What is the responsibility of a restaurant reviewer?

I took this picture of a crab boil as my son was about to tuck into it. Had no idea he was setting himself up for such a ghoulish experience.

I guess there are still some small markets where a media outlet will provide a review as part of an advertising package for a restaurant. But more likely, the restaurant reviewer is presumed to be independent and reporting their experience objectively so the reader can make informed dining decisions. In cities like New York and San Francisco, this responsibility is taken very seriously and reviewers will make multiple visits before reviewing, then return on a periodic basis.

Which brings me to a brouhaha that’s currently happening in my local food scene in the New York capital district, around a review recently written by the leading newspaper’s main reviewer for a Cajun-style seafood place. The complete review is here, and it’s worth reading in its entirety because there are some positive comments, but here are a couple of key excerpts:

“Diners wearing purple surgical gloves pluck crustaceans from clear plastic trash bags and plink waste into anodized buckets like a surreal post-op party at a hospital… The well-oiled promise is of a ‘Louisiana-inspired restaurant’ with fresh seafood, customizable Cajun flavorings, Bayou cocktails and house-made desserts. We find none of that here. Food is either forgettable or inedible and by meal’s end the uneaten detritus is the subject of morbid fascination … No matter how you sauce your boil (dry, Cajun, lemon pepper are options), it arrives in a lunacy of diced garlic so thickly carpeted it burns like toxic waste and leaves hands and guts reeking for days. Cheap crawfish are at least correctly bright orange bugs to snap from shells, unlike spindly, damp, gray snow crab legs that trail like deadman’s hands from the deep.”

One gets the feeling the reviewer is unfamiliar with the concept of a seafood boil, in which a bunch of crawfish or other items are cooked in a spicy liquor then dumped on your table to be picked apart and eaten by hand. “Surgical gloves” and “trash bags” translate a straightforward description of the experience into something ghoulish. “Lunacy of diced garlic” is simply garlic sauce which is actually good (I’ve eaten there) and unlikely to “burn like toxic waste and leave hands and guts reeking for days.”

This reviewer so in love with the sound of her own voice that she had to bully this restaurant (where, she points out, many of the servers don’t speak adequate English) for the amusement of her friends, her readers looking for jollies rather than information, and most of all herself. She’s definitely not executing the responsibility of a restaurant reviewer–and she’s just getting warmed up.

Here’s what she says about the seafood tower, presumably a presentation of cooked and raw seafood: “a travesty of mushy shrimp, parched oysters flopped like limp tongues and swollen clams of an indeterminate tangy stickiness that strike alarm in the eyes of my guests, who refuse more. Great rubbery crabs’ limbs bend against our dutiful efforts to crack them open. When we succeed, they unleash incontinent gushes from boggy, defrosted flesh… Nothing can save us from a reckless decision to bite into deep-fried Bayou fried oysters that spurt out a sort of sickly wretched bile that has us worried we won’t make it through the night. A perfunctory gumbo lacks life or salt, and a head-on-shrimp left on top has committed hara-kiri in its shell.”

Okay, we get it, the seafood wasn’t fresh. But “sickly wretched bile” is another way to say that an oyster is filled with flavorful liquid. And if a shrimp committed hara-kiri, that’s sad (I didn’t know they were so intellectually evolved) but doesn’t actually describe the food or the dining experience.

Today Dominick Purmono, the owner and manager of one of the leading and most-respected restaurants in the area, shared on Facebook a letter that he wrote to the newspaper where these reviews appear about the responsibility of a restaurant reviewer. I’ll share it in its entirety:

“I was incredibly disheartened to read Susie Davidson Powell’s recent review of The Boil Shack. I understand that in a time of sensationalized journalism, egregious editorial reviews can elicit website clicks, boost social media shares, and sell newspapers and ad space. In my opinion, however, the review was below the standard of professionalism befitting a 162-year-old journalistic institution such as the Times Union.

“The review is saturated with self-aggrandizement and showcases the author’s desire to use such a powerful, public platform to shame these hard-working restaurateurs and staff. A journalist with any sense of empathy would have recognized that the restaurant is in flux, possibly even in peril. Perhaps she could have decided that these human beings don’t deserve to be treated so harshly during their inaugural period, privately shared her thoughts with the principals, and then returned for a re-review in a few months to allow them time to work out their miscues and better themselves and their business. Instead, Ms. Powell chose to emphasize all the problems of an establishment in its infancy, putting in jeopardy the reputation and livelihood of scores of people.

“Restaurants are hard work. They are astronomically expensive to open and to continue to operate. They require long hours of excruciating, humbling, back breaking work. They have thousands of moving parts and radiate with a sense of urgency and intensity akin to an operating room—especially when utilizing products that have shelf lives measured in hours. Her article does nothing more than devastate the painstaking efforts and morale of the people who have worked so hard to bring a dream to reality.

“Shouldn’t a restaurant reviewer’s goal be to introduce readers to dining experiences that highlight the culinary richness and gastronomic diversity of our region—and not to publicly humiliate members of our community? Simply put, the review is ruthless, it is cruel, it is heartbreaking for those involved, and it is unnecessarily mean.

“Congratulations to the team at The Boil Shack for creating something exciting & new and focusing your collective efforts towards a common goal.” (I couldn’t help bold-facing that penultimate paragraph because the sentiment is beautifully stated as far as the responsibility of a restaurant reviewer and where this review falls short.)

I write Yelp reviews from time to time and am well aware of the hostility many restauranteurs have toward Yelp because of wise-mouth reviewers who are the equivalent of the writer described above, pleasuring themselves, settling a grudge, or possibly trying to sabotage a place where they were fired or had some other negative experience.

I’m also aware that the vast majority of Yelp reviewers are not like that. They try hard to describe their dining experience for the benefit of others and they are recognized by votes, which cause their reviews to rise to the top of a restaurant’s review page where they are more likely to be seen.

“Self-aggrandizement” is a perfect description of what not to do if you are a restaurant reviewer, and what to watch out for if you are reading restaurant reviews. Unfortunately, this trait is found more and more in our society today and not just in restaurant reviewers.