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Giant - Jason Vincent and the Glad-Wrap event

Giant - Jason Vincent and the Glad-Wrap event
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  • Post #31 - September 13th, 2018, 7:21 pm
    Post #31 - September 13th, 2018, 7:21 pm Post #31 - September 13th, 2018, 7:21 pm
    David Hammond wrote:
    ronnie_suburban wrote:
    David Hammond wrote:My understanding is that tables were mic-ed without diners' knowledge, and even if they agreed to be recorded, that kind of Soviet-style subterfuge is lamentable, especially when it's connected to a chef of such integrity as Jason Vincent

    Once you're informed that the event will be recorded, well, you've been informed. Where the microphones are placed is just the tail wagging the dog.

    =R=


    Though perhaps technically true, this is a perception issue, and hidden microphones (or cameras) just makes the situation feel more sneaky and lacking in transparency.



    I don't get why one needs to see they are being recorded if they are told they are being recorded in an advance. This was a total 1st world problem but okay.

    I find that part of the outrage really odd.

    It's a free meal.

    You are recorded.

    RSVP if you wish to attend.

    What am I missing?
    Ava-"If you get down and out, just get in the kitchen and bake a cake."- Jean Strickland

    Horto In Urbs- Falling in love with Urban Vegetable Gardening
  • Post #32 - September 13th, 2018, 7:48 pm
    Post #32 - September 13th, 2018, 7:48 pm Post #32 - September 13th, 2018, 7:48 pm
    Ideal Machine wrote:Sir, are you aware that you are not drinking regular coffee but Columbian decaffeinated coffee crystals?



    You win. :P
    Ava-"If you get down and out, just get in the kitchen and bake a cake."- Jean Strickland

    Horto In Urbs- Falling in love with Urban Vegetable Gardening
  • Post #33 - September 13th, 2018, 8:48 pm
    Post #33 - September 13th, 2018, 8:48 pm Post #33 - September 13th, 2018, 8:48 pm
    I'll be honest, I hadn't visited this thread until I had heard about the outrage of the Glad event elsewhere. Because it was my first time here, I saw the pictures of the food. Damn, it looks good. I don't really like what was done but generally feel the ire should be directed at the ad agency and the brand (Glad). In this case the restaurant (and chef) seems more akin to the musical artist whose hit is used in a commercial. "gotta pay the bills" but not responsible if that advertisement is aired during something the artist might be opposed to, etc.
  • Post #34 - September 13th, 2018, 8:51 pm
    Post #34 - September 13th, 2018, 8:51 pm Post #34 - September 13th, 2018, 8:51 pm
    Something important seems to be missing from the discussion (apologies if it's there and I missed it), but what makes the influencer whining particularly ridiculous here is that the recordings were not going to be used without signed permission (and a paycheck) after the fact.

    They were told ahead of time they were going to be recorded. They were recorded. After the event, they were reminded they'd been recorded and offered $300 for the right to use the recording ($1,000 if they did one of the "we were duped" interviews that made it into the commercial). If they said no, that was it - no use of their voices.

    Bspar wrote:Anyone think that perhaps the influencers didnt want to be heard or show raving about "3 day old" food?

    Bingo!

    Maybe I'm entirely out of it, but who are these influencers and how do they become one? The guy who started this laughable discussion with an instagram post has over 41,000 followers on an Instagram feed that doesn't demonstrate a knowledge base that should make him able to influence anyone. And it's not like he's someone who is known outside of the instagram influencer world.

    Between this and the accusations about Dolinsky the other day, it's been a fascinating week in terms of wondering about the editorial independence of anyone in the food world in Chicago.
  • Post #35 - September 14th, 2018, 6:21 am
    Post #35 - September 14th, 2018, 6:21 am Post #35 - September 14th, 2018, 6:21 am
    https://www.instagram.com/p/BnoJABgB60A/
  • Post #36 - September 14th, 2018, 6:41 am
    Post #36 - September 14th, 2018, 6:41 am Post #36 - September 14th, 2018, 6:41 am
    BR wrote:https://www.instagram.com/p/BnoJABgB60A/
    I posted that link in the thread yesterday early AM, before all the teeth gnashing, hair pulling and "why me god" LTH and elsewhere. Good to have it twice though as its relevant.

