The Q Capital’s Clapback
An article from Australia-based Chef’s Pencil went viral this week as they failed to include traditional barbeque stalwarts like Austin, Kansas City, and Memphis in their rankings. Award-winning restaurants like SLAP’s BBQ (pictured) were not even considered due to lack of geographic knowledge on the part of the unnamed writers at Chef’s Pencil.
Published May 15, 2021
In 1908, Henry Perry set up a pushcart selling smoked pork ribs, mutton, and wild game in a Garment District alleyway and began the tradition of Kansas City barbeque. Two years later, he opened this city’s, and by some accounts the nation’s, first barbeque restaurant. Today, nothing in Kansas City bears his name or likeness.
Please, consider taking 30 seconds to SIGN THIS PETITION to name the new Kansas City International Airport terminal in honor of Henry Perry.
“Correlation is not causation.”
This maxim, which is at the bedrock of all statistical analysis, points out that just because two isolated events or results appear to be linked does not mean the occurrences are actually connected or that a cause-and-effect relationship exists between the two. While I had heard this phrase as early as junior high math class, it was in a Political Science course at the University of Central Missouri where I received the best illustration of this notion. This was when the ramifications of spurious relationships started to really sink in for me.
In that particular class, my professor told us all about the famed “Redskins Rule”. The Redskins Rule referred to a phenomenon where every United States Presidential election between 1940 and 2000 appeared to be determined by the outcome of National Football League (NFL) games. For sixty years, the result of the final home game of the Washington Football Team (then named the Washington Redskins) had a direct correlation to the outcome of the subsequent election. If the Washington Football Team won their final home game before the election, the incumbent party would go on to win the Presidency. If the Washington Football Team lost their final home game prior to the election, the election was won by the challenging party during this era.
It was an interesting pattern and one that, given its longstanding nature, captured the attention of sportscasters and political analysts every four years. Of course, it was an amazing coincidence - nothing more. While I understood the notion of “correlation does not imply causation” from the time I was a teenager, the Redskins Rule became the ultimate example of what that really meant.
The Redskins Rule always made for fun conversation during each election cycle, but no person of reason would ever conclude that there was an actual relationship between the goings-on at RFK Stadium and the occupancy of the Oval Office.
Since no person of average, or even slightly below average, intelligence would ever draw that conclusion, it can then be reasoned that the writers at Chef’s Pencil would likely believe exactly that. Had their blog existed while the unbelievably coincidental Redskins Rule held true, the morons at this publication would have told you that our executive branch was in fact put in place by Coach Joe Gibbs and his counter trey offense.
Clearly, Chef’s Pencil does not possess even a basic understanding of statistical analysis. Perhaps I should not be so hard on these “writers”. After all, my junior high math class in rural Missouri might be a higher level of education than the staff at Chef’s Pencil ever received.
For nearly a decade, I have had the privilege of making my home in the World Capital of BBQ, Kansas City. Having been to over sixty of this city’s delectable BBQ joints (and dozens more across the nation) and multiple editions of The American Royal World Series of Barbecue, I cannot help but consider myself a bit of a barbeque snob. Given my passion for KC’s culinary calling card, it is incredibly common for friends, acquaintances, and otherwise to send me articles and videos about barbeque.
On Wednesday night, a friend of mine messaged me a link to a newly posted list of the so-called best BBQ cities in the United States from a food site I was not familiar with called Chef’s Pencil. Now of course, these lists are typically subjective and open the door for debate. I should know. My list from earlier this year of the top 12 BBQ joints in Kansas City sparked all kinds of chatter. The ensuing debate is obviously much of the incentive to publish any kind of ranked list in the first place. What made this particular list noteworthy is the obscenely low rankings given to widely lauded BBQ destinations like Austin, Houston, Memphis, and of course, Kansas City. In fact, Houston, Texas was named among the Worst BBQ Cities in the US and Kansas City, Kansas was left off the list entirely despite being home to some of the nation’s most well-known BBQ joints.
