annotations INTERVIEW: a theory of american festival cuisine
In which Meghan McCarron and I annotate her Eater feature on fair food
This is annotations, a newsletter in which I annotate a story every two weeks, and also read and write other stuff.
Today I’m happy to publish the second-ever annotations interview (read the first one here), in which a writer and I annotate a story together. And, imo, it’s the perfect story to read during this long weekend, as we enjoy these last gasps of summer before the season of fall leaves and fashionable scarves and PSL set in (just kidding it’s already started!). Enjoy!!
annotated: “Toward a Theory of American Festival Cuisine” by Meghan McCarron, Eater
Photo by Gary He for Eater
Meghan McCarron, Eater’s special correspondent (and my esteemed colleague!!!), went to the Iowa State Fair with photographer Gary He, and, between them, produced a truly laudable number of quality stories. This essay of Meghan’s, “Toward a Theory of American Festival Cuisine,” is one of my favorites, synthesizing observational reporting and food and cultural criticism to argue for fair food as a distinct, singular cuisine in the American culinary canon. It is…… very fucking smart, as well as hunger-inducing.
HERE ARE MY AND MEGHAN’S ANNOTATIONS. As always, comments are open, so you can add your own annotations, reply, etc., just please be careful not to erase shit!!
In addition to the interview within the annotations, here’s a short Q&A with Meghan (this interview been lightly edited for clarity):
JGZ: This story is one of several that came from your six days at the Iowa State Fair. I’m curious about that idea of an editor going: “Hey, we’re sending you to X, come back with some great stories, ok bye!” and a writer being left to find stories from there. How did you approach that situation?
MM: It’s both extremely wonderful and extremely intimidating to find yourself in that position as a reporter. It means your editors really trust you; it also means that yeesh you need to keep that trust. I work this way a lot at Eater, to be honest; both the pieces I wrote about Tex-Mex and about Portland came about that way. And an older piece I wrote, about Japanese food and nouvelle cuisine, came out of a conference where I just had to find … something. I started out as a journalist running our local Eater Austin site, where you were just always on the hunt for small, weird (and big, important) stories daily, so I think my brain works that way now. I wish I were better at the planned-out pitch.
Of course, I had tons and tons of anxiety, especially because I was stepping into a different, very high-visibility beat of campaign reporting. I tend to follow that reporting pretty closely anyway (I mean, who doesn’t rn), but I wasn’t sure what I would find in those scrums, or outside of them. It was super, super helpful to be there working with photographer Gary He, because he’s done a few of these cycles and knows everyone and could show me the ropes. The two very straight-reported pieces we did really rode of Gary’s work and his laser-focus on getting all those bonkers eating shots. I was the only reporter there who actually asked the candidates anything about food! You can always get at least a goofy quote, it turns out, by shouting, “Senator, how’s the corn dog?”
For the longer pieces, I knew I’d find stories based on what it seemed like people were most interested in food-wise, and also what surprised me. And my editor Matt Buchanan and I were on the phone off and on throughout the whole trip; he’s a really invaluable sounding board in terms of helping me figure out what’s a story and what’s just a weird detail only I care about. There was chatter on Twitter about what the vegan candidates would eat, so I knew that was something to watch, but I was so happy to find the Veggie Table truck, so we could tell a longer story about vegetarianism at the fair, and not just break news about Cory Booker’s fried PB&J. And we knew Eater readers absolutely love fair food, so I was on the lookout for a pure food story. Talking on the phone with Matt, what emerged was that there was this really passionate case to be made about why the food matters, period.
What did a typical day at the fair look like for you? Amid all the sensory overload, the eating of foods, the stalking of presidential candidates, etc., etc., ETC., how did you ensure you were getting everything you needed—notes, photos, recordings, memories, etc.—to recreate these scenes on paper later?
Oh god, I don’t know if I have a good answer to that question. In therapy this week we talked a lot about how I need to get better at self care on assignments like this lol. So I guess the answer is: I worked my ass off and just followed everything and worked a few twelve-hour days literally at the fair. I reported a food festival story, a campaign story, and a couple random human interest stories, in the hopes that I’d have enough for half of them. I photographed and recorded and wrote down and ate as much as I could.
