How the New York Times critic writes the reviews that make and break restaurants | Hacker News Reader

How the New York Times critic writes the reviews that make and break restaurants

newyorker.com

117 pointstaylorbuley66 comments

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, fashion is so ugly it has to be replaced every six months. Though the Metropolitan Museum may be my favorite place on earth, I find a good portion of NYC to be repugnant. Nowhere have I seen such spineless obedience to trends and fashions. Many residents seemingly can't put on a tee shirt without worrying over it endlessly, and express a self-congratulatory air when they've gotten that tee shirt just right. They are delighted to wait for 1.5 hours to get a burrito because it's the right burrito, and the right line to be in to buy one.

Hearing this guy say "my body is not my own" made me twitch and I had to stop.

The difference between them and rabid football fans is a matter of degree, not quality.

Is your position that "food critic" is not a legitimate job, or that there is no value in NYT restaurant reviews?

Once you admit there is, then by definition someone's job involves a lot of eating. I think that's pretty much all he meant by saying that his body is not his own. If anything, the better comparison is with football PLAYERS, who also make bodily sacrifices in the practice of their chosen profession.

Experience proves that food critic is a legitimate job, and sure there's economic value in restaurant review. However in my utopia it would be a low-key affair. Zeal for watching men play a game or eating seems debased to me.

The remark about "my body is not my own" seemed unduly melodramatic.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d053pPV_AA)

It's interesting that the NY times critics wield so much power with the chefs and NY public (and maybe even american public), when there are plenty of review systems (michelin, pellegrino) that are more worldly and forward looking. IMO, New York high end cuisine has always been more about hedge fund people and old money impressing each other with higher spend, rather than better food. Maybe that's why there's an aggressive restaurant review culture that serves well to these aggressive customers (born out of finance).

IMO bay area fine dining cuisine is #1 in the nation right now (NY might have even be #3, had Chicago not have some unfortunate chef deaths in the last few years)

If you look at new york times's 4 star restaurants list:

Le Bernardin/Jean Georges (old french cuisine, tons of sauces, boring)

Per Se << French Laundry

Del Posto (mario battali's strong/strange flavors are either love/hate) Quince (sf) is much more consistent and tasty.

Sushi nakazawa - very good nigiri, but lacks decent cooked seafood. Yoshizumi (sf) is much better in both nigiri/cooked food, taste great, is cheaper, and the place has a great minimalistic japanese feel.

And there's no direct answer from NY to Benu (out of this world Chinese), atellier crenn (if she only did desserts for all courses), saison (highly innovative), californios, mourad

SF might be in top five cities in the world right now for great food (low end and high end)

Loved your list. Though, I thought Benu was more Asian fusion rather than Chinese.

Thank you :) love to hear yours.

Benu considers themselves to be New/Contemporary American and I have it on good authority would be highly amused by the accusation of being "out of this world Chinese" or even Asian Fusion. :)

Ok, contemporary American it is. TBH, I only read about these restaurants and think about them. Cannot justify spending that much money on a meal, knowing that people where I could grew up will survive the whole year with that kind of money

Per Se is now (infamously) two stars, and you missed Eleven Madison.

Ah, good catch about per se. and I haven't had eleven madison park in 3 years; wanted to withhold my opinion. I really wanna go back, but if I'm going for a farm-to-table restaurant, I might as well as go to a restaurant on a farm :)

11 Madison is not a farm to table restaurant. Perhaps you're thinking of blue hill?

I've never heard Eleven Madison described as farm to table. The authoritative tone claimed in your original post is becoming more and more dubious.

If the account is 9 hours old, it's almost certainly crap. Especially if the username suggests it's a throwaway for a specific article.

If you're not willing to post your opinion under your main account, I can't say I'm terribly interested in those opinions.

From wikipedia:

"The restaurant offers guests one multi-course tasting menu inspired by the agricultural bounty of New York"

"Daniel Humm's cuisine is focused on the locally sourced ingredients of New York"

As much as I like SF restaurants, high end cuisine in the bay is at least as much about VCs impressing each other as NY restaurants are for hedge fund managers.

