After 12 Years of Reviewing Restaurants, I'm Leaving the Table

He had reviewed some of the restaurants that I previously opened/ran. He was generally a nice enough, but standoffish guy. I’ll never forget the feeling of realizing he was seated. One of those moments that you train for, and now it was game time . There are all sorts of tricks that people employ, cheat sheets with reviewers photos (there is one unfortunate photo of him that everyone has, it must be on every restaurant office wall in NYC), serving extra dishes to the tables around him (so that he got a look at things he didn’t order but should have), and calling friends to fill an empty dining room when he sat down for example. It was always an awkward interaction, he knew I knew, I knew he knew I knew. I generally think Sifton was a better writer, I appreciate that he reviewed restaurants that weren’t your typical white male chef joints, and I’m happy to see Tejal still doing well out west. I’m particularly excited to read some Mellissa Clark reviews in the meantime.

Right when FiveThirtyEight launched, they did a brilliant piece of content strategy in that one of their very first pieces was a quest to find the best burrito in America [1]. Anna Maria Barry-Jester self reportedly "traveled more than 20,000 miles around the United States and eaten 84 burritos in two rounds (to say nothing of the dozens of extracurricular burritos I polished off)."

I was glued to the series as it plodded on week by week and it still sticks in my mind today as simultaneously the best and worst job in the world I could imagine. Part of what made it so enthralling to read was this grand act of human perversity that a single woman would endure such a gruelling quest for such a trivial question and she made you feel that perversity along every step of the journey.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americas-best-burrito/

My favorite is his 2015 review of Señor Frogs in Times Square: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/dining/senor-frogs-review...

The following year The New Yorker wrote a profile of him which features some of the backstory. "Is it possible to say with a straight face that Señor Frog’s is a better restaurant than Per Se? Can you get those words out without collapsing under your own idiocy?"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/pete-wells-the...

Great article.

If you ask a real chef, "What do home chefs do wrong the most?"

They will often say, "Not enough butter, not enough salt."

Last spring, I was at my friends new at the time restaurant, when he let me know that Pete Wells was at the table behind us (and how important this night was for my friend) -- I noticed the sheer amount of food - pretty much the entire menu - that was coming and going from that table. I didn't even put it in to perspective how demanding that was on the body, since all I could think of was how I wish I had his job tasting amazing food all the time. The review came out a few weeks later, and it was a pretty nice review - took quite some time before reservations were obtainable again.

I miss Caity and Rich at Gawker, they indeed had the best reviews.

https://www.gawkerarchives.com/the-best-restaurant-in-new-yo...

Here in the Philly area we have a guy doing cheesesteaks.

https://www.philadelphiacheesesteakadventure.com/

I'd also comment that, in general, even though I've had jobs with tenures that many HN readers would consider ridiculously long, I mostly settled into the decade +/- space outside of a couple (of short) "events" outliers. Even with making some changes along the way sometimes, that ended up my been-there/done-that range.

Obviously people are different but that has been my experience.

Giles Coren (The Times of London restaurant reviewer) said that he reckoned he gained 1 ounce for every meal he reviewed.

Yeah, I think anyone who travels a lot for work very quickly realizes that restaurant food eaten everyday, if you're not careful, will very rapidly put pounds on you. Now with Wells' article we know how much worse it becomes if that's your job too.

As Anthony Bourdain wrote... "In a good restaurant, what this all adds up to is that you could be putting away almost a stick of butter with every meal." He's not exaggerating!

If everyone in the business knows your face isn't the review going to be skewed? Shouldn't the reviewers strive for anonymity?

I am up to the challenge of trying to be a food critic, but without gaining weight. I would review food once every 3 days and do a lot of cardio and eat les on the off days.

That would be a rough ride for your health. I remember back when Adam Richman was doing the original run of Man vs Food and he was looking like death towards the end.

Couldn’t the negative effects of 4 rich meals a week be countered by eating healthier the rest of the time and having a consistent exercise routine?

Just start on semaglutides, and eat in smaller portions like the women critics he describes in the article do. I think quitting a good critic job for your health is pretty silly when there are modern workarounds that mostly solve the issue.

This is the guy that trashed Guy Fieri's restaurant, right? Guy Fieri (and his restaurants') style might not be for everyone, but he's such a sweetheart and does so much for small businesses, not to mention firefighters etc., that you have to be pretty cold to do that. Still makes me mad.