The Seven Flaws of Professional Restaurant Reviewing

A reflection on the profession from a lifelong critic

I wrote this piece in 2017 for Eater. I was convinced it was information that readers of restaurant reviews ought to know. But it was never published. I have altered the piece slightly to reflect today’s restaurant reviewing environment, but otherwise this is just as it was written. Little did I know that I would become one of the restaurant reviewing casualties as I was laid off this past December.

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Restaurant reviewing has taken some hits in the last few years, as publications have slashed budgets or eliminated reviews entirely. In the meantime, Yelp along with social media have been flooded with amateur appraisals. Sometimes these reviews are based on free meals and faulty logic, and, in the case of social media, often depend on the appearance of food rather than its taste. In spite of this daunting competition, professional reviewers have proved they can continue to exist and live to fight another day.

Though restaurant reviewing itself is much older, the current system was created by Craig Claiborne, food editor and restaurant critic at the New York Times. The principles he laid down in the 1960s included multiple visits to a restaurant; eating as widely as possible on a menu, trying some dishes twice; waiting several months before writing a review; awarding stars; not soliciting or accepting free food; and anonymity, to the extent it was possible. Most critics today at least pay lip service to these principles, though many now revel in their lack of anonymity, and other people calling themselves critics solicit free food.

Transgressions aside, was Claiborne’s system perfect? Not by a long shot. Though the system remains sound, it has certain flaws and biases which are not widely recognized, which the consumer should keep in mind while reading a professional piece of restaurant criticism.

1. Omniscience
Reviewers often adopt a tone of omniscience, writing as if they’re familiar with everything on the menu. It’s a convenient fiction. In fact, a menu is often so long and changeable, a critic is lucky to have eaten a third of it. This means that maybe the best thing on the menu has gone untasted, or — even scarier — the best thing could be something different every evening. Which brings us to our second point.

2. Consistency
Just as two steaks are never the same in flavor and tenderness, no two examples of a given entree, even served the same time at adjacent tables, are likely to be equally as good. Reproducibility of food is largely illusory. Yet critics write as if any given dish will be identical whenever it’s ordered.