What are the other four in the top five, globally?

Besides Sf, Chicago, nyc? Lima, Mexico city, Copenhagen, London, Paris

Tokyo has to be in there

Le Bernardin is the furthest thing from boring, there is a reason Eric Ripert has lasted so long - he is always renewing. It is one of the world's greats.

Or especially for Eleven Madison Park (missing above), another continuous innovator.

I agree about Benu and Saison, though, both exemplary. SF has come along way the past 7 years or so.

You're completely missing the next wave of high end NYC dining, smaller destination chef oriented places like Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, or Torst, or Blanca.

Now one could certainly argue the merits of those places, but pretending that NYC fine dining is defined by midtown and expense accounts just makes it seem like you don't spend much time here.

Not to mention the real money types go to Eleven Madison Park, which is still stellar and curiously absent from your list.

4 star places are interesting to compare and contrast, but they're only a small fraction of the story as far as food critics are concerned. Moreover, for diners, they're typically rare special-event experiences.

You really have to investigate the 1/2/3-star places to see what's really exciting and up-coming. If you do that, almost every major city (hell, even many 'burbs and rural) has something special and worthwhile to offer.

Stack-ranking stuff like SF>NYC or #1,2, 3 or whatever is kind of pointless, as is saying that a sushi place is lesser because it lacks "decent" cooked fish. Much more fun to consider each restaurant on its own terms and in the context of the city and population it serves. All the great critics do that and while some may "stack/rank" their reviews, there's a lot to say about 2-star places (and no, 4 is not "greater" than 2, it depends on the occasion and the intent of the diner).

Frankly cooked fish is less than irrelevant in judging a sushi joint.

My journalism law teacher worked at a regional paper and being the food critic was the job where she had the most direct influence on people's lives. If she wrote a positive review, she'd call the restaurant before the paper went to print to advise them to stock up. Negative reviews frequently meant that a place would shut down in the next few months. After one particular negative review, someone shot out her living room window with a shotgun.

I imagine most regional papers today, if they even have a food critic, probably don't wield that much influence what with Yelp. I figure a good review by the NYT will cause a restaurant to skyrocket in popularity. I don't know how busy Dirt Candy was before its 2-star review (it's mentioned in the OP and was the first vegetarian restaurant to get 2-stars in some 10+ years), but I remember it being booked for months. I had to walk by it every night just to check if they had a cancellation to get in before I moved out of New York. But even if the NYT doesn't weigh in, there are so many blogs that cover the food scene in New York that there are plenty of ways to build buzz.

(I still used Yelp to find most gems when I lived in New York though)

A service with check-in data could probably quantify the uplift of a favourable review, by looking at the number of patrons before and after publication.

The NY Times probably would be uniquely influential for fine-dining because it's likely one of the few sources of shared information.

If you invite someone to an expensive restaurant that's just had a bad review, your invitation must mean either cluelessness or defiance. If you don't mean either of those two things, you should not choose that restaurant.

You can't "opt out" of this system. It doesn't matter whether you believe the reviews are accurate. It doesn't matter whether you believe the other party believes the reviews are accurate. Because the review constitutes shared information, the logic of pluralistic ignorance applies. It's not clever to ignore shared information. It just leads you to communicate badly.

>If you invite someone to an expensive restaurant that's just had a bad review, your invitation must mean either cluelessness or defiance.

How about you like the restaurant or you have recommendations from people whose tastes you share that like it? If I like a restaurant I really don't care what the newspaper or Yelp says. It's not so much defiance as disagreement.

(Sure, if "the reviews" are bad for a restaurant, a movie, etc. the betting money is that it is, in fact, not that great barring other data to the contrary.)

business meetings? absolutely.

anything else? meh, never enjoyed crowd sheepish mentality, no reasons to start with this. especially when things work like they do

A huge swath of people ignore reviews by never reading them. They are only important because of how tight restaurants margins are so even a 5% dip is important.

