Restaurant Reviewers

[Fat Guy]

There are several ways to look at it.

One way is to say, why should newspapers be spending all this money on meals for their restaurant reviewers? If restaurants want to be reviewed, let them pay for the meals. Theater and film critics don't pay for their tickets. Sports reporters get the best seats in the entire stadium at every game -- for free. There is no appearance of impropriety because it is uniform; it's not like the Mets give free tickets but the Yankees make newspapers pay for their seats. If every restaurant review is a hosted meal for an announced critic there is no money spent other than the critic's salary, and there is no preference shown to one over the other because all are providing the same service.

Another way is to say that newspapers currently waste most of the money they spend on restaurant review meals. At every one of these meals there are guests who eat for free. One of the best deals in the world is to be a friend of a restaurant reviewer, so you get to go out to eat at all the top restaurants but you don't have to do anything in exchange for it except show up on time, perhaps accept some direction in your ordering, and give the critic a taste of your food. Why not let those people earn their keep? Surely there are wine experts out there who would give a paragraph in exchange for those free meals. And as for gathering data from the dining public via the Internet, it's virtually cost free if you already have a Web presence -- it's just a question of implementation.

Or you could say, no, a reviewer must always pay and must always be anonymous and the guests are non-participants and anybody who does it any other way is unethical. Leaving aside the pragmatic answer to the high-horse position (the major critics are recognized most of the time anyway), I see no ethics problem with any particular system so long as the readership is made aware of the system that is being used. Decades of conditioning to one way of doing things would of course make it hard for readers, at first, to accept non-anonymous restaurant reviewing. It's something that would have to be advocated for persuasively over a period of time, both with good arguments and with good reviews.

[lizziee]

"More importantly, though, what I think most customers have yet to learn is that they have the power to be more involved in the creation process than they currently assume." (Fat Guy)

Fat Guy is completely correct that a customer is and should be an active participant in the dining experience. An enthusiastic, knowledgeable customer is able to enhance the restaurant experience in terms of the cuisine as well as the service. I am often asked why we get special tasting menus, why does the sommelier spend so much time at out table, why do the wait staff go out of their way for us and it is really very simple. We are eager diners who approach a restaurant wanting to be pleased and more than willing to trust the chef and the staff.

"Ultimately, preferential treatment can best be judged by the service."(Lesley C)

VIP service is open to everyone, not just repeat customers, big spenders or known critics. If anything, I wonder if the critic, who is trying to be low key and anonymous, will get as good service as the "average, enthusiastic" diner.

Also, I wonder just how many critics are as anonymous as they think they are. A well-known critic, who thinks he is completely anonymous, was dining at a recently opened restaurant. He was spotted by the valet parking guy who in turn told the owners.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Well restaurant reviewing isn't completely analagous to other types of criticism. A seat to a ballgame is $30, the movies $10, the theater $100, a book $25 and the cost to see a building is the price of a subway token. Three meals at Ducasse is $1000, possibly more depending on wines. Plus the amount of time you have to allocate to eating somewhere three times is significantly more time than anything else that gets reviewed. And as to wine, well Parker I believe said he can taste 150 wines in a day. Reveiwing 150 restaurants takes a year and a half and that is if you eat at one a day every day.

The real answer to this is there just aren't 52 restaurants a year that a Grimes type needs to review. To me it would be better if they skipped some of the lesser places they review and like FG suggested, offer multiple columns. For example, when soft shell crab or mushroom season kicks in, I would prefer if the Times ran a column with five or six places that offered them and described them at each place. I would find that much more useful than a review of a new one star Greek fish house on 53rd street.

[marcus]

I wonder whether Steve Plotnicki is being intentionally ingenuous or whether this may be a deadpan joke. Obviously the role of a major newspaper restaurant reviewer is to cover more than the handful of best restaurants. The reviewer's job is to cover the restaurant scene. Certainly there are more than 52, probably there are a couple of hundred restaurants in Manhatan worthy of a major review. Readers are not always looking for worldclass, they may care about location, price, ethnicity, style or someplace new that they haven't tried before. We need to have some humility. The world at large doesn't exist just to satisfy our personal desires and we need to keep that in mind in addressing questions of public import.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I think Marcus needs to reread what I wrote. Because what I said was that

there aren't 52 restaurants a year that merit a complete review. And in weeks where a singular restaurant isn't reviewed they should review multiple restaurants around the same theme. That way even more restaurants would be reviewed than they review now. This was actually Fat Guy's idea in response to my point that MarkJospeh steakhouse didn't really need an entire review. And if you read back a page or so, you will see that I said that it would better on certain weeks if Grimes reviewed good ethnic restaurants in the boroughs, rather than another Tuscan restaurant that gets a single star and nobody really cares about.

[Lesley C]

Marcus made a good point about a reviewer covering the scene. It's a beat. That's why the best reviewers are the ones who have been at it for ages. At least they know and understand what's happening around them before they start handing out the stars. And eventually when you award stars, you're often rating the restaurants in relation to each other.

And Steve P., it's not really fair to mix up restaurants on the same page. These people are competitors. Should they really be compared in print side by side? Also, how do you know nobody really cares about that Tuscan place? Just because it isn't on the gourmet radar doesn't mean it should be dismissed. Maybe the people in the neighborhood are curious.

And as to Steven's idea about inviting another reporter along not to waste that free dining companion spot...FORGET IT! I can't even imagine having to endure years of long, drawn out dinners with the same person -- especially a wine writer!

[Fat Guy]

... especially a wine writer! 

Good point. What was I thinking?

[Mebutter]

As a reviewer I think bylines promote accountability and give the readers/restaurateurs someone to vent at. You may not know what I look like but you can call up and yell at me all you want. What's more, I'll direct you to my editor if you're still not happy.

I know we've gone round and round on anonymity before but I still say its valuable - especially if you are interested in giving the readers a realistic bite of the restaurant under review. Otherwise, you're telling the readers what you - Mr. or Ms. Star Reviewer - experienced. Not for me.

Yes there are slip-ups and you're recognized or they figure it out. Whatever. But that doesn't outweigh the good that comes from being anonymous.

SPJ guidelines are good for the journalist in general - they don't address the specific needs of the restaurant critic. I think the AFJ guidelines for critics do a much better job at that. (Full disclosure: I helped write them.)

Bill Daley

[mamster]

Here in Seattle, the dailies have an inflexible review format of one lead and one cheap eats review per week. The weekly papers, however, deviate from this formula with impunity, offering a roundup of Ethiopian or barbecue places, or an article about bagels instead of a review. I think the readers are generally better served by the more flexible approach--sometimes a restaurant is worth mentioning, but not for 500 words or more.