NAME: Andrew Morrison

OCCUPATION: Food Critic / Editor

BASE OF OPERATIONS: East Van

Andrew Morrison is a local food critic, intellectual, father, and blogger. He’s made regular contributions to Vancouver Magazine and Western Living, and now earns his bread as a food critic for The Westender. His success can be traced back to humble days as a waiter and amateur blogger, serving up daily news and opinion on the Vancouver restaurant scene. His online presence is now focused in Scout Magazine, a popular website dedicated to the exploration of Vancouver food and culture.

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I’ve got to get it out of the way: what’s your favourite place to eat in Vancouver?

For a full spread, probably Lumiere. For a little bit relaxed and affordable and accessible, I’d go Chambar. If it’s just me solo with my iPod I’d go Kintaro or Motomachi Shokudo — there’s plenty.

What would you say is unique about the Vancouver dining experience?

Wow, um…

I’d say there’s a community of chefs that you don’t really see in other parts of the world. There’s very little suspicion or animosity within the restaurant industry here, and there’s a spirit of camaraderie that permeates it all; I think that’s been responsible for the diversification and the expansion of our food scene over the last ten years. I mean, it’s really just exploded in a positive way. Looking back over the last decade I’m amazed at how much the food scene here has flourished, and I think it has a lot to do with chefs playing off each other and restaurateurs building a sense of community– not just amongst the restaurant community itself, but with the wineries, fisherman, farmers and artisan producers.

Are there any food items or movements here that are distinctly our own?

I think that geographically we’re very lucky. We’ve got the Okanagan Valley producing some top drawer wines, we’ve got the Pacific Ocean giving us fantastic local seafood and we’ve got great farms in the Fraser Valley and all around Southwestern B.C. We’ve come to appreciate that. I mean, twenty-five years ago if you asked a restaurateur about local food they’d just look at you with a blank stare going, “what the hell is that?”. You get your tomatoes from California and Mexico and you could give a damn about spot prawns or fish that could be caught in Howe Sound.

Things have changed, and I’d say we have something of a gastronomical autarky [Editor's note: it means self-sufficient. I looked it up.] where you can actually source everything from our own province; I mean we’re still going to have trouble finding citrus and that sort of thing, but as far as proteins, greens and fruits are concerned, we can get it all here.

What about Scout Magazine: what’s its purpose?

Really it’s just an outlet for the things that I can’t do in print or want to see online. I come from a food and restaurant background, and that’s all I’ve ever done, work-wise, but academically my background is in history and classics. I read a lot, and I enjoy art and literature. Scout is an outlet where I can apply all those interests. It’s sort of like a culmination of projects I’ve had on the go for coming up on 10 years now.

Walk us through the steps that lead you here.

I started blogging in 2001 with a running commentary on the Bush Administration’s response to September 11th. When he won re-election I couldn’t stand the thought of writing another four years about George W., so I scrapped that.

I think it was Hemingway who said, “write what you know.” I knew the restaurant business. I mean it’s not a complicated thing, but it’s something that I was confident with, so I started Waiter Blog, and it took off right out of the gate. That eventually lead to the launch of Urban Diner, but there’s a finite number of people who are interested enough in food and restaurants in this city to hit a website about it three times a day. In my mind we hit a ceiling.

So if you felt like you ran out of rope with Urban Diner, what was it that was going to be different about Scout?

Well if I wanted to say, “these are the 10 things you need to know about Sarah Palin,” or if I went on a tangent about astronomy or some new bug they’ve discovered in the Bolivian rain forest, there wasn’t really a place to put it [on Urban Diner].

Plus, I sometimes get sick to death of food, particularly the chatter that surrounds it. I understand that people are really interested in it, but it has led to an insular, gossipy atmosphere full of geeks. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but when you fetishize something you take away a lot of its value, and the value of food is very human. It’s not intellectual — it’s subjective, it’s personal; going ten paragraphs on your favourite donut stabs my own personal affections for food.

The evolution from Urban Diner to Scout– is it fair to say Scout has reached new heights for you?

Absolutely.

What do you think makes it so popular?

I think what used to be the strength of Urban Diner was its reporting and the raw sort of ‘we get the information first’ thing. Scout draws a larger audience because it does that original reporting; it gets the news about the restaurant business first and in-depth without dealing in gossip and hearsay. I also think it’s prettier: it’s more functional and it’s updated more — it’s become the CNN of the restaurant business in Vancouver. But beyond that, we suggest interesting and cool things that people can do who have nothing to do with food and restaurants. We do music, we do the arts scene, we do plenty that goes beyond food.

It’s fascinating to me that you’ve found a way to differentiate yourself in this new media landscape where anyone can contribute, to the point that you make a living doing it– it’s inspiring.

I think these days everyone comes to their own little niche through their own devices. Is my story unique? I don’t know. The media landscape in Vancouver is very open right now and I don’t think we do anything particularly unique. I really like what Beyond Robson does, what Vancouver Is Awesome does. I think there’s a lot of room out there online for something like the Georgia Straight that isn’t the Georgia Straight. I wish there were six Georgia Straights! I wish The Tyee wasn’t so staid; I wish they would inject a little fun or humour into it. It’s one of my favourite websites. I’d actually love to write for them, but it so often comes across as too dry or professorial. I wish they would just funk out with an orgasm every once in awhile. They have a niche audience and preaching to the choir isn’t a bad thing, but I like the idea of them occasionally poking a stick into a hornet’s nest and having a little fun.

Is that where you see Scout heading?

I’d like to see us working on arts and culture and politics and city news and commentary a little bit more. I mean the food and restaurant component of Scout is always going to take care of itself because it’s a hobby of mine, and I really enjoy doing it, but I would never want it to be mass or mainstream media. I make enough to get by, and that’s it. My story is not a success story.

Well, I think it’s a success story in the sense that you’ve turned a humble waiterblog into a career as a professional food critic…

Sure, yeah, I understand that the optics of it are very good, but a waiter makes more than a writer does, and a waiter, depending on the degree of talent, might not work as hard as a writer. It’s a success in appearances only — I have a byline in print and I have a successful blog and there’s a certain modicum of name recognition and celebrity that comes with that, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing, especially if you measure success by your bank balance [laugh].

Well, I don’t think that people aspiring to similar paths measure success in that way anyway

And I don’t either. I could give a damn. I’m really happy that I can look after my children and be a stay-at-home dad that plays lego one minute and breaks a story the next. For me, it’s a totally ideal situation. I don’t care if I make $300 a week because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.