We live in a world where hot takes are all the rage. After all, ESPN pays Stephen A. Smith millions of dollars every year and FOX spent millions to lure Skip Bayless away from ESPN. It would be one thing if this list was subjective hot takes and attention-seeking behavior. What compounded my interest in the Chef’s Pencil pieces, and what made it go viral, is that they claimed their rankings were an objective study based entirely on empirical data.
A combination of a general lack of barbeque knowledge, arbitrary metrics, and data mischaracterization led international food blog Chef’s Pencil to crown some surprising cities as the best BBQ cities in America while ignoring a number of highly regarded BBQ meccas. IMAGE COURTESY OF - The Incompetent Staff of Chef’s Pencil
According to Chef’s Pencil, they analyzed the Tripadvisor rankings of all “BBQ joints” in the 75 largest cities in the United States and then ranked those cities by their average Tripadvisor ranking. To be considered, a city had to have at least 10 BBQ restaurants (defined as a restaurant offering a barbeque dish on their menu) that each had a minimum of 5 reviews, located within their city limits. The rankings of these cities were entirely determined by the numbers that their “study” produced.
Now frankly, this was a busy week for me. I took a quick glance at the post and while I did appreciate how transparent Chef’s Pencil was about how they arrived at their conclusions, I quickly saw the many shortcomings in their process and shrugged off the article as something that was not worth my time. I had a quick chat with my friend about the piece, got a nice laugh out of it, and closed the book on this posting, or so I thought.
The data aspect was intriguing to me but anyone who had ever passed a junior high math course could see that the data was manipulated and irresponsibly gathered. Whether it’s a subjective list or the result of data collection, any credible Top 25 list of the best major cities for BBQ in America would include Kansas City, MO, Kansas City, KS, St. Louis, MO, Memphis, TN, at least 5 cities in Texas, at least 3 cities in the Carolinas, and then at least one BBQ joint from the remaining Southeastern Conference States. Of course this list came nowhere close.
By Thursday afternoon, the article had gone viral. In every barbeque mecca that was excluded, and every city that was surprised to be listed, the piece from Chef’s Pencil was a widely discussed topic. Kansas City was no exception.
And so I found myself unable to ignore this post from Chef’s Pencil even though I wanted to.
Chef’s Pencil acted irresponsibly both in their arbitrary data collection methods and their reckless presentation of their findings. Their framing of this piece as a data-driven style showed an unbelievable penchant for dishonesty by the staff at Chef’s Pencil. I realized that as a Fountain City Foodie, and a proud champion for the World Capital of BBQ, I had an obligation to expose the problems with this “study” and the overall absence of character at Chef’s Pencil.
To be perfectly clear, my disagreement is not with their findings (although that’s what initially caught my attention) but with the process that they employed. As mentioned prior, this was not a case of a bunch of hot takes. That would not merit this much of a response. This was clickbait and manipulated data disguised as a study. My genuine curiosity about how the quality of food could be objectively quantified was rapidly replaced with disappointment in Chef’s Pencil for their intentional deception in order to generate web traffic. They did not present their article as opinion, they presented it as undeniable fact.
The only undeniable fact is that Chef’s Pencil mischaracterized data in order to generate web traffic. Ok, you caught me, that’s actually an opinion. In this writer’s opinion, what Chef’s Pencil did was disgusting and beneath any credible writer or publication. Let’s explore a few of the reasons that I, and many others, feel this way.
Failure to Define and Understand BBQ
One of the initial problems with this “research study” (I really should stop calling it a study as I fear I am only lending credibility to this farce), is that Chef’s Pencil failed to define barbeque. For their purposes, they considered any restaurant that had a barbeque item on the menu to be a barbeque restaurant.
For those of us in Kansas City, and throughout the South, who are outraged with the rankings, we have our own idea of what BBQ is. While our styles and specialties may differ, we are all definitely picturing “low and slow” smoked meats. We are all picturing American or Southern style barbeque. Kansas City, Memphis, Texas, and Carolina styles are all variations of this specific culinary style.
