Critical mass

16 May 2002 by
Critical mass

If there is one outside individual who has the power to influence the success or failure of a restaurant, it is the critic. There will be some who say they don't give a mustard seed for the opinions of the hyper-inflated ego, paid to eat out on behalf of a newspaper's or a magazine's readers, but it remains the case that a poor notice can send bookings plummeting.

Even - and perhaps especially - in London, bad reviews get noticed, and have a habit of lingering in the public memory almost as long as a news story about environmental health inspectors finding a freshly jointed German shepherd dog in your freezer.

By the same token, a positive review is like manna from heaven. To have one of the famous names raving about your cooking, especially if you've only just opened, could result in the glorious agony of having to turn people away.

A good review has a word-of-mouth effect too, so that even if a potential customer didn't personally read Fay Maschler of London's Evening Standard or AA Gill of the Sunday Times singing your praises, they will quite likely have heard about it from somebody who did. When Peter Gordon first opened the Sugar Club in Notting Hill, for example, he had to turn Madonna away four nights running because she hadn't booked.

But while the power of the critic may be undimmed, it is also true that the nature of the job has changed quite beyond recognition over the last 10 years or so. Until recently, the image that the public had of the critic going about his or her business didn't differ significantly from the code of conduct that the Good Food Guide still expects of its inspectors. That is, the commissioning staff send out the inspectors (not usually food writers) to nominated restaurants, they eat anonymously and return a detailed written report.

That approach is certainly not extinct among the press reviewers even now, but undoubtedly the tenor - and even the raison d'être - of reviewing has changed. These days, not everybody who wants to review your food is as well known as the luminaries on the nationals. Many are either anxious to establish themselves as journalists or just keen to eat out at somebody else's expense. It is possible simply to register one's name with PR companies that do restaurant publicity, and within days, press packs and menus will arrive like spring rain.

When it comes to the big names, though, reviewing is a pretty rough contact sport. There was a time when critics gave a critical yet dispassionate account of the cooking, but around a decade ago, things changed.

Restaurant columns were reinvented as an extension of lifestyle diaries so that readers had to read the minutiae of the correspondent's personal proclivities, social antipathies and family background before finally reaching just a few details of what was eaten.

Anybody who fancied doing it, and had a name in some other field, was invited on to the bandwagon. The grandaddy of the genre was Michael Winner, whose Winner's Dinners column in the Sunday Times is still going strong. For a while, the Observer had a penchant for using novelists, with Will Self succeeding John Lanchester - only to be dropped when it was discovered that his fondness for proscribed substances was not merely a rhetorical stance but the real thing.

As the columnists were celebrities in their own right, it was a short step to pictured bylines - now, you could not only visualise the taste of the food that had been consumed but also the corpulent, cheery face into which it had gone.

If pictured bylines aren't a giveaway to the identity of a critic when they turn up at a restaurant, it's hard to know what is. Jay Rayner, the Observer‘s incumbent of the last three years, has insisted his mugshot does not appear, although he knows that the most ambitious restaurants make it their business to spot the critics. A beady-eyed front of house official greeted him by name virtually on arrival at Claridges, having recognised him from a previous restaurant.

However, if he's had a good lunch or dinner, Rayner will make himself known at the end of the meal or when he contacts the restaurant later for a copy of its menu.

Many London restaurateurs and front of house staff recognise Fay Maschler. She often reviews a new restaurant in its first week of operation and says that if the chef is already known to her from a previous incarnation, they will sometimes come out to discuss the dishes with her. It's hard to be incognito after 30 years," she says. "But I do everything I can not to make myself known. I always book under another name. When I go out with my husband, who is tall and broad, I try to slope in inconspicuously behind him."

Others take precisely the opposite view. Some call ahead and let the restaurant know that they will be there - not to get a free lunch but to give the restaurant a chance of giving it their best shot.

My own view, after 12 years of pontificating, is that it is hard to improve on the system where reviewers simply eat and report as they find. Only in so doing are they faithfully reflecting the experience the average customer can expect. What difference can it make to the readers that if the chef is alerted to "Gervaise Paupiett's" arrival he will be obligingly trowelled with caviar?

Jonathan Meades was recently replaced on the Saturday edition of The Times by Alan Coren's son, Giles, who cheerfully acknowledges that there is a band of critics - of which he is a member - who see their mission as entertaining and amusing readers.

His most recent run-in has been with David Moore, proprietor of London's Pied à Terre, to whom he gave a bad review. Coren ordered a Chinon that was off, refused the sommelier's suggestion of a wine that was at least £20 more expensive, and settled for a cheaper one that he said turned out to be "grim". His zero rating for wine service thus brought down the restaurant's mark out of 10 in the paper's rather pernickety rating system to 5.33, although Coren had said the best of the cooking merited eight. "Critics should be educating the public," insists Moore. "If something goes wrong, why not say something, and then at least we have a chance to do something about it."

He claims Coren's antipathy cost the restaurant bookings. "The impact in terms of lost business of a bad review can be huge," says Moore. "And you read so many reviews where nothing about the food was wrong, and yet the overall tone is negative."

Alex Aitken, chef-proprietor of Le Poussin at Lynd-hurst in Hampshire, feels that out-of-towners can take a more relaxed view of the fallout from reviews than Londoners do. His particular beef was with a hostile piece by Jan Moir for the Telegraph, which moved him to write to the editor to make his feelings known. It turned out that more than 40 of his customers had done the same. But Aitken admits that the review "made me work bloody hard to make sure it didn't happen again".

Many restaurateurs claim to loathe critics, not surprisingly for their power to dent the month's profit margin with a single parenthetical slight.

But while the annual guides are by definition out of date as soon as they are published (at least until they go online), it remains the case that most eaters-out looking for recommendations will rely on the papers. Restaurant columns aren't going to go away, and so the dubious ethics, tiresome comical quips and blundering confusion must be borne with stoicism.

What's more, I suspect it is precisely by reinventing themselves as comedians that the critics have allowed restaurateurs to breathe a gentle sigh of relief. If the readers know - as seems evident - that it's all being said for rhetorical effect, then frankly who cares that "Gervaise" thought your brisket looked like roadkill?

Critic in the house?

Here are some tips on what to do if you think you have a critic in your restaurant:

  • Resist every temptation to ply them with extra garnishes or free fizz. It will only serve to make the cynical even more so - and it hits your profit margin. It might also look as though you don't have the confidence to stand by what you do.
  • Don't snoop. You won't hear enough and they'll only clam up.
  • Don't greet them by name. An ego massage might seem like a smart move but you'll only put them off their stroke. In short, leave them alone.
  • Don't let them know you've rumbled them. Isn't it more fun that way?
  • If they subsequently give you a panning in a piece full of cheap shots and inaccuracies, write to their editor, pointing out the mistakes. But do so in a calm, measured, urbane fashion. Anything else smells of sour grapes and won't get published. Remember, though, "The risotto was inedible sludge" is not libellous; it is, alas, fair comment. "The risotto was poisonous sludge", however, is actionable.

Who are they?

Saturday editionsDaily Telegraph: Simon Brooke
Guardian: Matthew Fort
Independent: Tracey MacLeod
The Times: Giles Coren

Sundays
Independent on Sunday: Terry Durack
Observer: Jay Rayner
Sunday Telegraph: Matthew Norman
Sunday Times: A A Gill and Michael Winner
London's Evening Standard: Fay Maschler

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