Thoughts on Restaurant Reviews

            I was pleasantly surprised while reading through the variety of restaurant reviews Marin pointed us to. I guess I have read a lot of poorly written restaurant reviews and had an idea of them as much less interesting or thoughtfully crafted as the examples we read, by Sifton in particular. I previously thought of them as being an account of an experience at a specific restaurant, mainly focused on the food and service and ending with a judgment about whether or not the reader (or general public) should eat there. Maybe this was a style of food critique writing at one time, maybe it still is, or maybe I just made up this conception based on a few bad reviews I read.

            Regardless, I was happy to discover quite a departure from this notion I had. The writers provide a description of the restaurant in a broader context rather than describing an experience at the restaurant in the form of a linear narrative. Both Well’s and Sifton’s reviews focus on the history of the establishment, the people behind it, the chef and his/her ‘standing’ in the food world. The writers attempt to identify the mission of the restaurant, what kind of dining it seeks to provide, and its personality.

In Sifton’s review of Lincoln Ristorante, the reader is introduced to the chef and the setting before any particle of food is mentioned. “LINCOLN RISTORANTE is a large and glittery Italian restaurant that opened this fall under a swooping grass roof on the campus of Lincoln Center at a reported cost of $20 million, under the direction of the chef Jonathan Benno and his partners, the Patina Restaurant Group.” I appreciate the context, but what I found to be more effective was when the review started with a very specific instance or scene at the restaurant - the Clamato Mary cocktail at Il Matto or the ‘stubby little handroll’ at Cagen. This brought me into the physical space of the restaurant and provoked my intrigue. After being entertained with a specific story, I wanted to keep reading to get the full picture. I appreciated when the context/background of the restaurant and chef was interspersed with the reviewer’s experience at the restaurant. (Absent entirely were the linear narrative of one experience at one restaurant I had anticipated reading, thank god.)

I noticed that the good reviewers are very knowledgeable about the restaurants they’re reviewing. Like Sifton mentioned in his Q&A, he will eat at a place 3-5 times (‘never just two and sometimes five’) before he reviews it. In writing a good review, it is so important to have a collection of experiences to draw from, not to mention the importance of sampling a wide variety of dishes.

I also noticed the prominence of opinion in these pieces. They are not supposed to be objective descriptions of a place and its food. They are supposed to give you an idea of whether or not this establishment is worth your time and money based on a critic’s overt judgments. An impartial portrayal of one’s experience at a restaurant would not be a review!

In appreciating these informative and amusing reviews, I’m much more excited to write my own.