However, Chef’s Pencil was too lazy to make that distinction. While most who read this article assumed that American/Southern style was up for debate, Chef’s Pencil failed to differentiate between this style and other styles.
One of the most surprising entrants on this list was Newark, New Jersey. Rebecca King of NorthJersey.com, who similarly cited the list as bogus, made a point to say that while the list is nonsense, Newark likely received such high marks because of their excellent Portuguese BBQ (a delicacy I now look forward to sampling the next time I find myself in Jersey).
Clearly, Portuguese BBQ is an entirely different genre of food. As is Korean BBQ, Hawaiian BBQ, Mongolian BBQ, chargrilled food, and BBQ-flavored foods. These are all very different styles of food and yet Chef’s Pencil, an international food magazine, fails to see the difference. If a restaurant had an item that was topped or tossed in barbeque sauce on the menu, that may have been enough to qualify them for the sake of these rankings. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, Chef’s Pencil failed to show their work. My initial response to the Chef’s Pencil piece was being impressed by their transparency but once again, this was sleight of hand. There was no transparency.
We know the number of restaurants and the majority of cities they looked at but we have no idea which specific restaurants were included in their study. However, it is clear that Chef’s Pencil acted carelessly. The false equivalency of shoving smoked brisket, a burger with BBQ sauce on it, an Arby’s roast beef sandwich, and Polynesian ribs into the same category is reckless.
Calling something barbeque just because it’s BBQ-flavored or has a drizzle of sauce is like placing a derby on my head and expecting me to run The Preakness this afternoon. In the same way that I am not a thoroughbred, that chicken sandwich with a dollop of KC Masterpiece is not barbeque.
It is clear that the writers at Chef’s Pencil do not know what barbeque is or even worse, do not have the integrity to really care. My ten year old niece has a better understanding of what barbeque is than the hacks at this international food publication.
A place like Harp’s Barbecue (pictured) was deliberately excluded from Chef’s Pencil’s findings. Despite being a Kansas City BBQ joint that is quickly earning a local and national reputation for excellence, the uneducated writers at Chef’s Pencil decided that Harp is not KC BBQ because it is located in Raytown. Thank our lucky stars that they likely chose to evaluate Dicky’s Barbecue Pit though! (INSERT EYE ROLL)
Gerrymandering The Map For Clicks
Chef’s Pencil made an interesting decision to limit cities to their specified city limits as opposed to exploring the region or metroplex as a whole. In doing so they showed either, at best, an infantile understanding of American geography or, at worst, a malicious intent to deceive readers by falsely portraying the culinary scenes of countless American cities.
Think about the absurdity of this decision for a moment. Imagine that Chef’s Pencil were using the same exact geographic qualifiers to determine the number of NFL teams in each city. Despite the fact that New York City and Los Angeles have the most most NFL teams at two apiece, Chef’s Pencil would lead you to believe that LA and NYC have zero NFL teams because the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams play in Inglewood, CA and the New York Jets and New York Giants play in East Rutherford, NJ. By the same token, Chef’s Pencil chose to ignore some of Kansas City’s most famous and internationally revered restaurants because they fell on the wrong side of Stateline or in a suburb adjacent to downtown.
This is incredibly problematic here in Kansas City. First of all, as I have clearly spelled out ever since I made a decision to write about KC, Kansas City is a sprawling metroplex of 14 counties that incorporates two major cities - Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Some of the nation’s best barbeque restaurants are within 10 minutes of downtown Kansas City, Missouri but do not fall within city limits. Famed Kansas City restaurants that have been critically acclaimed and won national and international competitions (such as Joe’s, SLAP’s, Woodyard, Smokin’ Guns, RJ’s, and others) were considered unworthy of consideration by Chef’s Pencil. Meanwhile, a few KC locations of Dickey’s Barbecue Pit and Rib Crib were likely included.
