The 2008 James Beard Awards for best restaurant, best chef, best cookbook, etc. were announced yesterday, and Minnesota got skunked. We had three chefs in the running for Best Chef Midwest - Isaac Becker of the 112 Eatery, Tim McKee of La Belle Vie and Solera, and Alex Roberts of Restaurant Alma and Brasa, which pretty much guaranteed that none of them would get the award. Wisconsin only had one candidate in the race, Adam Siegel of Bartolotta's Lake Park Bistro in Milwaukee, so the cheesehead voting block had their way. Needless to say, Rubaiyat in Decorah, IA never had a chance.
(Speaking of Solera, please join me at the Rake's monthly World Flavors dinner party, tonight (Monday, June 9) from 6-8 p.m. on the second floor patio at Solera, 900 Hennepin Ave. in downtown Minneapolis. Cost is $40 per person, including an interesting assortment of tapas and three accompanying wines. To see the menu and buy tickets, click here.)
It's a pretty safe bet that most of the people who voted for Bartolotto's have never been to the 112 Eatery, and vice versa, but the Awards are a tremendous publicity machine for the restaurants involved, and like they say, people who enjoy sausages or the law, or restaurant awards, should never see any of them being made.
I used to get these James Beard Award ballots every year, and dutifully fill them out, flipping through page after page of restaurants I had never been to, and many I had never even heard of. Is Canlis in Seattle more deserving of the Outstanding Service award than Vetris of Philadelphia? How many people are there on the planet who have actually dined at both of these restaurants more than once? Don't get me started.
But it did remind me of a topic I have been thinking about, which is whether the internet is making professional restaurant critics obsolete. Here's what I am thinking:
1) Professional restaurant critics are very expensive. Back when I was at the Star Tribune, my dining expenses often ran to over $1000 a month, as I recall, and I would guess my colleague Rick Nelson's tab was similar. We were the envy of our colleagues. We were supposed to visit each restaurant we reviewed at least twice, with dining companions, and sample a total of eight dinners. Most restaurant critics work for newspapers, and as newspapers enter their death spiral and cut staff and budget and newshole, somebody in management must be looking at that budget line, and wondering. I predict that five years from now, there will be a lot fewer paid critics around.
2) Restaurant critics are an artifact of the gastronomic revolution that started around 40 years ago, when most Americans had never heard the word pasta. They needed experts, or thought they did, and so people like me, (who really weren't experts, except in relative terms) got jobs as critics, which instantly elevated us to the status of experts. But nowadays, the public is much more knowledgeable about food, and much more skeptical about what they read in the newspaper.
3) We know more than you do, but collectively, you know more than we do. As predictors of whether the public will enjoy a particular restaurant, experienced professionals like Rick or Dara or myself are much more reliable than the average local food blogger. And we know a lot more than the typical amateur - we can give you background and detail and insights that will enhance your dining experience.
But now, thanks to the internet and the digital revolution, it is possible to aggregate the collective wisdom and dining experience of thousands of diners. And as New Yorker magazine writer James Surowiecki argues in The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (which I haven't actually read), when you put together a lot of individual opinions, the crowd often does get it right. A lot of the individual comments in the Zagat restaurant guides may be inane, or just plain wrong, or based on one atypical experience, but on balance, their thousands of reader/reviewers get it right. (By the way, you can help contribute to the collective wisdom of the Twin Cities dining community by signing up as a Rake Restaurant Rater.)
(Confidential to Anonymous: thanks for the spelling correction.)
Jeremy,
Back in 1994, there were three restaurant critics in town, and you were one of them. You'd show up anonymously, and we in PR for local restaurants took pride in being able to spot you and to give our clients the heads-up. (Psst. Put your best staff on table 10. NOW!)
In the summer of 1994, one of the top executives from a New York-based food industry client of mine had plans to meet with me in Minneapolis. I knew that she grew up in San Francisco; she was always talking about how much she missed the Bay Area. I also knew she was a stickler for perfection while dining. Where to take this important guest for dinner after our meeting?
I knew who could tell me. Jeremy Iggers. I had decided years before that your reviews agreed with me--or I agreed with them. So I called you at the Star Tribune. You answered. I apologized for my audacity and told you that I needed a personalized recommendation because there was no room for error here. You let me describe the situation and the person (actually a group of three) that I'd be entertaining. Then you said, "Chez Foley in Wayzata. They will feel as if they're in San Francisco. They'll like the food. They'll like the wine. They'll like the view." You even suggested a particular table, which I promptly reserved. (Note to readers: Chez Foley is gone and the lovely Patrick's Bistro, which I very much enjoy, now occupies that space.)
