I have often asked myself recently what it means to be a food critic! How can anyone in our small country today confidently claim to be a food critic?! Today, I bring you the most credible man on the subject, for me and for many others: Pierre Vajda.
How does one become a food critic? What has been your journey so far?
It's a series of coincidences really, you're not prepared, at least I wasn't prepared for this, because I've done so many other things in my life, it came much later, while the love of gastronomy, the interest in gastronomy has always been there. I could say that even as a teenager.
I have a kind of critical spirit towards the phenomena of life in general. How shall I put it? I see everything that surrounds me as an intellectual challenge, I try to understand it, to interpret it, obviously it's a personal attitude. And within that, because I've done so many things, I've been a film director, a producer, a plastic surgery owner and, of course, I haven't listed everything, just some extremely different directions. I have an adventurous nature, which is not just literal, but more intellectual.
Increasingly, it became clear that a long-standing interest in gastronomy had led me to cook a lot myself. I was never a professional, I don't compare myself to a good restaurant chef, because it's a completely different job, it's much more complex, it's managing, dealing with people. It's knowing how to deal with people.
It's a very complex profession but, as far as the basics are concerned, I think I'm familiar with things and I've had a lot of experience in the kitchen because I cook on a daily basis. It's not just that I cook, but I can pick and choose the raw materialI know what happens to a raw material in a given case, using such and such and such technologies. I have learned this in a self-taught way - 30-40 years in this - and in different parts of the world.
I have a kind of experience. I've been to a lot of restaurants, I've always been interested in this genre. It's quite different, isn't it, what you cook for your family at home and the restaurant business as such... it's a very serious science, in theory, in practice, all that. Culinary arts is a very important and powerful segment of culture and it's connected to everything else, fine arts, music, biology, chemistry, physics. It's worth being familiar with all of these in some way and seeing these connections, but it's also a kind of cultural dimension, a gastronomic history that is almost as old as humanity, if you like, it's all, all, all, all together.
What I found out is that it covers a lot of my interests when I do this. Writing... when I started writing about it, it turned out that I could convey a kind of experiential, but at the same time analytical and accurate picture. I started writing gastro short stories, trying to develop my own style. That's really what it all comes down to. It's very difficult to find the language for the experience of eating, the culinary experience... How to verbalise it, how to translate it in the best way, so that the right words, the right moods, the right flavours, the right aromas, will give it back in the most sensual way.
But at the same time, I think, as I said, that I'm somewhat knowledgeable, if I come across a food preparation, I can give my opinion on it. When I read a recipe, it's like a musical score for me, so I can immediately cook in my head practically the dish that the recipe describes. I am like a singer who can immediately hear the melody in the music, can hum it, can sing it. I have some experience of this and when I am confronted with a real product, I have a number of impressions and opinions, which I am able to express and put into words. For me, this is what it consists of: how much I am this, that or the other, I cannot say. I've been doing it for a long time, there are more successful moments and there are less....
Are there many restaurant critics in the country? Do we know of many? Can you name any?
What we have now, and since the opening up of all the publishing, all the media, all the social media platforms, it's really been about, since its inception, that practically anyone can express their opinion on anything in writing, in pictures, in sound, in any way they want, no matter how much they know or don't know. It's not even particularly demanded, and you can get readers or people interested anyway, that you really don't know anything about it, but you know how to get the topic or the content to others using the best marketing tools. From that point of view, it's a very big mix, and on the other hand, it's also a big responsibility, some people take that responsibility and some people take it less. So I try to be very careful about how I approach when I write about someone or something, a phenomenon, say... what words I use.... Because my aim is certainly not to destroy, I want to be accurate and objective. I can't decide how well I do that, when I do it, but the intentions are definitely that. Apart from myself, the person from whom I think I have learned the most and whom I still hold in very high esteem, on the one hand for his writing skills and knowledge, and on the other for his commitment, is none other than Tamás B. Molnár, who I think knows everything about the subject. His whole activity is very important. I consider this to be consumer protection. You always have to bear in mind that gastronomy is about food, it is a phenomenon, it is an activity that we are talking about, it is a part of life where you are introducing foreign substances into the body, it is basically nutrition... It is not just a health issue, it is also linked to many other things. There is a huge responsibility in principle, the Foodthat you put into your body every day. What quality and what conditions in general... from that point of view, it's a maximum and very responsible consumer responsibility.
However, it is also about the fact that there are providers who deliver it in one way or another and try to make the public believe that they are the best, because there is competition. It is also my job, as a consumer advocate and as someone who is perhaps somewhat competent in this area, to try to bring some order to this great competition, which is simply to give my opinion and try to give it in an objective, scientific, cultural sense about a particular product, service or product.
How are your days in Pierre? What are you up to these days?
My blog “Pierre is tasting” appears on the index. I have a certain obligation to publish it, both on the blog and in a section of Index Cult in the Degustator, which is a section on gastronomy.
It's not just me who publishes there, but others too.
In addition to the Pierre tastes blog, I also have a podcast where I talk to gastro personalities once a week. It keeps me busy because, you know, it's at least 15 to 20 appearances a month, it keeps my days busy.
We're getting back to normality, I can now taste, I can finally go out, which is my main activity, with this consumer protection in mind, to go to different restaurants, try them out and then summarise my impressions of what I experienced there. That's what I do. I've been doing it for a long time, I don't get tired of it, and I'm happy to do it, especially now, because it's been a very long break. We're trying to get back to our old, ordinary food, well I don't know how well that will work, but we'll see. Finally, I can put more emphasis on services again, let's say...
How do you see the future of restaurants and gastronomy in the short term, say this year?
I can say the same now clichéd things about it as many others. I've written about it, this and that... I can't predict the future, but I can see that Budapest's gastronomy is very dependent on mass tourism, and if mass tourism doesn't go to Budapest, because I'm talking about Budapest here, I'll tell you why... Then they're in a lot of trouble, because I don't think there are enough local consumers to really fill the supply and capacity that this city has. The other thing is that even the domestic guests, of whom there are perhaps more and more, a new generation has grown up, has money and their habits have changed, and if they cannot travel, they will obviously turn to other Hungarian destinations, because summer is coming, which could also have a negative impact on the gastronomy of the capital. Many people are trying to pop up in the area around Lake Balaton or in the busier areas to catch up with the domestic guests. This, for example, is part of the package. When will it recover? That depends very much, you know, on the departure of flights, on safe travel. How many vaccination cards, how many tests? It's not a simple fun thing right now. These are going to have a crazy amount of impact on tomorrow. The kind of courage it takes to say from the outside that I'm coming to Budapest because I'm in the mood for it like I used to be, so that's a big question.