In fact, of the ten highest rated Kansas City barbeque joints on Trip Advisor, 40% do not fall within the Kansas City, Missouri city limits! On my own ranking of Kansas City barbeque joints, three of the top four are outside of Kansas City, Missouri.
Can you imagine telling Minneapolis they don’t have a hockey team because the Wild play in St. Paul? Can you imagine talking about Dallas without mentioning Fort Worth or Tampa without mentioning St. Petersburg? Some of Kansas City’s most well-known and beloved barbeque restaurants fall outside the Kansas City, MO city limits but they are still in Kansas City. And can you imagine disregarding Kansas City, Kansas - the home of Joe’s, SLAP’s, Woodyard, and RJ’s among others - and the nearby suburbs when talking about barbeque?!
Well I can only imagine it because the writers at Chef’s Pencil were asinine enough to do just that.
With over 100 places to choose from, Kansas City has the most BBQ joints of any city in the nation and the most barbeque restaurants per capita of any major city in the nation but Chef’s Pencil wants you to believe there are only 26.
Varying Quality Standards
For some reason which was never clearly explained, Chef’s Pencil chose to release their report based entirely off TripAdvisor data. This is peculiar because if anyone was going to release rankings based purely off Tripadvisor data, you would think it would be Tripadvisor. Yelp famously does this every year.
Speaking of Yelp, I remember back in 2018 when Yelp released their list of highest rated BBQ joints. This particular edition made waves because while two Kansas City barbeque restaurants cracked the Top 25 nationally, the highest Yelp reviewed restaurant in KC was one I had never heard of - Scott’s Kitchen.
Now, please do not be mistaken, Scott’s Kitchen is an excellent restaurant and definitely a Top 25 Kansas City BBQ joint (and Chef’s Pencil actually agrees because Scott’s Kitchen has a KCMO address!). The burnt end breakfast burrito and their BBQ beans are the stuff that dreams are made of. My subsequent may read as shade being thrown at Scott’s which could not be further from my intention. This is an excellent restaurant, but the Yelp phenomenon is similarly an excellent case study both in varying quality standards and how a review can be manipulated.
So back to the 2018 Yelp rankings, my mind was blown. Here I was, a veteran of the KC BBQ scene and yet the highest reviewed restaurant was a place I never heard of? Then I looked up the restaurant and saw that, at the time, Scott’s Kitchen was less than a year old. They only had daytime hours and seemed to be located in the middle of nowhere.
Except they are not in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden their location and tenure explained how the rankings had skyrocketed so high so fast. After all, I have never seen a restaurant of any kind, let alone barbeque, burst on to the scene to the type of fanfare that Q39 did in 2014 and they had not accomplished this level of Yelp ranking.
So, what happened?
Well first of all, the location was of the utmost importance. Scott’s Kitchen is located in the middle of a cluster of Kansas City International Airport hotels. In other words, the majority of the customers who were eating here in that first year were largely out-of-towners anxious to try Kansas City barbeque. Instead of rating Scott’s Kitchen relative to other KC barbeque restaurants, they were comparing it to restaurants in their own cities. Given that Scott’s Kitchen is a Top 25 BBQ joint in KC, that means when compared to restaurants in most markets, it’s a 5 star BBQ joint. Then, there is the factor that travelers are more likely to Yelp. For a restaurant like Scott’s Kitchen, the majority of their customer base is tourists whereas other barbeque joints are being judged by locals and compared to other local fare. This meant an influx of reviews for Scott’s Kitchen. This all helped to make them one of the highest Yelp reviewed joints in the nation.
The second factor was the age of the restaurant. It was new. Very rarely does someone review a restaurant on Yelp on their twentieth trip. So for Scott’s, serving up a great product to out-of-towners and locals all trying the restaurant for the first time, led to a large number of reviews. This was a perfect storm that skyrocketed Scott’s Kitchen to stardom. I am still thankful for this anomaly because it helped put a great restaurant on my radar but it shows how the data can be manipulated.
