Sifton Responds to Steingarten's Accusation of Brooklyn Bias

While awarding one star to newish pizza restaurant Fornino Park Slope, Sam Sifton responds to Jeffrey Steingarten's accusation that he and other New York Times staffers have a Brooklyn bias and celebrate restaurants there unduly:

Mr. Steingarten writes in the manner of a biplane looping and spinning through the sky. He plunges deeply into opinion before soaring over fact. He flies into accusation then banks quickly past proof. And so, in the course of lamenting his substandard Kings County croissant, he managed to send a few shots across the bow of the Times’s Dining section, on whose decks work some people, including me, who live in Brooklyn and who — Mr. Steingarten’s circular reasoning goes — are soft on Brooklyn restaurants. We are, he said, “relatively uncritical of things in Brooklyn.”

Sifton contends that if Steingarten were to really examine the Times archives, he would find that is not the case, adding, "we’re fans of the delicious in whatever guise and borough it comes." Except when it comes to Staten Island or the Bronx.
· Reviewing Fornino Park Slope [DJ]
· Jeffrey Steingarten Calls Brooklyn Food Writers 'Dangerous' [~ENY~]

Fornino Park Slope

254 5th Ave., Brooklyn, NY