Why not review Harlem?

Zubin Jelveh at Portfolio.com posts complaining about the lack of food reviews by Frank Bruni of the New York Times in Harlem. His point, in short, is that despite rating on Menupages for Harlem restaurants that equal the ratings on Menupages for restaurants in the East Village, Bruni rarely writes about Harlem.

To some extent, this regional problem is endemic to every restaurant reviewer. In Washington, Tom Sietsema of the Post was recently reported to the Ombudsman for neglecting the Maryland suburbs (if I recall correctly). The response of every reviewer I've seen when confronted by this variety of accusation is that they go where the restaurants are even while making sure they're not neglecting good restaurants in less trendy areas. The challenge of reviewing breadth is harder for Bruni in New York than for anyone else anywhere. He has the opportunity to review one restaurant a week, 52 a year. There are easily 52 significant openings a year of which the food community in New York demands a review, not to mention returns to old standbys (see here).

It is simply impossible, in that context, for Bruni to also hit, say, a home style southern restaurant in Harlem just as a matter of geographical breadth. Without some knowledeable buzz to justify his effort and time, there isn't any demand for his imprimatur on such a restaurant - he would be performing a disservice to his readers by wasting a column on it. To the extent, further, that there are innovative or especially good restaurants that aren't hyped and identified to Bruni immediately, these are dug out and brought to notice by the New York restaurant market's elaborately cascading sorting mechanism - first by the veritable blanket veritable blanket of amateur food review that Chowhound has thrown over the city and then by New York's subsidiary food reviewers (New York magazine, Gael Green, Eater, Grub Street, Restaurant Girl, etc, etc, etc). I would argue, contra Jelveh, that New York's restaurant market is frighteningly efficient. Good places are dug out, identified, tested by knowledgeable pioneers, and then mobbed, and places that don't hit the mark are slaughtered with brutal rapidity.

I would argue in a little more depth about the differences between Menupages and the high food press, but I'll leave it at that for now.