    G Wiv wrote:"Jason Vincent eloquently addressed the tempest in a teapot desperately trying to become a Category 5 Hurricane in his Instagram account. -----> Link.

    I, for one, am Glad® he did."
    Hold my beer . . .

    Low & Slow
  • Post #37 - September 14th, 2018, 9:36 am
    Post #37 - September 14th, 2018, 9:36 am Post #37 - September 14th, 2018, 9:36 am
    ronnie_suburban wrote:A bunch of shills got caught in the crossfire. I'm sorry but this is a group for which it's virtually impossible for me to have any empathy at all.

    =R=

    So fucking true. Spare me.
    "In pursuit of joys untasted"
    from Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata
  • Post #38 - September 14th, 2018, 1:16 pm
    Post #38 - September 14th, 2018, 1:16 pm Post #38 - September 14th, 2018, 1:16 pm
    This stuff about "influencers" or whatever ... how is a critic different from an "influencer?" How are any of us on this forum? I know lots of people that cite LTH. There are GNR signs posted around town. What's the difference?
  • Post #39 - September 14th, 2018, 1:18 pm
    Post #39 - September 14th, 2018, 1:18 pm Post #39 - September 14th, 2018, 1:18 pm
    Vitesse98 wrote:This stuff about "influencers" or whatever ... how is a critic different from an "influencer?" How are any of us on this forum?

    Does anyone on this forum make their living providing their opinions about food or culinary matters (some do, I'm sure, but it's the exception, not the rule)? The person who started the complaining about what happened at Giant basically shills for a living. For me, that's a substantial difference.

    =R=
    Same planet, different world
  • Post #40 - September 14th, 2018, 1:54 pm
    Post #40 - September 14th, 2018, 1:54 pm Post #40 - September 14th, 2018, 1:54 pm
    Vitesse98 wrote:This stuff about "influencers" or whatever ... how is a critic different from an "influencer?" How are any of us on this forum?

    Objectivity. Critics should be objective to the point of a near adversarial relationship with the restaurants they provide reviews/commentary on. It is not adversarial in that they are striving to not have a positive experience, but rather so precise and demanding of the subject that they don't assume anything, just as you leave no stone unturned when facing an adversary. A critic works for the consuming public. Influencers work for the restaurants that seek the most efficient route of consumers' money into their pockets.

    The difference should be clear as day to everyone.
  • Post #41 - September 14th, 2018, 1:58 pm
    Post #41 - September 14th, 2018, 1:58 pm Post #41 - September 14th, 2018, 1:58 pm
    HI,

    The article I linked to was written by Kate Bernot, who was once a food writer in Chicago. She now lives in Montana. I thought it was interesting how this originated with someone who was not present, though she probably knew people who were there. I will guess they wanted their opinion known without messing their local connections.

    I have gone along to press dinners with friends who were writing about them. I was warned in advance these are work dinners with a concentration on documenting their dinner. The pleasure of their company was the drive to and from the event. Dinner was spent watching them take pictures, document their experiences for social media and otherwise fret about details. When dinner was over, we each paid a tip of $20 to the staff.

    It was an interesting experience, though not exactly a fun evening and not an experience I needed to repeat too often. It may not the best way to spend an evening, if this is not your work.

    As for shilling, in my book (and it is what gets a pulled on this board) is when you have a undisclosed relationship with the restaurant and pretend to be your average customer. Better yet, you are the owner of the establishment pretending to be your average customer. One of the giveaways in that scenario is complimenting a detail customers give scant notice to. In one case it was how well the printed menu looks. Yeah, you'd obsess if you spent a lot of time thinking and planning about it. Otherwise, who cares?