In terms of methods, I am very addicted to my phone as a reporter. I think I’m finally going to make the transition over to having a recorder, but for now I use my phone, and I would just record anything when candidates were talking about food, while also walking around. I shot a bunch of photos for my own reference, so I could visually describe the scene, and jotted a ton of quotes and observations in my Notes app. Tasting notes, too! As I write more criticism-ish pieces about food, I’m discovering how important it is to have tasting notes. I toggled occasionally between Notes and a reporter’s notebook, because I do find I write down different things in each of those modes. Longhand, I’m more observational, and I ask myself more questions. I also shot photos on my Fuji X100; I haven’t used those much yet, but might still. At the end of the night, I dumped thoughts and observations into my bigger notebook.
How was the writing process?
Honestly, writing this specific story came together in two days. I had a really hard time getting started, which is always true. I was especially feeling sick of the go-to lede structure of setting the scene, the who-what-where-when, and then delivering a little moment. It’s classic for a reason! But I wanted to mess around a bit more. So the first day I wrote maybe 500-600 words, most of it spent messing with the lede. And then I did this thing I do a lot, where I just write messy bonkers notes that sort of map out the beats of the rest of the story, but no other human should ever see them except me.
The second day, I just wrote straight through, using my messy map. Matt turned around edits really fast, and at this point he gives me a lot of notes like, “uh what does this mean” or “unpack plz,” and then I do. There wasn’t even a lot of rearranging. And we’d shot specific photos of people for this story, ones that looked more human and unposed, so the art was already set.
What was the most difficult part of working on this story?
This was the fourth story I’d filed in a week, and I’d definitely needed at least a weekend before I could write it (I took the rest of the week off after it ran, thanks to the newly ratified union contract’s clause about recuperation time (!)). Also, it was just very tricky to convey both how this food was quite wonderful and shouldn’t be dismissed, but that it shouldn't be dismissed in part because it reflected some fairly broken things about how we grow and consume food. Like, if you just look down your nose at it, you miss something vital about American cuisine from a lot of different angles. But I didn’t want to write looking down my nose at any of it.
What did you like most about working on this story?
Honestly, that it just came out in a rush. It’s a great feeling, when you can just focus and go. This reporting trip also drove home to me that there is value in using all your senses in observational reporting—including taste. It felt good to find something I wanted to say about such an over-covered place and topic, in part just by asking and thinking about how things taste.
Thanks, Meghan!
P.S. I promise not all of my interviews will be with Vox Media colleagues, I’m just shy okay 🤡
read
“The Adults in the Room” — or, “the state of digital media in 2019.” [Deadspin]
A really fantastic reported piece on the “post-truth” WeChat-centric publication that Chinese students in the U.S. rely on for a diet of “news” that appeals to a sense of nationalism and disillusionment with America. [The New Yorker]
Amanda Hess on Queer Eye and spiritual consumerism: “It’s a little bit curious that as our political discourse is concerned with economic inequality — and the soaring costs of health care, education and homes — the cultural conversation is fixated on the healing powers of luxury items.” [NYT]
Along a similar vein, Amanda Mull on Goopifying herself: “In an era when many people take the idea of ‘voting with their wallet’ quite seriously, it’s no wonder that self-care, a concept first articulated by the radical poet and civil-rights activist Audre Lorde, was commodified into a righteous cry for fancy bath products. Goop, with its $3,000 dresses and $95 drinkable skin care, is the company you get when people believe that having nice things and being a good person are achieved through the same means.” [The Atlantic]
This, about a contentious dog park dividing a community of rich people, is the best thing I’ve read all week!!! (there are some VERY good dogs) [Washington Post]
What group therapy for the end of the world looks like. [Garage]
Sometimes Modern Love makes you want to want to jump into the sea and sometimes it makes you uwu (in this case, the latter). [NYT]
wrote
For Eater:
this long reported story about a diner at the heart of a preservation battle is actually about the complexities of YIMBY, NIMY, and what kind of cities we want to build!!!
cHiCkEn SaNdWiCh tAsTe TeSt aka my own incompetence, distilled
a blog about froot loops cereal straws and this generation’s anxiety over the destruction of our planet lmao
RIP summer!
jgz