> tight restaurants margins

WAT????

Not sure if trolling or... but restaurant margins are paper-thin. For example, my father, a restaurant owner for 35 years lost money on most of his offerings (the exceptions being the cheap stuff - chicken fingers, fries, hushpuppies, etc). Almost all profits were made off soft drinks. If people all of a sudden stopped ordering tea, coffee and soda, he would have gone out of business in under a week. This was true in all different venues he operated -- a sandwich shop, an upscale steakhouse, and the ever popular "fish camp" style of restaurant. The only exception was his pizza restaurant -- and he only made money when people ordered plain pepperoni pizza. Ironically, if they only ordered cheese, you had to put more cheese on the pizza to make up for the lost space the pepperoni took up, and cheese is the most expensive thing in a pizza restaurant by far, especially if you use anything that is remotely real.

Why not price items accurately rather than relying on the deception of cheap food and expensive drinks? Wouldn't that make every item profitable?

Reminds me of how UK banks have no charges and just hope you make a mistake so they can earn money off you.

Because people are only willing to pay so much for chicken, steak, pizza, etc.

Market price/expectation. Everybody else does it, so you have to too, unless you can move $23 ordinary chicken sandwiches.

Fascinating. I guess what I'm trying to wrap my mind around is, how can the margins be paper-thin even at the very high-end places, where entres are > $40.

Most of it has to do with waste, labor, logistics, and how far off the well-trodden path they go with respects to food orders.

With respects to waste -- it's pretty obvious -- not everything can be made to order so every restaurant has prep-work. Some are better at predicting volume than others, so they waste less, but every restaurant wastes. As a concrete example if a restaurant wants to serve lasagna the whole day, they have to continually make lasagna the entire day, or risk disappointing customers. The pan they make at the end and at the beginning tends to go unused.

Also with respect to waste there are everyday products we take forgranted that a restaurant probably uses anywhere from 100 to 300x more than your average household -- soap, towels are overused, water is constantly running, multiple thousand dollars of water and power bills are not uncommon, waste disposal fees for grease traps and recycling and cardboard. All of these are factored into the cost.

Labor is obvious too -- you have to pay people to prepare and make the food. A basic restaurant that seats 100 people will have at least 1 prep cook, 2 line cooks, an expediter, a dishwasher, and a busboy. All are critical to ensuring the kitchen runs to acceptable speeds. All of this is on top of the executive and sous chef salaries you pay.

Logistics and well trodden path: Logistics is what you have to pay for raw food products to get delivered to you and depending on your menu and what season it is things will be cheaper at certain times of the year -- restaurants do this better than others. What I mean by the "well trodden path" is -- the big restaurant food distributors (Your Syscos, PFGs, US Foods) really try to funnel you to their cash cow offerings and they tend to not be the good stuff - the organics, the grass-feds, etc. Ordering anything else is considered "premium" and comes with a hefty markup. Not using the big food distributors comes with its own laundry list of risks and considerations -- now you become a salesman and you have to advocate your restaurant, negotiate price, schedule deliveries, ensure your supplier is reliable, what if they go out of business? What if the local harvest is bad that year? (For this I truly admire those "farm to table" type places)

I grew up in a restaurant. I have a passion for food and cooking and interacting with people. I would never want to be a restaurant owner. Restaurant failure rates are the absolute highest because the margins are so small -- upwards to 80%, and even 90% (NYC). It's crazy, not worth it. I became a software engineer instead.

It is amazing to me that people care so much about what other people think; they want to be told what they should and should not like.

There is some truth that having more practice with fine dining aids in better distinguishing flavours and textures, but most of it has to do with practice in identifying what Other Important People Tell You are desirable qualities. For example, in identifying fine wine, the average, untrained population cannot, study after study has shown, discriminate. One study(1) even showed that perceived quality and neurological response could be manipulated by simply mislabelling bottle price, regardless of actual price.