    As for why are not more LTH people invited to these dinners. Some years ago, a few players here started blogs. Next thing I know, they are going to these press dinners. I asked a publicist about this who knew full well about LTH. The explanation they were too busy to follow the inside baseball to identify who are influencers and who are not. Whereas a blogger who wrote about food was easier to identify. So we are untouched, because PR people were just a tad bit lazy. I wasn't willing to create a blog just for this.

    The last PR driven meal I attended is one I still thank my lucky stars: meeting Jonathan Gold. His daughter attended, who was then a student at University of Chicago, sat at my table. What I came away with how he was a wonderful family man. I was pretty certain with his recent death, he would given everything for another day with his family. My invitation was related to my food history activities. I did see some people from LTH there as well.

    Regards,
    Cathy2
    Cathy2

    "You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
    Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways,
  • Post #42 - September 14th, 2018, 2:35 pm
    Post #42 - September 14th, 2018, 2:35 pm Post #42 - September 14th, 2018, 2:35 pm
    I know full-well the nature of objectivity, especially when it comes to professional criticism. (Never mind that few critics of any beat are so objective that they are truly willing to bite the proverbial hands that feed them; there are almost always judgment calls and secret handshakes and tacit agreements behind the scenes in return for access, but that is a different discussion). I'm not defending shilling or influencers or whatever the guests were, but these invited shills were nonetheless also customers, just as Vincent, despite shilling for Glad, was an esteemed chef. Yet the shills arrived at Giant shills and left as shills. Vincent started the night as an esteemed chef and ended it ethically compromised, minimally or no, all for the sake of shilling himself. Which is to say, they went in bad and came out unchanged. He went in good, but came out damaged. That's why he changed his approach and later apologized.

    Anyway, it's all academic, and why these fun forums exist.
  • Post #43 - September 14th, 2018, 2:48 pm
    Post #43 - September 14th, 2018, 2:48 pm Post #43 - September 14th, 2018, 2:48 pm
    Vitesse98 wrote:. . . but these invited shills were nonetheless also customers . . .

    I'm going to split a hair here and disagree with this part of what you wrote. If they didn't pay, they were decidedly not customers.

    =R=
    Same planet, different world
  • Post #44 - September 14th, 2018, 3:39 pm
    Post #44 - September 14th, 2018, 3:39 pm Post #44 - September 14th, 2018, 3:39 pm
    True enough! But they were guests nonetheless, and no invited diner, comped or not, should be treated any less (or, really, any more) than any other, save during a soft opening or friends and family gathering or any other work in progress situation, and even then unintentionally. In this instance they were treated differently (or treated worse) in service of ... a shrink-wrap marketing gimmick. In other words, the third party company/client and Giant were profiting at their expense (however unsavory their shill status), which I also consider pretty gross.
  • Post #45 - September 14th, 2018, 4:08 pm
    Post #45 - September 14th, 2018, 4:08 pm Post #45 - September 14th, 2018, 4:08 pm
    Vitesse98 wrote:In other words, the third party company/client and Giant were profiting at their expense (however unsavory their shill status), which I also consider pretty gross.

    Isn't this what influencers are all about though? Showing up, getting stuff for free, then plugging it for PR companies and restaurants. The fact they were providing assistance to the PR/restaurants in a different form in exchange for free stuff doesn't make it the crime of the century.

