen if we attack them, they’ll need to be brought along very gently, and lovingly, but brought along none the less.
I don’t blame anyone for being rude, jealous, or angry, this too shall pass.
“by the great unwashed masses” last I checked your not exactly in that category.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Toffler
She’s a tad late to the party, but it’s nice to see Dara doing some horizontal self-marketing integration. And shefzilla is indeed unwashed, but his mass is less than great.
Are you going to create a contest for grouchiest Shefzilla commenter? Because I have a nomination.
on the year it would have to be either Platt or Greg, for the grouchiest.
I think/hope that greg was trying to be funny in his first comment and just fell short by not turning on the tags. Wordpress FAIL.
Also, Toffler was wrong. The illeterate of the 21st century will be those without a 3G mobile communication device.
“Frankly she and plenty of other folk in the media are having a hard time with the idea that their work is going to be evaluated, by the great unwashed masses. Many sound no different than young chefs. “who are they to criticize me, or evaluate my work?” And like young chefs they’ll learn that that is the wrong question.”…what an interesting point of view this is. I agree 100% that many young chefs feel that way, especially the ones who feel their art is violated by commentary, they will laugh themselves all the way out of a job. we all need customers after all, which is why the idea that media types would ever shy away from being evaluated on any level is so interesting. as a media type myself, i know that i am being evaluated every 10 seconds by someone out there. and when you get into this game, you understand that this is a part of the rule system. Out of curiousity, can anyone name a media type who doesnt accept evaluation? seems to me they all do. if the unwashed masses dont like your stuff, you’re out of a job, wether you are a chef or a media type…
Great question Andrew. Clearly one of the reasons you have been so successful is that you have the attitude of a seasoned chef, a willingness, nay eagerness to learn from criticism. The same cannot be said for some other media folk.
The resturantrater at your mag can serve as a fantastic example of the very philosophy I referenced. The rater is flawed, and considerably so, it’s simply not responsible to publish such overtly strange and bizarre opinions as if authoritative. These flaws have been pointed out, and I’ll do it again if you would like, that criticism has fallen on deaf ears, not because I am not right, but because there exists at your mag an unwillingness to accept criticism, and improve based on that criticism. That decisions to change and improve mustn’t come at the behest of a peon, the mighty powers at MSP know best.
The rater is offensive to anyone desiring a sense of openness (how can you arbitrarily assign numbers to reviews?), it seems deeply rooted in a conviction that transparency (how can some reviewers reviews count four times for one resto , while others only once?), and democracy are flawed principals. The fact that the rater exists the way it does betrays an attitude of someone not interested in listening to criticism–from certain sources, that is.
Hey, I’m late to my own party! But thrilled and delighted nonetheless. Thank you all so much! Minnesota is a great place full of curious and hardworking people of every stripe, and I’m tickled to think that so many chefs and cooks and food-thinkers see me as a force for good. That’s what I always do try to be, even when I fail.
Also, on the question as to why I didn’t chime in earlier: No one actually notified me. I heard from someone at MnMo about the award just today. I love this site, but sometimes I’m just busy being a mom with 2 jobs, or an editor with 2 toddlers, and I’m simply doing those kinds of things. I have no problem being evaluated, I think critics are evaluated every day, I’ve always said we’re only as good as our last review, and some of my most treasured past awards are the Readers’ Choice Awards I got at City Pages for which people wrote in my (unreasonably long and unpredictably spelled) name.
In conclusion (and I imagine this is the point in the award show where the music comes up and the camera pulls back) evaluation is fine and dandy by me, I’m quite proud of my body of work, I don’t do it for the recognition but I’m honored and delighted to be recognized. Next time though, if you want a rapid response, you might send out an e-mail or pick up the phone. Oh, and all hail Jim Norton and Heavy Table, I think they’ve done amazing work in the Twin Cities and I feel sort of unworthy now thinking that I have gotten something that should rightly go to them. Also, of course, the wonderful dinner will have to go to charity. But what else do I get? A certificate? A golden-spray-painted pen? That feather in the picture? But seriously. Thanks everyone, I’m glad we have made such a collegial, prickly, thoughtful, unpredictable little world together.
We debated at length whether we should call. In the end we decided to proceed entirely on the web, for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to keep it at arms length, and exist as much on the web as possible. Along those lines, we didn’t want it to seem personal, it was truly a decision made by the team. Yes I represent them, but the feeling was that award presents a difficult dilemma, how to respect journalistic integrity and present an award. Clearly we erred on the side of caution, I respect that you feel we should have acted otherwise.
It was a blast to do this. On our end, we assembled the work of the three nominees, and read through and digested it. It was fantastic fun, and a great learning experience.
Frank is creating an original work of art to commemorate the occasion. As you indicated you would like the dinner to go to charity. We can certainly respect that, and I think it would be in keeping with the spirit of this award. Any-who, thanks for being you, it makes the world a better place.
“Out of curiousity, can anyone name a media type who doesnt accept evaluation?”
Define “accept” in this context:
1) reacts poorly to
2) ignores
3) does not allow on a technical basis (no site comments)
Depending on how you define it, I’d say Garrison Keillor, Adam Platt and Bob Collins (among others, this is just off the top of my head) are local media types who don’t deal well (or at all) with criticism of their work.
On the opposite end of the spectrum you have David Brauer, who’s highly transparent and willing to engage dissenting opinions at face value.
Add James Norton to that list. His work is great, but the reviews on the site are silly and sophomoric. On that front, he had such an opportunity to be the guy that brought something special to the table given his format. Yet he shit the bed, adding insult to injury he both 1) reacts poorly to, or 2) ignores, criticism. My Catholic girlfriend, back in the day, used to say “Father what a waste”, slightly different usage here, but I’d call him “blogger what a waste”.
At the end of the day I speculate that he is trying to be all things to all people, he doesn’t want to piss anyone off–besides me, as a business model that will usually lead to mediocre results. As a writer, that is almost certain death.
Full disclosure: I picked James Norton for this award. He would have had to share it with Aaron Landry, though.
But I think Shefzilla has a point (which he overstates, which is weird because in his paid gig he’s all about understating). Norton has been outright hostile to dissenting opinions on several occasions. I’m sure it’s tiring to grind out that much content only to have people pee on it, but them’s the breaks in journalism these days.