Should you like or dislike food because of what someone else told you to think? Maybe being told what to think is a sign of inept judgement and a lack of resolve--a different interpretation of having a "sophisticated palate."

Besides, different qualities--textures being particularly notable--can be desirable in one culture and entirely undesirable in another.

My advice: Just enjoy what you like and explore whichever foods you so desire. Take time to really absorb the quality of the food, and try out reasonably priced family owned restaurants. Stop reading the NYT to tell you what to think.

Particularly ridiculous addendum: This critic ordered, in the review in question, gluten free noodles even though less than 1% of the world's population has Celiac disease. If I went to work and addressed the problem I was given by tailoring it to 1% of my clients, I would be fired for being an idiot. Probably you would, too.

1) https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/baba-shiv-how-wines-pr...

> It is amazing to me that people care so much about what other people think; they want to be told what they should and should not like.

This is an amazingly uncharitable read on the reason that food critics exist. How about this version? There are thousands upon thousands of restaurants in NYC. Constantly opening and closing. No human in the world has time to try them all, and going to one that sucks is a wasted opportunity. So having outside sources to turn you on to good places is really valuable. If you find a restaurant critic whose taste you agree with, taking his or her recommendations can drastically improve your ratio of good to bad meals.

It's no different than looking at reviews when going to a movie. If there are 15 movies playing, I'm a fool for reading reviews to help me decide what to watch? I suppose I should just try them all and then decide for myself what I like, rather than "being told what I should and should not like"?

>having outside sources to turn you on to good places is really valuable.

That's a reasonable reason to take advice on places to try, but does that justify the influence food critics have (which is the topic of the article)?

There's a host of review sites with a democratized review process--anyone can write a review, and reviews are accessible to everyone. For that reason and others, to me the answer is no.

>If you find a restaurant critic whose taste you agree with

You can also find reviewers whose tastes you agree with. Or friends, family, etc. There are even prolific reviewers, who may have reviewed more restaurants than you have time or desire to try.

Edit to say this: Perhaps there's some space in the market for food critics, but by and large I don't believe they should have the influence that is the discussion of this article. That is not to mention the host of other problems food critics bring to business.

Yelp reviews for ethnic food and fine dining are usually pretty poor in my opinion and also have similar issues as food critics. Also why would I care about the masses opinion on food? I'd rather read review from people who really care and know about food.

> If there are 15 movies playing, I'm a fool for reading reviews to help me decide what to watch?

If there are 15 movies playing, 12 of them will be remakes/reboots/rehashes/sequels, two of the others will be superhero movies, and the last one is an animated children's film. Stay home.

> There are thousands upon thousands of restaurants in NYC. Constantly opening and closing. No human in the world has time to try them all

If you restrict yourself to a particular area, a price range, a type of food, there are already many less options (even in NYC). You can also make a good opinion just by looking at the place from the outside. Personally, I much prefer to find some good place to eat by myself rather than go to the same place as everybody else just because it has a good review.

For movies, it's not different. You can tell from the genre, the director, the actors and so on if you may like this movie or not.

  > You can tell from the genre, the director, the actors and so on

New directors? Unfamiliar or upcoming actors? A desire to experiment and try a genre you're unfamiliar with?

  > You can also make a good opinion just by looking at the place from the outside.

Ehh, isn't this textbook "judging a book by its cover"? It tells you nothing about the quality of the food, service, etc. unless you waste a bunch of time scouting out the restaurant.

  > Personally, I much prefer to find some good place to eat by myself rather than 
  > go to the same place as everybody else just because it has a good review.

That's cool, and I don't think you're alone in that. Much of the time though, I don't want to experiment. It feels bad to waste money on a restaurant I don't like. It feels even worse to tell a place their food is so bad that I'd like a refund. There's no winning scenario for me in that instance.