In the same way, this study of Tripadvisor data rewards restaurants that are located in touristy areas while ignoring those that may be more frequented by locals.
The truth is that food reviews are relative. A person from Philadelphia is going to have a higher standard for cheesesteaks than someone from KC. When you’re regularly exposed to the best version of something, you are going to judge everything in that category relative to what you already know.
That leads to the chain phenomenon. It would stand to reason that a person in the World Capital of Barbeque would likely judge a national chain, fast casual barbeque restaurant more harshly than a person in a city where the fast casual barbeque chain is the best option in town. That means that the same Famous Dave’s that may elevate one city’s status could actually drag down the status of a city like Kansas City or Austin. A Kansas Citian may view a place like Panda Express in a much more favorable light than a New Yorker would due to a sheer lack of options.
In 2018, an anomaly led to Scott’s Kitchen being the highest Yelp reviewed BBQ joint in Kansas City less than a year after it opened. While Scott’s Kitchen is a fantastic restaurant that I definitely recommend, it does show how Internet rankings can be skewed and information can easily be misrepresented.
As someone who lived in New England, the 50th best barbeque restaurant in Kansas City would likely be the best BBQ joint in Western Massachusetts. By the same token, I understand that most of the pizzas from New York, Boston, New Haven, Portland, Springfield, Providence, and Hartford would be among the elite pizzas in Kansas City. Every city and region has their specialties they excel at which means that what passes for great Chinese food among Kansas City locals may not be acceptable in New York or San Francisco.
What I consider a 3.5 in Kansas City would likely be a 5 start BBQ joint in Connecticut.
Kansas Citians have regular access to some of the best barbeque in the world which means they judge barbeque by a stricter standard here. In more touristy areas, or cities that don’t have a burgeoning barbeque scene, that may not be the case.
Anthony Bourdain famously included Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que (pictured) as the lone BBQ restaurant in his global list of 13 Places to Eat Before You Die. Located in Kansas City, Kansas, Joe’s has received numerous awards and distinctions from a number of recognized media outlets. However, Chef’s Pencil, due to the manipulation of geography, chose to exclude Joe’s from their study of over 2000 barbeque restaurants. But don’t you worry, Lion’s Choice likely helped St. Louis land in the top 10!
Arbitrary Data Collection, Parameters, & Presentation
As previously mentioned, Chef’s Pencil was oddly specific in the parameters they chose to put in place. For a magazine that is about food, they were incredibly loose with what they were willing to consider barbeque but unreasonably strict about what they considered a region. Does that not strike you as a weird stance to take? A food publication without food standards? I mean, we now know that Chef’s Pencil is without morals or standards when it comes to journalism but that they would carry this over to food as well? As they would say in Wonderland, “Curiouser and curiouser!”
They ridiculously failed to account for the context of these rankings or varying quality standards from one market to the next. They also chose to base their rankings off Tripadvisor rankings with very arbitrary qualifiers for what determined a barbeque restaurant or a barbeque city without giving any reason why.
They also failed to account for how a burgeoning barbeque scene could hinder a city. For instance, let’s imagine a small city that has a dozen restaurants that Chef’s Pencil considers barbeque. Let’s then imagine they all have at least five reviews and the average rating is 4 stars for each of these restaurants. On the other hand, let’s take a city like Kansas City with over 100 restaurants. Let’s imagine they have 25 restaurants that have 4.5 stars, another 25 with 4 stars, another 40 with 3 stars, and another 25 with 2.5 stars are fewer. Do you know which city would rank higher according to the Chef’s Pencil metric?
Now let’s imagine that you have a bar that’s been open a month and has six Tripadvisor reviews, all from family members and friends who rank the restaurant as five stars. Now let’s pretend this bar has a BBQ burger on the menu. This is an average bar burger that is topped with BBQ sauce. Now imagine on the other hand, we have internationally renowned spots like Franklin’s Barbecue in Austin, Texas (over 1600 reviews) or Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que (over 1300 reviews) who both carry a 4.5 star rating. By the Chef’s Pencil standard, the bar with the family member reviews that chooses to put BBQ on its burger over mayo or ketchup is a better barbeque joint.
