Letter from Boston
Freelance Eating
By MASAKO YAMADA
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食べ歩きのフリーランス記者
料理を作って、人をもてなすことが楽しみの一つという雅子さん。もちろん食べることも大好きです。そんな趣味が高じて、最近、ボストン在住の日本人向け雑誌に、レストランの紹介記事を書く仕事を始めました。ぜいたくな食事を楽しんで、その上お金までもらえるなんて、なんとも「おいしい」仕事です。
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Although working in a kitchen or food-preparation factory is not glamorous
work for the most part, I think many people who are frustrated with their
jobs harbor the secret desire to own a restaurant, coffee shop or bakery.
Most people associate food with good times, and I suppose it's natural to want
to have a job that involves these comforting tastes and smells.
I have often joked about wanting to work as a baker or a professional
caterer. This is simply because I like to make food, to serve it to others
and to eat it myself. But being relatively practical, I've decided that
working in a restaurant would be too stressful for me, since things have to be
prepared quickly, and patrons' egos must constantly be stroked in the dining
room.
I still find myself going to the lab every day and I know I probably
wouldn't give up this humble lifestyle even if I were offered a full-time
job making pastries at the White House. Food is something that I have
always pursued in my spare time, as a hobby, and I can't imagine it ever becoming a full-time job for me.
That said, I've recently taken a small step toward becoming more than just a glorified glutton. Indeed, according to some definitions, I might even be considered a food
"professional." This is because I've recently landed a moonlighting job
as
a restaurant reviewer. I am getting paid — a tiny amount — to engage in one
of my favorite activities!!
I would hate to call myself a professional food critic because I don't
have much more knowledge than most enthusiastic amateur eaters. As a matter
of fact, I don't go to restaurants as often as many working professionals,
and the restaurants that I do go to tend to be not too fancy.
When I was interviewed for the post, the editor of the magazine asked me why
I felt qualified for the job. I told him that I liked to cook and I liked to
eat. That reply seemed good enough for him, and now I write articles that
I believe reflect what my average reader would find interesting. I simply
write about what I like.
The magazine is a local magazine that caters to the Boston-area Japanese
population. It has a youthful and friendly feel to it, and since I'm a
young, Boston-area Japanese person myself, I feel that I'm writing to peers
I understand. Perhaps I'm fooling myself a bit, since I rarely speak with
any Japa
nese in Boston and I've survived quite well without associating with the large
Japanese community in the area.
If anything, that's probably one of the reasons I felt such a strong
desire to write for the magazine: It makes me feel a bit more connected to my
roots, especially since it's written in Japanese.
I went back to one of the restaurants that I had written about and I saw a
group of young Japanese girls sitting at the table next to mine. This is not a
place that is on the normal list of restaurants that Japanese people visit in
Boston, so I was tempted to ask them whether they had read my article. I
decided not to, but it was nice to think that we might have been connected,
however indirectly.
I've also met many people while writing my reviews to whom I never would
have talked otherwise. The surprising thing is that many of the people that
I've met in the restaurant business have had rich "alternative lives" in
the past.
Some have escaped persecution in their home countries, while
others have given up fancy white-collar jobs. Some have started talking to me
about their families, while others, who did double (or triple) duty as chef,
manager and cashier quickly shooed me away.
I even made a friend while reviewing a restaurant. I was sitting at a
communal table in Chinatown and was rather conspicuously snapping photos
of the food I was eating. A man asked me whether I was a reviewer, and told me
that he was thinking about becoming one too. I had much too much food to finish myself, so I offered him some. It's wonderful to be able to share the
pleasure of a meal — and wonderful to get paid for it.
Shukan ST: Nov. 12, 1999
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