    I agree all of it is gross. I just don't think it's any worse when the self-absorbed influencers are more overtly treated like pawns.
  • Post #46 - September 14th, 2018, 6:02 pm
    Post #46 - September 14th, 2018, 6:02 pm Post #46 - September 14th, 2018, 6:02 pm
    Eh, I think you all are focused too much on said influencers (whoever/whatever they are). I don't know anything about them, and don't care. But Giant getting paid to shill for a shrink-wrap company, and taking advantage of guests to do so, is, as they say, nagl. Vincent was behaving no different from an influencer: getting paid to spread a positive message about a product. Which imo opinion hurts him more, since a) he has integrity and b) he already has a product to shill: his own. So why devalue/debase yourself simply for the sake of someone else's product?
  • Post #47 - September 15th, 2018, 11:32 am
    Post #47 - September 15th, 2018, 11:32 am Post #47 - September 15th, 2018, 11:32 am
    Vitesse98 wrote:Vincent started the night as an esteemed chef and ended it ethically compromised, minimally or no, all for the sake of shilling himself. Which is to say, they went in bad and came out unchanged. He went in good, but came out damaged. That's why he changed his approach and later apologized.

    What makes you think Vincent was ethically compromised or that he changed his approach because of any belief that there was an ethical lapse. To the extent that Vincent or the restaurant did anything wrong here (and I don't think they did), it was that they did not sufficiently review what Glad, the PR firms, or the ad agency did in promoting and designing the event. As far as I can tell (and I hope this is true), Vincent only apologized because that's the easiest and probably the smartest way to move past a fight like this one, no matter how absurd the complaining parties, particularly when the complaining parties have a microphone.
    Vitesse98 wrote:Anyway, it's all academic, and why these fun forums exist.

    I don't think it's merely academic when someone calls a respected chef an ethically flawed shill when the facts of this incident are what they are, but maybe I take these things too seriously.

    And just to be clear - I have no personal bone in this fight. I've never been to Giant, I've never met Vincent, and I wasn't particularly impressed on either of my visits to Nightwood.
  • Post #48 - September 15th, 2018, 5:10 pm
    Post #48 - September 15th, 2018, 5:10 pm Post #48 - September 15th, 2018, 5:10 pm
    He took money from Glad to prepare his food a different way than he normally would have done it, and he did it secretly in service of Glad's marketing/PR scheme. There's your ethical compromise. Unless I misunderstood?
  • Post #49 - September 18th, 2018, 9:15 am
    Post #49 - September 18th, 2018, 9:15 am Post #49 - September 18th, 2018, 9:15 am
    It's a chef's perogative to cook and hold food however we like. If you think all the food you eat in a restaurant got there that morning, you don't have a clue as to how 99% of them operate. Good chefs understand how to prep in advance w/o compromising the integrity of a dish. Logistically, many things just aren't possible ala minute. We know how far you can take things and how long you can hold them. In fact, quite a few dishes benefit from holding. JV is a chef of the highest order and I'm betting the meal was wonderful (except for the whiny bitches-- that always puts me off my feed).
    "In pursuit of joys untasted"
    from Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata
  • Post #50 - September 18th, 2018, 10:08 am
    Post #50 - September 18th, 2018, 10:08 am Post #50 - September 18th, 2018, 10:08 am
    Vitesse98 wrote:He took money from Glad to prepare his food a different way than he normally would have done it


    Did he really though? I mean, literally every restaurant in town worth talking about cooks food long before service, portions it into delis (basically the same thing as Glad containers) and then reheats it to order during service. That's one big thing that's missing from this discussion, is that among the overwhelming amount of things "influencers" don't know about a restaurant's operation is that everyone does what Giant did for every single service.

    I think Jason and the Glad team's biggest mistake was showing their hole cards too soon. Had they not said a word, let all the phony critics spend a 24-hour cycle raving about the sneak peek they got at the fantastic restaurant, then dropped a TV ad three weeks later of him serving them three-day old food and them liking it in the restaurant he could have taken the indignation card away from them.
  • Post #51 - September 19th, 2018, 8:50 am
    Post #51 - September 19th, 2018, 8:50 am Post #51 - September 19th, 2018, 8:50 am
    jhdouglass wrote:
    Vitesse98 wrote:He took money from Glad to prepare his food a different way than he normally would have done it


    Did he really though? I mean, literally every restaurant in town worth talking about cooks food long before service, portions it into delis (basically the same thing as Glad containers) and then reheats it to order during service. That's one big thing that's missing from this discussion, is that among the overwhelming amount of things "influencers" don't know about a restaurant's operation is that everyone does what Giant did for every single service.

