Satire: The Daily Life of a Food Reviewer

Reporter Carson gives insight to the difficult task of reviewing Pullman cuisine

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STELA SZABOOVA

It is not all rainbows and good eats at the Evergreen …

CARSON HOLLAND, Evergreen columnist

If you are reading this, I do not have much time before my editors come back to check on me.

My name is Carson Holland and I have been trapped in Murrow College this entire year in the Daily Evergreen Newsroom, you might have read a few. The editors have held me, probably against my will, and made me write columns on the various food stops around the Palouse area, you might have read a few. 

Judging by how no knight in shining armor has come to my rescue, I feel it is safe to say that my attempts at putting this message in morse code in each of my articles have not worked. If you played each of the articles through a voice recorder backward then it would have been more clear. 

I do not have much time, and for all intents and purposes, this article is just for your eyes only. Not the other reader, just you. 

For those interested in joining the Evergreen (or those who have contacts with higher authorities) I am going to detail my time as the third-best food review columnist at the Daily Evergreen and the horrific experiences I went through. Let this serve as a warning or an invitation. 

I start the day at 3:00 A.M. waking up to my alarm and whatever WSU garbage truck is putting out 10000000 decibels grabbing one of the dumpers. A reporter’s work is never done and my editor’s expectations are enormous so I walk through the shivery snow and slippery ice to get some breakfast.

After writing a food review that seems like either a desperate plea for help or the next BuzzFeed article, I make the trek back to campus and get ready to write the next recipe column. My editors never actually let me eat the food, it is not professional according to them, though it falls on deaf ears when they chow down on it in front of me. 

I have written the word tasty and delicious more times than a functioning human should in their entire lifetime, let alone in just one semester. You can only describe the juicy meat so many times without it sounding a little weird but still, I am told to push on in the glorious name of content. 

After a read-through of my latest article, it is lunchtime, which means I must once more brave the weather to get you, glorious readers, the food reviews you crave. 

The wind bites against my skin, not in the poetic Instagram caption way, but in the I-would-rather-be-on-the-surface-of-the-sun-than-right-here way. 

Almost to my destination, I fall on the hard ice and penguin-slide the rest of the way. Still, I did not despair, for this food was even more tasty and delicious …oh no, not again … than the last restaurant. I was able to open up about the future of my columns earlier this week. 

“It really puts things into perspective,” Holland said. “There really are only so many restaurants around the Palouse that you can go to. I must be getting close to the end by now.”

The editors of the Daily Evergreen have stayed silent on the future of Cooking with Carson and Bite of the Palouse.

“Wait, I just realized that I am running out of restaurants to review! What happens when I run out of restaurants?” Holland said. “Will I just cease to exist when I take the last bite or will my editors make me try the whole cycle again?”

After my press conference, I am once more instructed by my cruel benevolent overlords to once more venture out into the Palouse Winter Wastes to get another tasty morsel for my consumption and the readers. 

A few of my readers have heard my story and commented that my life was great. I got to try the wonderful cuisine of the Palouse and get paid for it. 

While that may be true, they simply do not understand the unnecessary risks that I put myself in for this breaking news. 

Just the other day, I had to fight off a pack of wolves as I attempted to get in line for Dom’s Donuts, and during the Apple Cup I fought off some husky fans trying to take my chicken sandwich from the Land. 

That is not all – my computer is now chalked-full of restaurant reviews that I do not even remember going to. Everything from the Tuptim Thai restaurant in Topeka, Kansas to the Pig ‘N Pancake in Seaside, Oregon. Have my editors turned me into a Jekyll and Hyde-like food review monster?

Despite all of these hardships and horrors that I have endured, I will be continuing to serve up to readers the truth about dining spots on the Palouse along with some of the strangest array of recipes this side of the Washington-Idaho border. I will miss all those Evergreeners who are leaving for the semester, but as I hear my editors calling me for another readout on my next restaurant review, I wished they would have taken me with them.