When actress Julia Roberts portrayed fictional restaurant critic Julianne Potter in the 1997 film, “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” every breath and bite she took led the restaurant staff to tremble.
The unmitigated power and unbridled influence of one set of taste buds—the ability of those human sensors to strike terror into the hearts of restaurateurs—remains pretty much the stuff of cinematic fiction. The days of the all-powerful restaurant critic, who can make or break an operation with a single review, largely are over.
To be sure, the restaurant critic’s job is changing.
Today’s critics face a buffet of options to get their messages across, and with that smorgasbord come a number of variations in the way they approach their roles and present information.
Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic for The New York Times since 2004, says, “I think restaurant criticism probably to some extent will become less formal, in the same way restaurants have.”
Bruni, who follows in the footsteps of such influential critics as Craig Claiborne, Mimi Sheraton and Ruth Reichl at the Times, says the wide variety of sources of restaurant information is changing how critics do their jobs.
“With so many Web sources for information—and opinions—about restaurants, I think it’s incumbent upon restaurant critics to offer more than information, more than a barrage of this-was-too-cold, this-was-too-hot opinions,” Bruni says.
“We need at least to try to provide an engaging reading experience, some wider wisdom on the state and direction of the restaurant industry, some real perspective,” he adds. “We need to harness the experience and authority of eating out more—or widely—than even the hungriest, most committed blogger.”
Those bloggers are growing, both in numbers and girth. New York City cab driver Dave Freedenberg created
Such informal sites are joined almost monthly by for-profit Internet nooks, such as
Nina Zagat, who founded the democratic, reader-input Zagat Survey with her husband, Tim, says: “There are lots of different types of restaurant criticism and opinions and restaurant information that’s available to the consumers. I think they are all useful to the consumers.”
A lot depends on where and how hurried that consumer is, she adds.
“There are times when people want to read what is essentially an essay on the critic’s experience at a certain restaurant,” Zagat says. “That’s very valuable particularly to people who follow a certain critic and know what their tastes are and are interested in hearing about an experience.”
The Zagat way, however, is a democratic approach that has caught on.
“What we’ve been doing for 27 years is content that’s based on the consumer,” Zagat says. “People today call it ‘user-generated content,’ but it’s basically the information that we’ve been putting together and soliciting from consumers from the first day that the Zagat Survey got started. We do it in a unique way.”
The new media are even changing the way nontraditional restaurant reviewers such as Zagat do business. The online and mobile-assistant offerings from Zagat are the fastest growing parts of the company’s business, Zagat says.
Zagat to Go is the survey company’s product that can be downloaded onto a Blackberry, a Palm device, any PDA or cell phones. “[People] can download the product,” Zagat says. “It gives you the mobility that people love about our guides when they stick them in their pockets. Don’t underestimate the number of people who still prefer to carry around the guides.”
The new-media options also provide opportunities for larger amounts of information for the consumer.
“The new forms of media enrich the restaurant-reviewing experience,” Zagat says. “On
Some websites offer a little bit of both worlds, blending both prose criticism and listings. Those can be found at such Internet sites as
The jury is still out on whether the traditional newspaper critic will keep his or her job as it existed in the past. However, some critics see their influence expanding.
Michael Bauer, the San Francisco Chronicle’s executive restaurant and wine editor, has been a restaurant critic for more than 25 years and the chief critic at that paper since 1994.
“We’re in the middle of things,” Bauer says. “In a way, the influence of a critic like myself has lessened because there are certainly a lot more outlets to get the information. There are also the alternative publications and restaurants’ own websites where they can tout themselves.”
But, though those outlets are burgeoning, Bauer says he’s getting more reaction from readers than ever before.
“I’m probably getting more feedback now than I ever have,” he says. “It seems like more people are reading, even though newspaper circulations are shrinking. I think the flip side is that others have more access to us beyond the basic subscribers [to the newspaper]. I know I get five or six e-mails a day from people out of town who were looking at
“It’s kind of like our influence has spread,” he adds. “The bottom line, like anything else, is name- and personality-driven. If you’ve been doing it for a long time, you’ve gained influence.”
Bauer expanded his audience by writing his SFGate blog since last May. He recently blogged about race-influenced seating at restaurants, for example, after being quizzed by e-mail with stories.
The new technologies have made the critics’ job easier, he says. “The actual review is a lot easier than it was 10 years ago,” Bauer says. “I used to spend hours going through cookbooks if I didn’t know a definition or to learn about a cuisine. Now it’s at your fingertips. I would spend hours looking for spellings on hard-to-find wines, and now online I can do it in a second.”
All of those new media, Bauer theorizes, actually may be working together to create a more influential critic. “For me, it’s too soon to tell whether in fact traditional restaurant critics are going to have more or less influence,” he says.
Nina Zagat says the restaurant critic will always have a place.
“It’s easy to talk about so much of the new wave of online discussions on blogs and Internet places, but I think that people still love restaurant criticism,” she says. “They love to go to their newspaper and see what their favorite critic is saying, understanding that it’s the views of a particular critic. That’s always been fun whether it’s for a restaurant or theater or whatever, and it’s a different kind of writing.”