    I think Jason and the Glad team's biggest mistake was showing their hole cards too soon. Had they not said a word, let all the phony critics spend a 24-hour cycle raving about the sneak peek they got at the fantastic restaurant, then dropped a TV ad three weeks later of him serving them three-day old food and them liking it in the restaurant he could have taken the indignation card away from them.


    True.

    And some of the methods used by these restaurants to preserve food are much more sophisticated than plastic wrap - i.e. vacuum packaging. I don't understand what the point of the "experiment" really was anyway, other than to provoke the media and create buzz, which they did achieve.
    Logan: Come on, everybody, wang chung tonight! What? Everybody, wang chung tonight! Wang chung, or I'll kick your ass!
  • Post #52 - September 19th, 2018, 9:07 am
    Post #52 - September 19th, 2018, 9:07 am Post #52 - September 19th, 2018, 9:07 am
    bnowell724 wrote:I don't understand what the point of the "experiment" really was anyway, other than to provoke the media and create buzz, which they did achieve.


    The point of the "experiment" is to sell more Glad wrap. Everything else is just noise, as far as the PR company behind the event is concerned.
    Steve Z.

    “Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
    ― Ludwig van Beethoven
  • Post #53 - September 19th, 2018, 2:12 pm
    Post #53 - September 19th, 2018, 2:12 pm Post #53 - September 19th, 2018, 2:12 pm
    stevez wrote:
    bnowell724 wrote:I don't understand what the point of the "experiment" really was anyway, other than to provoke the media and create buzz, which they did achieve.


    The point of the "experiment" is to sell more Glad wrap. Everything else is just noise, as far as the PR company behind the event is concerned.


    Sorry, I meant what point they were trying to make by serving food wrapped in plastic wrap? Restaurants already do that anyway using a stronger grade plastic than Glad.
    Logan: Come on, everybody, wang chung tonight! What? Everybody, wang chung tonight! Wang chung, or I'll kick your ass!
  • Post #54 - September 19th, 2018, 2:39 pm
    Post #54 - September 19th, 2018, 2:39 pm Post #54 - September 19th, 2018, 2:39 pm
    bnowell724 wrote:
    stevez wrote:
    bnowell724 wrote:I don't understand what the point of the "experiment" really was anyway, other than to provoke the media and create buzz, which they did achieve.


    The point of the "experiment" is to sell more Glad wrap. Everything else is just noise, as far as the PR company behind the event is concerned.


    Sorry, I meant what point they were trying to make by serving food wrapped in plastic wrap? Restaurants already do that anyway using a stronger grade plastic than Glad.


    My point stands. There weren't trying to make a point. They were trying to collect footage they could/will use in a marketing campaign for Glad ala the Folgers Crystals campaign of yore (mentioned earlier in the thread).
    Steve Z.

    “Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
    ― Ludwig van Beethoven
  • Post #55 - September 20th, 2018, 11:59 am
    Post #55 - September 20th, 2018, 11:59 am Post #55 - September 20th, 2018, 11:59 am
    the Folger's "switch" commercial
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRrav4Jeew4

    Leek

    SAVING ONE DOG may not change the world,
    but it CHANGES THE WORLD for that one dog.
    American Brittany Rescue always needs foster homes. Please think about helping that one dog. http://www.americanbrittanyrescue.org
  • Post #56 - September 20th, 2018, 12:29 pm
    Post #56 - September 20th, 2018, 12:29 pm Post #56 - September 20th, 2018, 12:29 pm
    Is that Tony Shaloub as the chef?
    Steve Z.

    “Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
    ― Ludwig van Beethoven

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