Who would want to be a restaurant reviewer? Why it is a horrible gig
Some people think that being a restaurant reviewer for a well recognized publication must be a great job. You get to eat out at someone else’s expense and then write about it. How hard can that be?
Actually, it’s very hard, and I wouldn’t like to do it. I have immense respect for anyone who, every week, can write entertaining, fair, incisive columns about their dining experiences without being boring or repetitive.
In one episode of that legendary British comedy of errors Fawlty Towers, a hotel inspector turns up. Of course, the inept owner Basil Fawlty – aware that there is a team of inspectors in town – is on the alert. But in classic Basil fashion, he mistakes another guest for the hotel inspector, and fawns over them, while treating the actual inspector terribly. In the world of restaurant reviewing, this is never going to happen, because restaurant owners will instantly spot any of the significant critics. One exception here was Marina O’Loughlin who kept her identity secret: no one knew what she looked like, she never booked under her own name and no photographs of her are on the internet: quite a feat.
Immediately, the fact that reviewers aren’t incognito is a huge confounder for their reviews, although I suppose that if a restaurant tries extra hard to look after them and then is still bad, it is truly bad. And if you see photography in the review, this will likely be staged after the event with the publication sending in a photographer to picture the setting and the various dishes mentioned in the review. Again, a confounder: these may not look like the dishes everyone is served.
So why is writing a restaurant column so hard? I think for me one of the challenges is that you are dealing with someone’s business, and the performance of the staff working there, based on a small sample size – usually, just one visit. I find this quite scary: if, in a review, I say something that’s critical and I’ve got it wrong, or something bad had happened in the kitchen on the day of my visit, then I may have unfairly damaged someone’s business, or upset the professionals involved.
A false positive (saying that something is better than it is) is much less problematic than a false negative (saying that something is worse than it is). But it’s always the negative reviews that people want to read, and which make the best reading. We love it when critics describe an awful experience in a restaurant. And sometimes the critics really let loose, exaggerating the horror of a bad meal for comic effect. We laugh along, but somewhere someone is going to be suffering as a result, and sometimes that suffering is undeserved.
One of the factors that makes a particular restaurant great is consistency. If you have a bad experience, the restaurant is either bad, or it is inconsistent, and neither are desirable. But if you have a good experience, then you can’t, on one visit, comment on the consistency of the kitchen and the dining experience. Of course, there’s another factor here: the reviewer is a person and people aren’t always consistent, eating out is a very personal experience, and if you are to review well you have to describe accurately what the restaurant is like without your own preferences getting in the way too much.
The biggest challenge in writing a restaurant review is being interesting. Most reviews are boring, and utterly predictable. They will start with a bit of history about the restaurant, noting who is working there and their career paths. Chef X trained under [famous chef Y] and then worked in [famous restaurant Z] before starting this venture, which is part of the XXXXX group. Whether this is insider knowledge or just the result of a google search, it’s usually boring to read. Then there’s some commentary about the décor of the restaurant, and the sort of clientele eating there, and the performance of front of house. And then commentary on the food, which is usually horrible to read, and of course they only sampled a small part of the menu. Wine/drinks is an important part of the restaurants offering, but for some critics this is a complete blind spot. It surprises me because I’d have thought a good drinks knowledge would be an essential skill for a restaurant reviewer. Finally, there will be some comments on the price of the meal, and maybe some sort of numerical or star rating of the whole experience.
Some restaurant reviewers are excellent, though. They are fair, free from bias, free from petty jealousies and feuds with individuals in the hospitality scene, knowledgeable about food and drink, with good aesthetic sensibilities (‘taste’). They write well, and their columns are a joy to read. I admire them: this is a very hard job to do well and fairly.