Worse than just being a bad outing, it's an opportunity cost: I have $X and Y hours to spend eating out. Because I wasted an evening at Thai Noodle Place #3, I didn't get to eat at Ethiopian Restaurant #2 that's supposed to be incredible. Especially in NYC, it's not a given that said Ethiopian restaurant will be around next week.

Wasting money and/or time on an awful meal is much less likely if I'm going to a place with good reviews. Still possible, of course, but less likely.

  > For movies, it's not different. You can tell from the genre, the director, 
  > the actors and so on if you may like this movie or not.

Except in this instance you probably don't know the director, the actors, or even the synopsis. You're seeing the movie solely based on the genre, the title, and who else is in line for the movie. Not a strategy I would consistently recommend.

Lots of strategies for choosing from large sets. One friend tries dishes at a restaurant until she finds one she really likes, then sticks with that ever after.

I've read a better algorithm: look until you find an acceptable choice, then reject it and keep looking. When you find a better option, keep it. Works for shoes, cars, spouses etc. Might work for restaurants. The statistics say it should usually move you 1 std dev above where you would have been.

So it's better to artificially limit yourself to a particular area or particular type of food, forgoing opportunities to try something outside your established practice, and to limit yourself to particular genres and actors, again forging opportunities to try something new, than to rely on other peoples' opinions in deciding what to try?

If you end up enjoying it, why do you prefer having found it yourself over going to some place that's well known to be good?

Unless you've run out of new great places to try, I can't understand why the former is "better".

I'm not saying reviews are not useful or that I necessarily want to find places by myself. I just think reviews are sometimes overrated. People like to think that some restaurants are so much better than others, when in fact, many are of very comparable quality. For instance, I remember people queueing for 30 minutes at Shake shack because of the good reviews, when you could find comparable burgers everywhere.

In NYC, people go to restaurants all the time, it's part of the experience. If one restaurant isn't good, you'll go to an other one the next day.

But far more than 1% of the restaurant's visitors would order the gluten free noodles - I'd ballpark 5-15%. And ordering an uncommon variation on a menu item gives the reviewer a chance to test whether the restaurant can deliver on rarely-ordered items.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of the role of the food critic. None of them intend to manipulate anyone, nor do they have some special sense of discernment or sensitivity that goes beyond anyone else, nor is "liking" or "not liking" anything the central issue they're concerned with. And when you think about it further, opinion has little to do with their job.

What distinguishes a food critic from everyone else is their ability to WRITE about the food, wine, place, and experience. This means they describe the restaurant by comparing it to other experiences, putting it into a context. "Eating out" may very well just mean grabbing a bite to eat to some people at some times, but it ALSO can be a central cultural activity. It absolutely is worth writing and reading about.

"Breaking a restaurant", as dramatic as it sounds, doesn't happen with all reviews. Bad things can happen (because of reviews) when a restaurant tries to fake its way into being something which it is not, or when a formerly spectacular place starts "phoning-it-in" as far as service, food or innovation is concerned. Far more common, however, is that the reviewer will identify something really unique and thus create a buzz that causes a rush of business (as seen with "Dirt Candy" in NYC). Sometimes, its "sophisticated palate" sometimes its "simple pleasures".

A good reviewer will generally advise you to do exactly what you said "to explore, take time to absorb the qualities and try reasonably priced family-owned places." And if you want to read about it as well... that's their job.

Food critics in "food cities" still have a lot of influence (and I would count some blogs as worthy food criticism as well). Philly is a prime example with our well-respected critic, Craig Laban [http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/craig_laban/].

> It is amazing to me that people care so much about what other people think; they want to be told what they should and should not like.

the sole reason fashion industry exists (I don't mean buying stuff that looks timelessly nice, quality is good etc. I mean stuff that was "in" 20 years ago, is 99% same and is hip now and will be "in" again in next 20 years with very minor modification).

