This probably isn't the best way of introducing myself to the forum, but I'm the editor who James Chatto mentions in his piece about dining incognito. I'm writing because it's disturbing how little some of the posters to this forum appear to know about how restaurants are reviewed. Maybe it isn't as obvious as we expect it is. And without question, there are plenty of "restaurant reviews" published elsewhere that don't take the reviewer's responsibility to readers seriously. But here's how it works at Toronto Life. First, when we review restaurants, we always pay the whole tab, plus tax, plus tip. There is absolutely no "I'm reviewing your restaurant tonight so the tab's on you." Any reviewer who did that wouldn't be a TL reviewer for long. The magazine spends thousands of dollars each month on restaurant bills—it's one of the single biggest line items in Toronto Life's editorial budget. That's the cost of what we do and there's no way around it. Restaurants aren't informed in advance when they'll be reviewed or who's reviewing them. We don't announce, "Oh, we're coming for dinner tonight, so please try extra hard." The goal of a good reviewer is to have as typical an experience at a restaurant as possible. And TL's reviewers know that and strive for it. Reviewers at the magazine most often make reservations under an assumed name, or, better, have their dining companions make the reservations. Ninety percent of the time, a restaurant doesn't know that we've been there to do a review until our fact checker calls. Let me also dispell some readers' impression (though not one that I've read here recently), that reviews are connected to advertising. They are not connected in any way. Period. I assign the reviews. I edit the reviews. I choose when to run the reviews. Much though I'm sure our advertising department would love it if we'd review all the restaurants that advertise with us, and that we'd review them with kid gloves (and I don't blame them for this—it's their job) we don't. Not even close. On dining incognito: great idea. And also, frankly, impossible to do consistently—and this is important: for a living—in this city for any period of time. Toronto is a small town. It has a relatively tiny restaurant industry. The same waiters, cooks, managers, wine stewards and hosts move through a handful of jobs at top-end places. When you dine out a lot, these people begin to recognize who you are, even when you're not a critic. The alternative for a publication like ours, one that reviews a few dozen places each month, is to use reviewers kind of in the same way that narcotics squads use undercover agents: let them work until their cover's blown. After that they get a gold watch and a desk job. For obvious reasons, this just isn't feasable. Mr. Chatto's article (aside from being smart, beautifully written, hilarious and vastly entertaining) does a great job, I think, of addressing just how, given these realities, a professional restaurant critic in Toronto does the job. I urge you all to read it. Finally, for anybody who wants to learn about how restaurant reviews are done elsewhere, I recommend the book "Dining Out:Secrets from America's Leading Critics, Chefs, and Restaurateurs," by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page.