The trust thing
All writers want to be read and all seek the reward of trust and consequently the foundation of a loyal readership. That precarious writer-reader relationship is personal and one which I think is dependant on both the skill of the writer and his untold mojo to draw an audience.
This trust thing is tricky. Take my own trusted reads for example. I’ve never been to New York and know next to nothing about it, but I regularly follow the midtown lunch updates and over time, I’ve established a level of trust in the blogger – to the point where if I go to NY, he would be my first point of resource.
Contrast that to London, where I don’t tend to be a loyal follower of any one source. While I have a bias toward the timeout chaps, I’d feel safer taking a second opinion from an american in london and even urbanspoon before finally taking the plunge.
It must be psychological I’m sure – but this trust thing, its difficult business.
If you can’t beat em, may as well join em
More and more publishers are now embracing web 2.0 rather than loathe it. In addition to his rather gloomy reviews, Jay Rayner regularly flexes his muscular opinions in the guardian word of mouth blog. Hah! The empire strikes back, foodies.
Still I can’t help but feel that Jay is writing as ‘Jay Rayner, restaurant critic’ on word of mouth, instead of just writing as Jay Rayner, a food lover and human being.
With the line between the pro and amateur increasing blurred, one cannot help but wonder what this means for the future of media. In the fast moving world of the modern eater, does he care for the flowery fluff when all he wants is an affordable and juicy steak?
A review is a diary entry
At the end of the day, all food writers professional or otherwise are exactly that: they write about their encounters with food. I’d like to think of a review as a journal entry and another one chalked up with each restaurant visit. If a reviewer (applied to both critic and blogger) were to bind all their essays in a book and compile them chronologically, you could easily pull out the personal diary bits from the eating.
Which makes all reviews subjective since it is a perception of an experience. Unsurprising really, hence the spread of opinion on the same restaurant (if we disregard the kitchen consistency argument) ; which leads me to introduce the third protagonist: community.
Have your say
Like most things, word of mouth (the real thing not the blog) is one of the strongest way a restaurant builds its street cred. The internet hasn’t just given an unsecured outlet for living room writers to have their voices heard, it’s also a place for communities to form. Because we tend to take reviews with a pinch of salt, a good way of gauging quality is to get the popular vote. Sites such as london-eating, trustedplaces and tripadvisor empower the public voice by letting users give an account of their experiences, lending to it a balanced view of how good a restaurant really is.
Then there’s this argument (misconception?) that you only go online when you feel compelled to rant – so maybe that view is not representative afterall.
Urbanspoon goes one step further by summarising not just the critic and blogger views, but also gives the user the opportunity to vote on the restaurant (victim) , leaving with it a score based on the number of likes and dislikes.
Metrotwin on the other hand, puts a spin on social media by purposefully empowering bloggers giving them free reign to create all the site’s content. Yet the user is kept well in the interaction loop as the website uses a bunch of background metrics to track popularity.
Change has already come
What started as an argument for the case of the critic against the blogger is really masquerading as a discussion for the way we receive and interpret media today. We are no longer slaves to the traditional media outlets nor do we rely on just the word on the street. Instead, media saturation allows us to choose what we want to read, when we want it and who from. Media has simply evolved to this conglomeration of the powerhouse, the arthouse and the you and me.
In my view – the critic and blogger are both of equal importance, a yin to the yang, you can’t have Charmaine the timeout reviewer without Charmaine the tasty treats! food blogger. Whether Jay Rayner likes it or not, the foodsnob blog is here to stay and I am as likely to hear his views as I am Jay’s.
But that’s just my opinion, what’s your view ? Which side of the fence do you fall on – the food critic, the food blogger or neither?
Read part one here.
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Restaurant critic vs Food blogger: Who do you trust? Part one — London Eater
[...] This write-up concludes in part two here. [...]
November 27, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Loving Annie
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Kang !
I’ll trust the blogger any day. (if I like/respect their area of focus/ restaurant choices overall, that’s what makes me add them to my links
But even still, I like to get a compendium of the different views, blogger and critic alike.
If several agree on the same flaws – or agree on the same things they are praising – I feel fairly comfortable that I’m getting advice I want to follow.
I tend to think that newspaper critics/reviewers have something worthwhile to say or they would not have gotten what is a highly desirable job; but always keep in mind that they are getting paid..
If most of their reviews are highly favorable, I don’t take them as seriously.
The Zagat Guide has TOO many restaurants they recommend highly, for instance. Really, in any city, it is unlike;y that there are more than a half dozen true, extrordinary gems…
I may winnow down a crowd of hundreds, but then more research needs to be done still before I’d automatically make a reservation to dine there…
Loving Annie
November 27, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Kang L.
Annie,
Happy thanksgiving to you too Annie!
