We demand better food coverage

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If The Record of Woodland Park can squander half of the front page on a single baseball game, I feel free to start right off demanding better food coverage -- and during the obesity epidemic, food news has a legitimate place on Page 1.


What we get now are poorly written, poorly researched articles and recipes from Food Editor Bill Pitcher, who is famous around the Woodland Park newsroom for his poor eating habits and unhealthy lifestyle. His food writers are no better, and that includes Elisa Ung, the on-leave restaurant reviewer, who is constantly obsessing about desserts and throwing around the word "quality" as if she knew anything about the origin of the food she writes about.



How does Better Living publish a Starters piece on a 350-seat steakhouse in Paterson without putting the place in context? Surely, this is the Silk City's first high-end, destination restaurant to open in decades. And don't readers deserve to know whether the beef served there is free-range and grass-fed or just conventionally raised and stuffed with antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts?


The same goes for the meat served at Locale, the Closter restaurant reviewed by Pitcher today. Where does it come from and how was it raised? What about the odd name? Locale? Did they mean Local? What about that embarrassing typo that starts the second paragraph? "But" comes out "bur." Then, there is this about the owner's visits to white-tablecloth restaurants in Bergen County:

"He studied their customers, taking note of their wealth and wondering if there was room for another restaurant in their repertoires."

 Huh? Customers have "repertoires" of restaurants? Pitcher also makes it sound as if  Locale replaces the long-shuttered Korea Palace. Did the reviewer mean the first Korea Palace?


Later, Pitcher samples a dish of "Gulf shrimp." Gee. Are those the shrimp marinated in that special BP sauce? This reminds me of the pork tacos recipe he published at the height of the swine-flu epidemic. Hey, Bill, for your inflated salary, you should get your nose out of those gooey desserts and pay attention to what's going on in the world -- like the obesity epidemic.


If Editor Frank Scandale or head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes or your editor, Features Director Barbara Jaeger, don't recognize the importance of reporting on the obesity epidemic, you should go out on a limb and propose such a project involving all departments of the newsroom.


I hope you and the other editors aren't taking their lead from Governor Christie, who is greedily protecting the Borgs and other wealthy folks like himself from the "shared sacrifices" he is imposing on everyone else.


Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson has the best story on Page 1 -- contributions to congressmen who voted to fund a fighter-jet engine -- but it's shoved down near the bottom of the page.


The only Hackensack news in Local today is a story on the postponement of a hearing for suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa -- just two days after a long, detailed preview of the hearing by the same reporter, Monsy Alvarado. What a waste of space. What about the proposed city budget and tax hike, Monsy? When are you going to write about that? After the City Council approves them?


Does Publisher Stephen A. Borg have his eye on the 30,000-square-foot mansion in Alpine listed for $68 million (Page L-7)? Is he feeling cramped already in the $3.65 million Tenafly mansion he bought in late 2007 with a company mortgage only months before he downsized The Record and Herald News?


Will Borg order the project on the obesity epidemic? After all, he was a hands-on publisher when he took over in mid-2006, reshaping both local news and food coverage.

Or does "Let them drink wine" sum up his attitude?

(Photos: The stuffing in a stuffed shirt.)