Critics spend a lot of time eating the roast chicken, the mashed potatoes with chives, the steak frites, all the standard meat-and-taties entrees that average diners get all the time. So when a delicate little octopus liver comes along, poached in monkey blood, with a veal-and-cocoa ganache? It’s all they want to try.

Sam Sifton, on why food critics often write about the esoteric. Poor things. This must also be why fashion magazines (and the NYT Style section) only write about super-expensive designer clothes—because they’re bored. It’s not because they are ignoring the fact that their readers can’t afford what they’re covering.