That word is very accurate: Compendium, I think that these days people are more wary of any media they hear, both good or bad and I think that the getting the public view on things is a good barometer of exactly how good one place is. Which is why i think that places like urbanspoon are good because you need them to catch all the different viewpoints.
Yes. I think that people (perhaps us bloggers?) are wary of the critic because at the end of the day you know he’s writing a particular ‘role’ and may (im not saying he isn’t) not be actually writing what he really thinks.
I think it depends on your definition of a gem because I believe that there are several factors involved too BUT all gems need to share one, ie, great tasting food.
However, i believe one needs to account for price, atmosphere, quirkiness, imagination into judging whether a place is good or not. in other words, one shouldnt compare apple and oranges on the same scale.
For example, if I were searching for a bowl of noodles , I wouldnt really be concerned with grandiose designs, I’d much prefer it to be small, quiet and serving hearty food. AND – price. it’s noodles, gotta be cheap. Those would be my criteria.
However, if i’m out in a michelin restaurant then i’m looking at a whole extra set of factors. Depending on how much they decide to burn my wallet – I take into account service, cutlery, cleanliness, creativity of cooking, taste and it has to have that mind blowing signature dishes which you can get from a ‘normal’ place (let’s say). Because if im going to pay £100 per head – I’m expecting something out of this world, if the roast beef is going to taste similar to what my mom can make – then obviously the michelin star is not warranted. Clealy then, it’s just media and marketing and the glamour pushing the restaurant into legendary status – when the food actually just taste OK and not great.
So yeah – I think the criteria is a moving target and it is tied to what the restuarant is actually trying to achieve. At least, that is how i approach places when I go to them.
So to go back to your point about the zagat guide – yes very true, too many glowing reviews (of pricy places) is not a good thing.
November 28, 2008 at 9:34 am
Food Snob
Rayner better watch his back!
(but to be honest, I rather like him…lol)
November 28, 2008 at 9:38 am
Charmaine
I feel like I have a very unusual perspective on this debate, having started out as a humble food blogger and making my way into ‘professional’ restaurant reviewing.
I still feel that we at Time Out are very different from our broadsheet counterparts – most, if not all national restaurant critics are easily recognisable – we all know what AA Gill, Giles Coren, Jay Rayner, Michael Winner, Fay Maschler, Terry Durack et al look like. And you’d be kidding yourself if restaurateurs and chefs don’t go out of their way to find out what the critics look like. One exception is, of course, Marina from the Metro – I relate to her much more than these other glitzy media-friendly critics, as it’s still not known what she looks like (though there was an amusing piece a while back speculating on her appearance… a Gwen Stefani lookalike appeared to be the popular opinion).
My biggest problem with famous critics is that while I do give them kudos for their infinite knowledge of food (or in the case of Jay, not so much sometimes, re: him thinking Gourmet San is a Sichuan restaurant when it fact it serves northern Chinese cuisine), I have always remained sceptical about how much of a true reflection they can give to us readers of the restaurant experience. Any recognised critic that believes they won’t be getting that little special extra attention is kidding themselves. Cue Guy Dimond, the opposite, who gets stuck with the ’sucker table’ at popular, big name restaurants and practically has to chase a waiter down for service.
I do feel that I am limited in what I can write when I do ‘proper’ reviews – I tend to overwrite in real life anyway (check out my long blabbering blogs) and I hate being restricted to 300 words for a minor review and 500 for a main review. Oh those Guardian/Times/Independent critics have so much space to whitter on….
I can’t speak for other critics but at least for us (Time Out), I think we get as close as we can to the ‘real’ diner experience. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to refuse glitzy press launches and free meals for sake of anonymity. Nowadays I even have to think twice about whether or not I should be attending blogger events. It sucks, in that sense, because I feel neither here nor there. Sometimes I miss the freedom of being a simple food blogger – of booking in my own name, not having to worry about overzealous reservations officers tracing my number to find out if ‘Flora’ is really ‘Charmaine Mok’, of hushedly telling my friends to stop saying my name out loud when I’m out on a review…!
I like reading reviews but ultimately even I myself trust blogger opinions. I guess I’m in a weird position in that sense! Though, I do find myself very partial to Terry Durack’s reviews. Great man and very well written, honest reviews.
November 28, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Charmaine
Another interesting point (playing devil’s advocate here) – what happens when a food blogger becomes recognised? (I wonder at times if the guys from Dos Hermanos are becoming celebrities in their own right.) And for those of you who openly take notes/take pictures/ask specific foodie questions in restaurants, I wonder if that sends signals to the restaurant. I never take notes, and pictures are usually taken very discreetly or when I’m not on review. Basically, I try to act as much as a normal customer as possible – and ask any questions about dishes later on the phone.
In that sense, how do we know when a blogger isn’t being given similar special treatment, if restaurants are being extra cautious in a world where bloggers are taking over critics in terms of importance?
November 28, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Loving Annie
Good Saturday morning to you Kang,
This opened some great discussions !