In the interest of minimizing bad experiences, people have long turned to trusted curators and tastemakers to narrow down their decisions. We spend money and attention on these pursuits; of course some people are going to want a more informed decision. We have favorite DJs because they play great music in the right order; we peruse travel guides to focus our trips abroad; etc

The whole first 3 paragraphs almost describes an intricate dance of restaurants having to keep up with the Times to recognize these reviewers, and the reviewers disguising themselves to get a more authentic experience.

It is sort of like driving -- the best way to avoid a speeding ticket is not by having a keen eye, understanding the cop shifts and hiding spots, and when its "quota" time, the best way to avoid a ticket is to just always drive safely. Then you don't even have to worry about being pulled over.

Similarly, the best way to avoid having a bad review from a fancy columnist, is to just always treat every customer as if they are special, and not have to catch yourself up in the worry of always looking out for the right people. My father was a restauranteur for 35 years, and myself for 8, I found that even if you don't get it right the first time, if the service is exceptional and you build a rapport with your clientele, you will be given a chance to make it right. Focus your efforts on the important things.

This is one of the reasons I started my food side project https://bestfoodnearme.com the idea is to give you a list of amazing food dishes close by, so you can quickly figure out what to eat without reading reviews. I personally find it difficult to find new places to try especially when traveling. Reviews can be biased in many ways especially from competitors or dishonest restaurants. Some sites give you the feeling that the reviews are a payola type situation.

I hate spending any time reading them. I just want a list of great dishes.

I worked as a cook in fine dining, the two and three Michelin star level, for eleven years. Outside of being awarded Michelin stars, it's a myth that reviews have any noticeable influence on a restaurant. Never once have I ever experienced a rush of new customers after a review in the SF Weekly or the LA Times.

The HN retitling of articles is really starting to jump the shark.

I forget how important eating out can be, especially in the US.

This is a freaking book, not an article. Who has time to read all of this?

This is about people who think everybody thinks about them and cares. Nope. And wrong.

Explained here why: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

And the ones who do, do because of prestige, biases, and inability to understand they were being manipulated (into liking/not liking sth). Not to mention, that statistical difference between all this life important eating out, is not worth your attention.

Does this guy ever review a place that would be affordable for the average -- middle class -- human being, because it is hard to see how the middle class people would care about restaurant reviews on such a vast scale when everyone's struggling to make the ends meet in the first place.

The article mentions that there are two different columns in the Times. Pete Wells only reviews the fancier restaurants, and it's one of the reasons that a "Fair" review won't even get you one star in his column. Another columnist is responsible for establishments targeted more at "everyday" Americans.

The article further states that Wells is actually uncomfortable with this dichotomy and has been throughout his duration at the Times.

> Pete Wells only reviews the fancier restaurants

This is not true; in fact, Wells is somewhat famous for reviewing more blue-collar restaurants, in contrast with previous Times critics. For example, here is his review of Guy Fieri's restaurant in Times Square: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-...

$11 for french fries, $19 hamburger is considered blue-collar?

I assume this is a new york thing?

Sure: something can be both overpriced and blue-collar. Think of the food you get at a typical football stadium, for example.

Did you read the article?

Yes, he does review cheaper places occasionally (the comment about Senor Frogs being one).

However, the article does point out that there is a different NYT critic who mostly does the cheaper restaurants.

All kinds of people go to restaurants once in a while to celebrate a special occasion or anniversary. That makes the job of the restaurant critic particularly important. If you are going to splurge once a year on a fancy meal, you really don't want to choose badly.

> everyone's struggling to make the ends meet

No, I don't think everyone is. A lot of people, maybe. Certainly not most. Definitely not everyone.

And this is HN where I would be pretty confident that most who aren't students make 2x the median household income themselves, and the vast majority make 2x the median individual income.

And even my parents who are objectively working class people will still splurge for special anniversaries and go to a very, very nice restaurant for dinner. And if you're going somewhere that you can only afford once every 5-10 years, you are probably going to read every review you can get your hands on. They become extraordinarily important.

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