TOW #1 - A Blurry Line Between Bar and Restaurant

For this first TOW, I decided I wanted to read something the truly interests me.  For me, the two most interesting things in life are sports and food.  So I began the hunt to find a great article about either sports or food.  I ended up deciding on an article called A Blurry Line Between Bar and Restaurant by Pete Wells, which was written for the New York Times.  Wells has been the restaurant critic for the New York Times since 2011, and has received five James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards for his work.  This article was about the recent trend in the food industry of bars serving high quality restaurant food yet retaining the bar atmosphere.  Wells wrote this piece as part informative reporting and part argument.  His first and foremost goal was to inform the general public (specifically those in middle to high income households who can afford going out to eat on a regular basis) about this interesting trend.  He also argues for the validity of this bar-restaurant hybrid.  Wells believes that this new trend combines the great food of a restaurant with the great atmosphere of a bar.  He plugs for this type of bar, mentioning many specific bars and describing their food in great detail.  This detailed description is one of the many rhetoric devices that Wells uses.  For instance, he writes, “There may be tiny, tender and nearly gamy chops; or pork loin wrapped in a purplish and very flavorful pancetta made on site; or an odd-looking but tender cut of dry-aged steak.  A cook tosses the meat on a plancha as the air fills with the aroma of sizzling fat” (Wells 2).  This description helps his purpose because he makes this bar food sound so utterly delectable that the reader finds him/herself dying to attend one of these bars.  After reading this article, I learned much about these kinds of bars, and also wanted to try one.  Wells rhetoric and success in describing the bar food allowed his article to accomplish the purpose he desired.