I would agree with you on the great bowl of noodles vs. michelin restaurant paragraph totally. Good point made there – food is at the heart of what makes greatness for some things.
Charmaine brought up some thoughtful points as well.
So glad I found your blog – you are stimulating my brain as well as my appetite
Loving Annie
November 29, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Douglas
‘Trust No One’ (?)
November 29, 2008 at 11:22 pm
genuiness
Kang, I personally would place more emphasis on the opinion of food bloggers and word of mouth of my friends than restaurant critics. I have absolute disdain for critics who are so up their arses. e.g. Giles Coren who spends 95% of his review talking about everything but the food. People like AA Gill who will give a bad review simply because a restaurant doesn’t give them preferential treatment. And as you rightly pointed out, many restaurants do give critics preferential treatment – looks of ‘on the house’ treats and free meals.
The other problem with food critics is that some of them (though not all) base their review on the cheaper lunch menu which may not be a true reflection of the cooking at the restaurant. For example, the Good Food Guide describes Le Gavroche’s set lunch as ‘much cheaper, perhaps using a few less fanciful ingredients’ is perhaps missing the point. Nor is judging a restaurant like Hibiscus solely on their (experimental, chemistry class 101) lunch menu truly representative of the level of the cooking at the restaurant.
As with everyone, each person has their own preferences and area of expertise. Hence, I might agree with a guide book with regards to say French cooking, I find their opinion on say Malaysian cooking (where I come from) to be wildly off the mark. Is it to say the guide/critic is wrong? Maybe.. maybe not. Of course, Malaysian food has to adapt to the taste and preferences of people here – so while it may not be authentic, it is a good intepretation of it.
As such, I place more weight on food bloggers that share similar preferences and taste with me. Foodsnob is a good example – I have found that we generally share the same opinion when it comes to different restaurants so it is easier for me to make a decision when I am uncertain about a restaurant. Case in point – I was pretty undecided about going to Ambassade de l’Ile having heard mixed reviews of it (including of course the infamous Giles Coren review where he kept harping on about the decor because he didn’t like the colour purple was shameful) but decided to book it for my girlfriend’s birthday based on foodsnob’s recommendation and was definitely not disappointed.
p/s Charmaine… you could always do what Gordon Ramsay did in one episode of Kitchen Nightmares ie have some unassuming person come in for the booking and order for you and do a switcheroo halfway through
November 30, 2008 at 8:21 pm
vivi
okie, im upset now. my essay got accidently twice =_=. so heres my shorter shorter version of what i wanted to say:
i trust some bloggers over critis, since bloggers are more like us
use a range of sources, both bloggers and critics
everyone experiences different situations at the same restaurant, (for exmaple me at leongs legends was bad, but some other blogger experienced good)
take a risk and try it for yourself
November 30, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Kang L.
Charmaine, Vivi, foodsnob, genuiness, doug and annie:
Thanks for the extensive comments! You guys just sparked off some pretty interesting points and got my debating juices flowing.
i’m going to consolidate my reply as a part 3 follow-up post to this discussion
December 1, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Foong
Hmmm….I’d say any reviews from a food blogger or a food critic is purely subjective. This is because everyone’s taste buds are different, thus the saying ‘one man’s meat, another man’s poison’.
A case in point would be the wonderful ‘king of fruit’ – durian. If you ask 10 Malaysians, not everyone will agree that the fruit tastes good and probably each and everyone will say different things about that single one fruit.
And then there’s the aroma.
Some likened it to dirty wet socks and clogged drains while others likened it to rotten fruits or leaked gas.
So, in my opinion, all reviews are true – in the perspective of the reviewer. It is quite another thing for the reader cause the reader may not have the exact same taste as the reviewer.
Remember Zimmern eating the beating heart of a frog? He thinks it tasted good but I doubt most of us will think that!
That’s why, though I love reading food reviews, in blogs or anywhere else, I always do it with an open mind.
Just my two cents.
December 2, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Mien Tay, Dalston « An American in London
[...] London Eater, by the way, has been writing thoughtful posts on why we trust food bloggers even though some of us aren’t exactly inconspicuous at restaurants (so query the consumer advocacy of someone who’s drawing special treatment perhaps as much as a professional reviewer would), and most of us visit a restaurant only once before sharing our opinions. Exhibit A: soft-shell crab at Mien Tay in late June 2008 [...]
December 5, 2008 at 12:09 am
vivi
this is absolutely off topic.
but i think giles coren looked pretty damn hot in the BBC programmes on what they use to eat back then……i think it was victorian era where he had a moustache. I thought he was pretty hot/funny there lol.
Although i trust bloggers if they are blogging about thier own culture of food. =) thats a big big point for me. I would trust a chinese blogger over a caucasaian blogger for chinese restaurants just because its their cuisine.
December 6, 2008 at 8:53 pm