It’s been said that everyone’s a critic, but never before has that adage applied so perfectly to the restaurant industry.
With thousands of Internet bloggers writing about restaurants, hundreds of Web bulletin boards devoted to all things edible, and dozens upon dozens of newspaper and magazine restaurant critics still licking their chops for the next new opening, the restaurant review has survived—and even flourished—in the electronic age.
That’s a far cry from a New York Times article on Jan. 1, 1859, by a reporter who surveyed that city’s restaurants and noted that “whereas all people know how to eat, it is only the French who know how to dine.”
“I don’t see restaurant reviews ever going away,” says Tim Zagat, who with his wife, Nina, founded the Zagat Survey, which surveys diners in 88 cities and 100 countries and aggregates the data for its regional guides on hotels, resorts and spas. “Good reviewers who are effectively painting a really good portrait of a restaurant are here to stay.”
But those singular voices have been joined by a large number of Internet soapboxes from blogs such as New York’s TheWanderingEater to bulletin boards like Craigslist’s food forums, eGullet,Mouthfulsfood,and Chowhound.com as well as many for-profit sites such as Gayot, CitySearch and Yelp.
Bill Addison, restaurant and dining critic for The Dallas Morning News, says: “I don’t see newspaper restaurant criticism going anywhere anytime soon. The strongest vantage point for restaurant criticism is that it falls squarely within the current focal point of most American newspapers: ‘local, local, local.’… And readers are invested in restaurant information: It’s one of the subjects that best fosters conversation between readers and reporters.”
Tim Zagat says newspapers and magazines need good reviewers to keep expanding their audience.
“If the reviewer is good, chances are there will be readers,” he says.
However, a place exists for other forms of criticism such as the Zagat Survey, which he and his wife started in 1979 as a hobby. In the fall of 1982, they sold their first Zagat Survey book; in 1999, they set up Zagat.com to take advantage of the Internet; and this past August, they created Zagat.mobi for mobile-device users.
“We essentially democratized the process long before the Internet got around to doing what it’s doing today,” Zagat says. “We empowered thousands of avid consumers to share their dining experiences. The idea that there is only one person who has a set of taste buds is nonsense. What you are looking for in a good reviewer is somebody that has basic professional knowledge and is a good writer and has reasonably good taste buds.”
The Zagat Survey also averages various opinions, which in restaurants tend to be divergent.
“There are a lot of people my age who thought of sushi as being a fraternity prank,” he says, adding that the simple ratings system provides for ease of use. “They never really got over it. A lot of early reviewers never appreciated Japanese food very much.”
“If you have a 20-year-old’s hot spot, my kids will say ‘lively, exciting, fun and a great place to pick up a girl at the bar over a burger and a beer’; I will say, ‘noisy, crowded, oh-my-god,’” Zagat says. “You have to recognize there is more than one way to see something that is inherently a subjective experience.”
While the number of newspapers has diminished over the past two decades, their reviews are expanding into other media. Addison of The Dallas Morning News, says: “Reader feedback has been the most satisfying aspect of starting our Eats blog last May. When we’ve thrown out questions like ‘Which restaurant offers the best Tex-Mex in Dallas?’ or ‘Where’s your favorite place for fried chicken?’ we’ve been deluged with comments.
“Our blog also offers an outlet for me to write more casually and conversationally,” Addison says. “Sometimes I have a dining experience that doesn’t warrant a full, formal review, so the blog is an ideal way for me to express my thoughts more spontaneously.”
Tina Wong, who writes the New York City blog TheWanderingEater, started her blog about two years ago “after transferring colleges from the suburbs of Queens to the bustling city of Manhattan.”
“This particular move gave me an opportunity to write about food and restaurants since I eat out more often in Manhattan,” she says.
She began posting detailed descriptions of food she sampled and later added photographs.
“I write about food mainly for the sake of loving food and talk about my experiences when I eat out either by myself or with a friend or two,” she says. “I see my role in food reviewing as a someone who loves food for it’s deliciousness, curiosity of trying new places and exciting flavors. The beauty of food and food presentation comes second.
“The reviewing to me is basically showing the world how a certain restaurant can range from mediocre to sublime. For example an expensive restaurant that I went to the past year for lunch, wasn’t worth my time or money. My readers knew how I felt [about] each course and the overall experience.”
The review, in its many forms, shows signs of having a long and fruitful life, both as amateur reporting and artful writing by professionals.
Zagat, who frankly admits most of his subscribers and readers are looking for a synthesis of viewpoints and “don’t have time to read 500 to a 1,000 words about a restaurant,” says all the different forms of reviewing are a pleasure.
“The Internet is free form,” he says. “If you want to read what a lot of people have to say and try to figure it out, it may be fun. And a good writer who is doing a full-blown review of a restaurant is always a pleasure.”