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Originally Posted by ED BUCHANAN  True many foodies are great cooks and I know a lady that is one of best bakers I have ever met who is a housewife. The fact remains they are not pawning themselves off as reviewers or critics. In fact Craig Clayborn from the NY Times was a great cook, he teamed with Franey who made him even better. They complimented one another.There are chefs and there are chefs, anyone who puts out crap as you say is not a good chef because he or she has no pride in what they do, or may not know what to do and shoulod not be called a chef. Then there are writers and critics who may not know what their doing. I am not saying all, or generalizing but as in anything there are good and bad. I think the customer should be the final judge. If they dont like it they wont be back and they will advise their friends and associates.of their experiences and that particular place will fail. |
Claiborne went to Swiss hotel school and got pretty serious training. And it's true, it is extremely helpful to have expert knowledge of what you're reviewing. But you're taking things too far in suggesting that (a) only chefs can review restaurants, and (b) reviews are a bad idea anyway because the customer should be his or her own critic.
As I said before, a review is an essay. The question is whether the essay is any good or not. With restaurant reviews, there are certain notions of practical value that have come to dominate excessively, and that's also led to the longstanding reality that certain reviewers have make-or-break power in a given city. That's very unfortunate, but insisting that such reviewers have to be chefs doesn't make much sense: chefs can be as vicious, narrow-minded, pigheaded, and obnoxious as anyone else.
Consider music concert reviews. What's the point? Most of the time, the concert is only performed once or at most twice, usually on consecutive days, and so by the time you read the review there is little or no possibility that you might hear the concert. But nevertheless music criticism like this is an old and admirable tradition.
The basic problem, in my opinion, is that 99% of restaurant reviews consist of
1. what did I eat
2. did I like it
3. what "color" can I put in to describe the place
In order for that to be of any value, the reader must already know a lot about the reviewer. That's not criticism, it's a statement of opinion, more or less clearly expressed. Criticism implies analysis of some kind, on the basis of something. Serious music criticism requires some expert knowledge of the music in question, but that doesn't mean the reviewer has to be a musician. Just so, serious food criticism requires expert knowledge of the food in question, but that doesn't mean you have to be a chef. I have seen several very stupid reviews of Japanese restaurants, written by people with at least some serious experience in the professional (French/American) kitchen. Why are they stupid? Because these people have expert knowledge of
some food but not
this food, and they prate as though they knew everything. Rick Bayless is a pretty good chef, it is generally agreed, but I could care less what he thinks about some local Chinese restaurant...
unless of course he were to frame his remarks in terms of what he does and doesn't know. And that's where almost no reviewers are honest.
Frankly, I'd rather read a review by an honest, open-minded, passionate eater who makes no claims to specialist knowledge than one by an expert chef who doesn't know much about what he's eating and thinks he's an expert anyway.
Where I agree with you, though, is that the majority of reviews are the worst of both worlds. They're by people who don't have expert knowledge of any food, yet who think they should pretend to it because that's what reviewers are supposed to sound like. That is useless, destructive, and dishonest. And, of course, usual.