Adam Platt writes about New York restaurants. Does he feel disconnected from the rest of the country?

Question: As a New York restaurant critic, do you feel a disconnect from the rest of the country?

Adam Platt: Well, writing about-- Anyone who lives in New York is sort of disconnected from the rest of the world. That’s in many cases why they’re here but no-- Restaurants-- The phenomenons-- The restaurant phenomenons that I’ve been talking about are not just-- They’re happening all over the country. It’s not just in New York and in New York when you travel you go to- you’ll go-- There-- Most cities will have several really good places to eat there. If there are not, quote, unquote, fancy gourmet restaurants, there are other kinds of places and often the thing about New York is that- the phrase, the ... of a place, the sort of what comes out of the sort of unique environment of place, will inform what people eat, and in New York you don’t really have a lot of that. In New York, like I said, what you have is people coming from all over the world and displaying their talents so it’s really a bazaar of fancy foods, of different kinds of cuisines and different sort of culinary affectations and it’s actually refreshing going to Nebraska to eat real steak or Maine to eat a real scallop or San Francisco to eat a real vegetable. So I don’t think- I don’t see New York in that sense as really-- It’s sort of the center in a certain sense of a sort of the grand restaurant world but as far as food in general and eating in general that’s all over the country.

Recorded on: 4/22/08