Backgrounder: Robert Sietsema
Have you ever eaten Uzbek lamb fat on a stick? Or ram testicles? How about grasshoppers served atop tacos?
Robert Sietsema, intrepid Village Voice food critic, member of the Organ Meat Society and contributor to Gourmet magazine, has tried all of these ethnic delicacies and more. “You have to be ready in this business to eat anything,” Sietsema said in a Feb. 12, 2004, Astoria Times article by Tien-Shun Lee.
In the same article, Sietsema said he had tried lamb tongue, pigs’ feet and even such illegal fare such as dog penis, which he sampled at a Korean restaurant in Murray Hill. It is this adventurous attitude towards food, along with his enthusiastic desire to share inexpensive food finds with readers, that informs much of Sietsema’s writing.
Sietsema moved to Manhattan from the Midwest in the late 1970s to follow the woman who would eventually become his wife, he said in an Oct. 6, 1993, New York Times article by Michael T. Kaufman. While he played bass in the now broken-up noise rock band Mofungo and worked as a secretary in a real estate office, he started the food newsletter called Down the Hatch.
The newsletter was about his discovery of great, affordable ethnic food in New York, which was a complete change from the boring meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes cuisine he was raised on. “I learned that there are people who don’t just use pinches of salt or pepper on their food but who actually toss in spices by the handful. Two days after I got here, I underwent a total conversion from bland,” he said in the Times article. After three years of writing, editing and publishing Down the Hatch, Sietsema was hired as the Voice’s food critic.
In addition to writing for the Voice and Gourmet, Sietsema is the author of a number of food-related guide books, including Good and Cheap Ethnic Eats in New York City, Secret New York: The Unique Guidebook to New York’s Hidden Sites, Sounds and Tastes and The Food Lover’s Guide to the Best Ethnic Eating in New York City. Sietsema’s goal is to inform and help readers in their food choices, according to the Astoria Times article. “My kind of review is on the side of the consumer,” he said. “My whole purpose is to let readers know what they should eat. My job is to confront the food.”