The Restaurant Critic Steps Back

On the dreams and realities of living a life of gastronomic service

Why putting down the fork may be the best move for the NYT critic. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

In 2011, I picked a fight with Sam Sifton over Twitter. Sifton had just released his final review for the New York Times, after two years of service following the five-year reign of Frank Bruni. For his final dining experience, he chose Thomas Keller’s restaurant Per Se, at the time a $295/person prix fixe experience with endless waiting lists and a relentless adherence to the strictures for gourmet cooking. Sifton made no excuses for his choice, as he saw it as the “best restaurant in New York City,” turning his final act of journalistic service for the Times into an opportunity to satisfy his own bucket list. I begrudged Sifton’s choice, tweeting about how “good food should be for everyone,” and that his job was to be in service of the broader gastronomically curious community. Sifton, to his credit, retweeted my snark to his 15,000+ followers, and I spent the next three hours answering exactly which restaurants I thought would have worthier of his final column inches. It was the most fun I’ve ever had on social media, even as it gave me nightmares of someday meeting Sifton and having to defend my opinion. (Sifty, I’m open to work—call me.)

On some level, every food writer must want to be a restaurant critic. It’s a dream assignment on paper—the opportunity to craft an expansive dining itinerary across your designated region, to have your employers foot the bill, and to render your opinions as gospel for the gastronomic masses. Since the 18th-century French critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière published his assessments in his L’Almanach des gourmands, the restaurant critic has been expected to serve an audience of both the masses and the deep-pocked gastronomic elite. Certainly when Craig Claiborne became the Times’ first dining critic in 1962, he felt that his responsibility was to expand the food world beyond the so-called “women’s pages,” to reframe restaurant criticism as a subset of cultural criticism, and the experience of dining out as a genuine form of cultural engagement. By doing so, Claiborne upped the ante for what the restaurant critic had to do—not just to offer recommendations, but to be both impassioned and evidentiary in their work. Restaurant criticism requires an anthropologist’s localized understanding of their audience, and a salesman’s well-oiled delusion in pushing their vision of what’s worth another person’s dollars. But it also requires a willingness to push against the boundaries of good taste, and to genuinely question what role the critic should play in a world of increasing income inequality and niche consumerism. It’s the best and worst of jobs, and I envied and pitied the person who would inherit Sifton’s responsibilities in the role.

Yet during the reign of Sifton’s successor, Pete Wells, I found many more moments to be satisfied with the Times restaurant coverage—not only because Wells seemed genuinely curious about a wider array of restaurants than Sifton, but also because he approached his job with an awareness that what was categorized as “reservation-worthy” was quickly about to change. Rather than spending his column inches bemoaning the rapid collapse of New York’s restauranteur-driven empires, he set out with enthusiasm in search of the new and under-appreciated. His first review focused on an “Asian locavore” restaurant that catered to diners hungering for adventure, available in the sea cucumber-heavy bolognese or in its duck fat ice cream. His reviews led with a sense of whimsy and open-mindedness, informed by a conviction that good restaurants should fill bellies and upend expectations (and not always empty wallets). In many ways he seemed to openly acknowledge and appreciate that his reviews would shape the already-precarious economic outcomes of many a restaurant, and as a result spread his critical attention with liberal gusto. (In many ways his work embodied my favorite quote from Thornton Wilder who said that, “Money is like manure: it not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.”) He went further than Sifton to explore the booming culinary scenes of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and offered critical evaluations of pizza and burgers with as much gusto as what other critics would give to roast chicken or foie gras. (Unlike Sifton, he downgraded Per Se to a two-star review, never letting a dining temple rest on its laurels.)

As an aging Original Flavor(TM) Millennial, I’ve also appreciated Wells’ tendency to stay away from focusing on the “new,” as he seems to love Old New York as much as I do. Taking a page from the late great Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold, Wells gave space to restaurants that had long been mainstays of New York’s everyday dining landscape, not just the buzzy new entries on the scene. Most importantly, he knew how to turn both a pan and a rave into a readable feast. While his notorious skewering of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant went viral (though it seemed not to hurt Fieri’s business model—I knew countless people who checked it out because of Wells’ review), his praise of a seemingly similar establishment, the Times Square location of Señor Frog’s, was overflowing with joy. Wells genuinely seemed to relish the responsibilities of his position, whether or not it was on a foot-long hot dog.

It’s with no small degree of sadness that I learned of Wells’ decision to step down this week, after more than a decade on the job. He cited the toll that the job had taken on his health, the challenges of the “week-to-week reviewing life,” and no one would deny that those are legitimate challenges to someone in his position. (Also, I would argue, as a responsible cook and/or diner in 21st-century America, leaving food behind seems unconscionably wasteful, and chefs notice when a plate is sent back unfinished.) While Wells was a worthy protector of what he called an “endangered profession,” he also understood that no person, least of all him, could do it without the physical realities of the job coming back to bite him. Eating like what the critic Adam Platt called a “giant Brahman Bull” could only last so long, especially if one intended to enjoy one’s food to a ripe old age. There’s a certain bravery in Wells’ decision to step back while he can still enjoy the many meals he has left. In laying bare the physical realities of the job, he serves the profession even further, by demystifying the work, bite by bite, and noting that while “omnivorousness is a prerequisite for a good critic,” it’s easy for the work to become a pathology.

I can’t say that Wells’ elegant exit letter has altogether stomped out my desire for restaurant criticism. My bucket list of Boston restaurants I’ve been meaning to try, from award-winning noodle bars to divey sushi spots to classic Greek grills, demands coverage and a solid publication’s backing. But I also bid farewell to Wells’ tenure with an increased appreciation of how much perspective, and appetite, the job truly demands, and with a sense that, should I be called to duty in a similar role, what I’d have to make certain to leave on the plate.

Recommended Reading: I’d very much appreciate your reads on my recent publication in Serious Eats (longtime reader, first time writer) on the rich history of the Caesar Salad. Not only was it a joy to research and write, but it was particularly great to kickoff the piece with a remembrance of my many high-school meals at the late-great Brigham’s in Concord Center with my friends. No surprise, Eater had already published a remembrance of the chain, which I’m happy to share with you here.

The Perfect Bite: After visiting the recent MFA exhibition on the “Korean Wave,” I’ve been hankering for a great meal at a Korean restaurant. Luckily Kaju Tofu House in Allston was a short drive away, and a great opportunity to introduce our kiddo to mandu, kimchi pancakes, clay pot cooking, and most importantly tteokbokki, the irresistibly chewy rice cakes sauced with plenty of gochujang. While I wasn’t sure if she could handle the spice level, I very much hoped that our kid would revel in the qq factor of the tteokbokki, and in that, I was very happily rewarded.

Cooked & Consumed: Because of summer travel plans, I often find myself preparing meals with an eye towards emptying the fridge rather than filling it with new creations, especially at lunchtime—last night’s grilled vegetables become today’s salad fixings, or tomorrow’s lunchbox offerings. Today’s lunch made me grateful for that clean-out tendency, as it involved a salad of quickly wilting CSA fixings (more on that in a future post) and a warming of cold pasta with frozen cubes of butternut squash-cashew sauce, so creamy and rich that you’d think it was designed to hoodwink carnivores into vegan-friendly dining. I like to think of our freezer backlog as a hidden resource during the summertime, and when I get to call it into action, as in today’s unexpectedly delicious pasta pairing, it all seems wortwhile.