A letter came in to our paper that complained bitterly about a restaurant review that one of our food critics wrote. It was long and impassioned, the writer obviously very hurt and insulted about what the critic said about his food. While there were a few small holes in the review – after all, how much can you say in the little column space that a newspaper will give you these days – it was, for the most part, fair. But the style of writing was, like the critic – who happens to be a fun and funny new friend that I treasure – wry, tongue-in-cheek and very bright and clever. And it did say some nice things, albeit in a somewhat backhanded and oblique manner. Which was all perhaps a little too much for the restaurant owner to digest.
Writing food reviews is never easy. Ideally, the critic should visit the eatery at least three times, at different periods of rush, to find out what the service, décor, food and patrons are truly like, in moments of stress or moments of comfort. Then there is the menu itself, which could go into reams of typeface, fancy or readable, that must be decoded so that you can see the relationship, often obscure, between the listing and what actually appears on the plate in front of you. And then there are the externals that you need to look at – whether the place is in a salubrious neighbourhood, whether it is accessible, whether there is parking, whether environs are clean, whether the customers are…Of course, the most diligent food critics visit the kitchens, check out the produce and may even take a peek under the fingernails of the prep staff, but that could be paranoia and the effects of knowing too much that no guest would really want to know.
In a perfect world, no restaurant owner or staff will know who the critic is. While this does not mean wigs, hats and fake moustaches, it does mean a certain discretion in behaviour, not taking frantic notes during each course or nibbling small mouthfuls of each dish and leaving the rest for the leftover bin. All of which makes the multiple visits mandatory, so that the waitstaff does not get suspicious and the writer has a fair chance of being unbiased and being able to sample more from the menu than would be feasible in a single visit. But where, oh where in the modern journalistic world, is something like that possible? Who has the time, the leisure or, indeed, the budget to do so? Of course, going with other people makes the tasting more extensive, but it could be a good day or even a really bad one, making the review as good or bad from both points of view: the restaurant’s and the critic’s.
Over the past few weeks I have been watching a lot of food shows on television, from the nightmarishly tacky Hell’s Kitchen to the more aesthetic Made to Order to the extraordinarily interesting Chic Eats, and learned that while running a restaurant is no simple task, there is a way to make it fun for everyone concerned, from chef to client. Almost every upmarket eatery worth its spices has a tasting menu, while the more plebeian ones do not care too much for critics or what they have to say. Many of these reviews are genuinely unbiased, thoughtful and informed, written by invitation when the place opens and – which will admittedly come as a bit of a surprise for restaurant owners in this city, considering the way they believe that they are the gods who have produced ambrosia that is universally desired and relished – the feedback is taken seriously and changes made to the food on offer before the public gets a taste of it. Whatever comments are made, are considered, good, bad and unwanted, and all that can be done to be as universally appealing, is.
But that is something our letter writer perhaps does not understand, his cited vast experience in the business notwithstanding.
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