Don’t you see how fallible these data points were?
If you still don’t believe how dangerous was Chef’s Pencil’s supposed analysis and subsequent presentation of data from Tripadvisor was, then ask Tripadvisor! Tripadvisor immediately released a statement in an attempt to distance themselves from the findings, because of the inappropriate way data from their site was twisted and presented.
In a statement released to FOX4 News in Kansas City, Brian Hoyt, the head of Global Communications and Industry Affairs for Tripadvisor said,
“Tripadvisor has no association with this BBQ study presented by Chef’s Pencil. In fact, we have concerns about the use of and presentation of Tripadvisor data within the study, inclusive of how they ranked cities and states against each other.”
Their social media presence went so far as to describe the maps put out by Chef’s Pencil as “wild.” In other words,
Dear Chef’s Pencil,
Get our name out your mouth.
XOXO,
Tripadvisor
When the source of the data and the backbone of your research is doing everything they can to distance themselves from a gross mischaracterization of their own information, you know you have done something wrong.
But it wasn’t just Tripadvisor or shunned barbeque markets that were disputing this reports. Many commenters and publications in markets that received praise were questioning the validity of these rankings.
When in the history of viral city rankings has a city pushed back and said, “You were too kind.” or “We aren’t very good at this.” or “We do not accept your praise.”? Just this once that I recall. Writers in places like New Orleans and Newark have been quick to dismiss the rankings as well.
And then there’s the whole matter that even Chef’s Pencil knows that their rankings for the best and worst BBQ cities in the USA were unfounded. First of all, they did not even have the common courtesy to explain why they set the parameters they did.
Secondly, these cowards at Chef’s Pencil refused to put their names on this article. No self-respecting writer would want this drivel to ever be attributed to them. As I clicked around Chef’s Pencil, every single review, list, and article had a byline where the piece was attributed to an author. But this one? It was simply attributed to the entire staff of Chef’s Pencil.
Writers in the cities that Chef’s Pencil highlighted, the data source for their “study”, and the writer’s at Chef’s Pencil themselves have jumped through hoops to put as much space as possible between themselves and this article.
In stark contrast to every other article I read on their site, no writer at Chef’s Pencil stepped forward to take credit for this farce of a study. Any writer affiliated with this project knew this was something they did not want in their portfolio. IMAGE COURTESY OF: The Dishonest Cowards at Chef’s Pencil
In other words, Chef’s Pencil knew that they were pushing out clickbait garbage. They wanted to throw their hat in the ring of the great barbeque city debate. Now sure, they could have pushed out a subjective list filled with hot takes that got a conversation going but they had the audacity to feign some kind of intellectual high road by taking readers on an unfounded sabermetric journey that manipulated an arbitrary data set in order to create controversy.
Part of the reason that they could not create such a subjective list is that it’s unlikely that any of the cowards from Chef’s Pencil who participated in this sideshow likely never visited any of the cities they honored or the celebrated barbeque cities they shunned. They could not publish a subjective list because there was nobody to defend the rankings and there was nobody with enough backbone to put their name on the rankings.
These writers have chosen to cower in the shadows instead of putting their names on this embarrassment of a blogpost have probably never eaten actual Kansas City, Texas, or Carolina barbeque. After all, the Chef’s Pencil is based in Sydney, Australia.
In the movie Trouble With The Curve, the entire plot is about the struggle between a scout for the Atlanta Braves who actually watches and analyzes players and another who considers sitting at his computer and reading the player’s stat lines good enough. Ultimately, the player that the latter scout pushes on the organization turns out to be a total bust and the sabermetric scout gets fired because he pinned his entire reputation on a baseball prospect he had never watched play.
Similarly, Chef’s Pencil is nothing but a bunch of hacks and keyboard warriors who chose to actually write about food that they’ve never tasted. They read a bunch of reviews on Tripadvisor and felt like that was good enough.
