other people's food for thought

At the recent food blogging conference, where I was given the generous opportunity to talk about how and why I blog, restaurant reviewing was a hot topic. It’s something I’ve always felt uncomfortable about. I’m caught between the role of review as public service (vegetarian-friendly, caters for vegans, has healthy food, great food but under-patronized etc), or conversely not wanting to add to the publicity of an already hard to get a table at local favourite. Because I have a limited dietary range, whenever I’ve actually reviewed an eatery I’ve made it clear how this filters my experience of the menu.

Holidays are different. Reverting back to blogging in it’s original form as a web log/online diary, I’ve seen documenting dinning experiences in places like Bali, Malaysia or New Zealand as a way of sharing holiday highlights rather than an actual review. Just as I’ve found some delightful meals in out of the way places thanks to some nifty googling, so too are the many hits the blog has had for eating in Gili Air or Melaka.

An event late last year, which I haven’t written about before, crystallised my discomfort with reviews. That being, negative aspects of reviews can potentially impact on individuals who own or cook in such eateries. I think that a fair review is not gushingly uncritical nor an unnecessarily negative one and that balance lies somewhere in the middle. If I have an issue with the food, service or overall experience, I’ll own it if it’s due to my own mood or picky eating habit.

Out of the blue I answered the phone at work late last year to hear an aggressive man bark down the line “Are you the person who writes a blog called Confessions of a Food Nazi?” As you may have noticed, the blog is anonymous, though even before speaking at the conference it really only took two clicks of a mouse to work out my identity. It’s not so much that I want to be anonymous so I can write nasty reviews; the issue is that blogging is my hobby and I don’t like to blur the boundaries between work and my non-work (I am so not an entrepreneur!). While writing under a pseudonym I accept that I'm still accountable and identifiable and don't do anything to subvert that.

On the other end of the line, entirely out of context, was a chef/restaurant co-owner who had a beef with a response that I’d made to a series of untraceable comments* regarding a follow up to my original review of his restaurant. The place was getting quieter by the week and I dared suggest that unless all his ardent supporters ate there more often that they’d be out of business in a few months.

“How’d you like it if I said that you’d be out of business soon?” he shouted. He had a good point; I’d be very upset if unsubstantiated comments about my service were published on the internet. But the point he missed entirely was that I’d asked people to eat there and see what they made of the place, I’d asserted the good lineage of the restaurant and that although I didn’t have a huge choice the food was ok. It was just that it seemed to have an identity crisis and for some reason it didn’t work as a whole. Neighbours commented on a similar issue. I had a bundle of feedback from his target user group that I was happy to share with him on the phone but no matter how often I said, “I’m on your side – I want your restaurant to work” he kept shouting over me.

And clearly the restaurant wasn’t working. My predictions were correct. A few weeks after the verbal assault down the phone the place shut up shop and last week in Epicure I read that it was sold and the new owner had reopened under a similar name. I cycled past it on the weekend and observed a friendly looking chap serving a large table of relaxed looking people. They had the look of those who’ve just eaten a satisfying meal – a marketing tableau that money can’t buy.

Back to the phone call, two actually, with the chef who was most likely haemorrhaging money and understandably stressed. The reality is that a low traffic blog such as this, would have no real influence on the success or failure of his business. Interestingly, though there was one anodyne review in The Age shortly after it opened, nowhere else on the net was a review of any kind. It was flying under the radar and attracting no interest, no buzz. I called him back a few hours later after rereading my posts and the comment in light of his criticism, to point out that I’d qualified what I’d said and in fact done everything at the time that he’d later requested (i.e. “why didn’t you tell people to come and try it for themself?”). We ended up having an interesting conversation about the restaurant business. Though unfortunately he spent most of the time blaming other people and the location. We never actually touched on the fact that his menu seemed out of synch with the clientele he wanted to attract. It was not bad food, just priced higher than the locals were willing to pay for it. Only time will tell whether the new owner can make a go of the enterprise or the location is the "lemon" he asserted it was.

I was glad I could justify my criticisms and that it was a fair review, so that once he’d calmed down I could go over each point with him and gain some grudging acceptance. In the end the only issue he had was casting aspersions on the chances of the restaurant staying open. I guess I won that point too but perhaps there was a possibility that the venture could have been a success if he was able to take on board feedback – from a blogger as well as locals who’d stopped eating there.

My question to you the reader, local eater or fellow blogger – what do you think of blog based restaurant reviews? Do you write them? Do they help guide your eating out choices? How do blog reviews differ from print media? Is one or the other likely to be more impartial? Do you ever suspect a blogger or journalist is getting undisclosed freebies for their reviews? Could food bloggers be legitimate restaurant "consultants"?

I do read reviews from a handful of blogs. On the whole, I tend to ignore writers who only give glowing reviews or are too subjective, Gourmet Traveller included! I tend to skirt around simple reviews that merely say I like this or didn’t like that if it’s without context. And of course, being the Food Nazi, the lovers of meat and dairy are not the ones I tend to consult. But I’ll own that. One thing I love reading blog restaurant reviews for is something largely ignored by the print media, those covering dietary niches. I search for new vegan eateries when my sister visits and enjoy discovering allergy-friendly restaurants beyond the hippy ghetto. I love reviews exploring the diverse eating opportunities in my own neighbourhood as well as ones across town that I rarely get to visit.

What are your thoughts?

* a tip for restaurant owners - if you're going to plaster blog reviews with comments under various guises then consider writing in a variety of personas with different "voices" and genders. It helps also if you've commented on other local food blogs under those names too. Just a thought.