Published Messenger Newspapers, January 22, 2003


PRAISE ON HIGH A CHINESE CURSE


NEVER one to exaggerate unless my life depends on it, I was astonished the other day to read that Ying Chow had been declared the "world's best Chinese restaurant''. The world's noisiest restaurant, quite possibly, but the notion that Ying Chow - the pokey little place on Gouger St - is the very best of its type anywhere on the globe, including China, is too absurd for words. Yet, according to a piece in The Age, the Food & Wine magazine in the US - a publishing offshoot of American Express - named it No.1. Having eaten occasionally at Ying Chow, I emailed the F&W editor Dana Cowin, in New York, to ask if she was being serious or should we take it with a pinch of monosodium glutamate? I await her response. Not that I am necessarily bagging Ying Chow but the praise is such an exaggeration, so beyond reason, that the place cannot possibly live up to unfair expectations. They must be cursing their Chinese luck. The basis of all exaggeration are the three words, good, better, best. Or, as is often the case in news stories, bad, worse, worst. Exaggeration is an occupational hazard in journalism. Governments are ``slammed'' by a ``huge backlash'' of voters and unions warn of ``massive job losses''. Exaggeration makes things appear larger or more important than they really are. In journalism, too often, the aim is to gobsmack people beyond what the facts warrant, especially on the weekend TV news services. I once worked in a newsroom where the journos, for a laugh, presented each other with an Iron Bar Award for the biggest beatup of the week. A real iron bar, it was not something anyone really wanted to win, an object of derision not desire. The boss, missing the point, confiscated it. The bar had served as a reminder that gross exaggeration created a distorted sense of perspective. If the earth was ``huge'', for example, how large was Jupiter and how big was the universe? Very, very, very huge? Personally, having grown older and less excitable these days, I prefer it when the facts are left to speak for themselves. The unadorned truth is usually remarkable enough. Some exaggerations are harmless. The Big Lobster. The Big Orange. We all exaggerate the weather - it is so hot, the chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs - or the size of the fish that got away or our sex lives.
But in none of these areas do we really expect to be taken seriously, a bit like telling someone: I want your honest feedback. Sure. Thanks to the Food & Wine silliness, poor old Ying Chow will now have to live with the burden of being called the best. Even the advertising industry, for whom everything is new, improved or better, would not have dared use such an exaggerated superlative. Should any of F&W's US readers bother to journey to the other side of the planet to dine at the best Chinese restaurant in the universe, I suggest they bring ear plugs. If nothing else, Ying Chow is LOUD and NOISY. I cannot hear myself talk in there and that's no exaggeration.