On the night of the dinner, wine in hand, my client said, and I quote: "Amazing. I feel like I'm back in San Francisco." Score!
You probably don't recall any of this, but I called you back and said I think I may owe you a commission on the new contract secured at that dinner. (Too late now--I've long since spent the money!)
My point is that experienced food critics have tremendous value, not only because they save us money and frustration when they pan a bad restaurant, but because they consider the entire experience. You can match up your scorecard with a diner's expectations to predict who will enjoy a place and who will think it's over-the-top or not-quite-enough. We don't have time to do the research; you've already done it. And we need more than a generic review; we need to know where they will accommodate a diabetic or a vegetarian or a hyperactive three-year-old.
The successful food critic's future may be to personalize the interaction between reader and critic to the point where we can all ask you, "Where should I take the kids to celebrate their 18th birthdays?" or "What's a good place to take a client that best shows off my city?" or "Where can I take her to propose?" Oh, and you have to make the right call more often than a meteorologist does, or we won't trust you.
Food critics: Let us enter our criteria online and then read your reviews of all the places that match our stated needs. Give us assurance that you're not being influenced by the restaurants. Keep spending $1,000/month or whatever it takes because we want the best places to stick around long enough for us to try them all, and they need the dough. Keep on challenging chefs to challenge our palates so that we can say there's something new and different in our city, wherever we live. Keep on putting out the news about food trends for the sake of our health and our enjoyment. There's a place for you. It's just that you must reinvent your profession just as we in PR and in almost any other field have done to remain relevant.
I, for one, am counting on you!
Anne Nicolai
www.nadfm.com
What an interesting dilemma. No, they are not obsolete, but we dont yet know how they will be able to maintain their independence because a new economic model has not yet emerged. Our access to good restaurant reviewers is definitely shifting, but I would argue that there is still a need for good reviewers of restaurants,(and of movies, dance, and the arts). Yes, the knowledge of the crowd is useful, but I don't really want to wade through several hundred comments to decide which ones I can trust!
There are still many benefits that come from reading a good food review by a professional that don't come from reading a bunch of comments on Chowhound, or some other aggregator of the crowd's wisdom (which have their usefulness, don't get me wrong). A good restaurant critic (and not all of them are good--I don't want to read ad promotion disguised as a review) has standards that are informed by experience and, yes, expertise that might come from having a good palate, travel, a wider range of dining experiences, reading, study, insider gossip etc. A good restaurant critic does more than tell the crowd what they will find or like; she helps educate people about what is considered mediocre, good or great by those in the business or other people with high standards. A good restaurant critic becomes a voice that allows me to gauge my own tastes: "I trust this critic, but that critic caters to a different set of tastes than mine," for example.
And finally, a good reviewer and especially a good food critic, is a good writer, and there aren't many people who can write well about food and dining and make me want to read them for the pleasure of reading, even if I never get to the restaurants. Familiarity and continuity are part of what creates trust, but good writing is one of the great pleasures of reading a good review.
Where will we find these reviewers? Probably at some blogs for now, but the budget issues is a sticky one.
I agree with Joanna. I love to read the local bloggers take on a restaurant and I love to look through websites that compile lots of reviews, but I read restaurant reviews like those in The Rake and City Pages because of the writing -- because they are well-crafted, thoughtful, often funny, insightful essays about more than just eating or food.
I think that food writing and food reviews cater to a pretty small crowd anyway -- and while some might diversify where they get their information from -- most of them will continue to go where there's good writing.
Reviewers are still very important. Most of the blogs, expecially here in the twin cites area, are composed of Miller Lite swilling amateurs.
Not that that is a bad thing, just not a reliable source of information.
shogun, I want to read people who are, as you claim, "Miller Lite swilling amateurs" because, well, they are closer in their reality to me than someone who has a $1000/month dining budget and gets to eat at all the trendish hotspots that appeal to no one except people who think that eating trendy, in turn, makes them trendy.
Some of the local bloggers like We Got Served, Renee and Steve, Aaron Landry, Twin Cities Eats, and Lazy Lightning offer an eclectic array of options for "average Joe's" that people writing for newspapers will never provide. They get to those places that open and close within six months, before the newspapers have even had a chance to catch up to the local scene buzz on and they offer a much different look into restaurants that are reviewed by such big names as the Star Tribune and get the opinion that they suck a whole lot worse than the Star Tribune's editors would permit them to say.
If the local bloggers don't do it for you, check out Chow's Midwest Section or MNspeak's Food Category, they might offer some other insight for you.
Restaurant Critics are definitely obsolete, unfortunately, pompous ones like Zimmern just don't know it yet.