Do you understand how far away Sydney is?!
I could go out and purchase a slab of ribs or a pound of beef burnt ends (hey Chef’s Pencil, perhaps one day when you learn what BBQ is you will understand what these words like “slab”, “ribs”, and “beef burnt ends” mean) from every single BBQ joint in Kansas City (and yes Chef’s Pencil, there are over 100) and that total cost of all those purchases would be less than the cost of roundtrip airfare from Kansas City to Sydney.
With them sitting half a world away browsing the Internet for other people’s experiences, what gives these hacks the right to judge the best barbeque cities in America? In the age of hot takes, Chef’s Pencil could have pushed out a subjective list but they didn’t have the experience or knowledge to do so. Instead, they maliciously manipulated arbitrary data points and dangerously tried to present them as facts.
They saw a spurious relationship and intentionally presented it as a cause-and-effect one. Chef’s Pencil saw loose correlation and recklessly chose to present it as undisputable causation and fact.
I cannot tell you why they did this. While it’s clear that this publication lacks even a basic understanding of American geography, mathematics, data collection, and American barbeque, I think it’s more than that. What the cowards at Chef’s Pencil really lack is a sense of integrity.
And it’s that degree of immorality and absence of a conscience that allowed Chef’s Pencil to act in this manner. I am not certain of the motivation. Perhaps they got bored. Maybe after 12 years of writing, the Chef’s Pencil doesn’t stand as straight as it once did. Perhaps their short articles and web posts that lack girth have them feeling inadequate. Perhaps they saw how many readers other food blogs have and felt ashamed that the size of their following shriveled in comparison. It may have been a good old fashioned case of audience envy.
What’s incredibly unfortunate is that this worked out for Chef’s Pencil. In the end, they got what they wanted. Their article went viral and they generated a massive amount of clicks. They got their 15 minutes of fame, or I guess infamy. Aside from an independent blogger with a couple hundred readers attempting to hold them accountable, there will be no repercussions for this. There was no downside for Chef’s Pencil. They get what they wanted and these hacks have been rewarded.
As for me, I am already looking forward to future Chef’s Pencil “research studies”. I have heard next month they will name Australia the best nation in the world in an objective, empirical data study. Of course, this will be based on the super obvious data points of number of marsupial species and overall marsupial populations. These are the hard-hitting studies we can expect from Chef’s Pencil.
By the end of the year, they will likely rank Monowi, Nebraska (the only incorporated town in the United States with a census population of 1 person - a seemingly charming elderly woman named Elsie Eiler who is, by process of elimination, the best person at everything in Monowi as the town’s sole resident) as the best city in America. Lowest death rate during the COVID-19 pandemic? Check! Average lifespan of 85 years? Check! Unanimously elected mayor? Check! This is the kind of data that will help put some lead back in the Chef’s Pencil. It’s been a little droopy as of late.
Of course, these studies may be put on hold. The writers at Chef’s Pencil are too busy reeling from the news that Joe Theismann and The Hogs were the basis for American government for sixty years.
When I really think about it, I should probably be thankful. Kansas City barbeque has received the praise of countless food critics and publications of actual repute over the past fifty years. Meanwhile, Tripadvisor and some of the cities that Chef’s Pencil lavished praise upon are doing everything they can to distance themselves from this article. Even the cowards at Chef’s Pencil are actively distancing themselves from their own article. They have still failed to elaborate upon their intent, share the cities and restaurants analyzed, and no one is stepping forward to take credit for this garbage.
So you know what, “thank you Chef’s Pencil”. Thank you for keeping Kansas City’s name out of your dishonest, uninformed, cowardly mouths. Tripadvisor wishes they could be so fortunate.
For the record, in case you missed it at the top, this was written in haste by disKCovery contributor and founder Devan Dignan. Unlike the dishonest cowards at Chef’s Pencil, I am not afraid to put my name on my words.
