Part 2: Who Judges Restaurants?

Who Judges Restaurants?

Claiborne’s role in the development of restaurant criticism and food writing is undeniable. But was he really the first food journalist? Let’s watch author and former New York Times food critic Molly O’Neill discuss the topic.

O’Neill indicates Clementine Paddleford, to whom we dedicate a unit in this course, as the first food journalist in the modern sense. According to O’Neill, Claiborne outshined Paddleford because he was a professional and gifted male journalist who took advantage of the economic boom following the end of World War II, and a capable navigator of the internal politics of the New York Times, which was becoming the newspaper of record.

While this writing genre was relatively new in the U.S., in France food and restaurant reviews had constantly been visible in printed media since the early 1800s, when Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1838) published his first critiques about shops and eateries in Paris. 

From 1803 to 1812, he published the Almanach des Gourmands, which reported the views expressed by a committee (called Jury des Dégustateurs) on dishes and delicacies offered by caterers, restaurants, delis, and pastry chefs of Paris. de la Reynière and his colleagues expected to be rewarded for positive reviews. The concept of impartial and objective critic came only later. The Almanac also contained Parisian itineraries that signaled the most interesting businesses for a growing audience of gourmets.

Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Almanach-des-Gourmands.jpg Links to an external site.

It is no coincidence that food criticism began just after the French Revolution. With the growth of the bourgeoisie, growing segments of the public were able to patronize high-quality shops and restaurants, especially in cities where such establishments multiplied. Not only customs and manners, but also taste itself underwent a slow process of sophistication, careful investigation, and codification. As their experience expanded, some proclaimed themselves — and were later acknowledged — as experts and judges. Their influence on the bourgeois public culinary sensibility was undeniable. Although they often deferred to the standards and cooking styles previously developed by the upper classes, these new critics played a democratizing function, as they spread knowledge previously limited to the elite and allowed the broader population to develop their own preferences and categories of taste. Like the Dandies in England with regards to fashion and clothing, with attitudes at times eccentric and extreme, the new French food critics established new rules and parameters in a historical moment when old social structures were undermined by political and economic changes.

France was also the birthplace of gastronomic tourist guides. Right before War World I, the French Touring Club published La géographie des gourmets au pays de France (French Gourmet Geography) which became the model for similar guidebooks in other parts of the world and inspired books about local and regional cuisines. The increasing use of cars to organize leisure trips influenced this kind of texts. In 1920, the tire manufacturer Michelin started adding restaurant addresses to its list of tire and repair shops in France.

In 1926, a star was introduced to signal the best restaurants in each province, and the 1931 edition of the guidebook developed the three stars system, extended also to restaurants in Paris. Since Michelin, many guidebooks have been published all over the world. In Unit 2, we discussed how Michelin was criticized in France by new generations of critics from the 1960s, such Gault and Millot. For good and bad, restaurant guides — ranging from the local to the national in their scope — have become a fixture in the world of food. Some are the direct reflection of the knowledge of single experts. Others use a system similar to Michelin’s, where teams of anonymous experts produce a common judgment and give points. Others still, like the American Zagat, prefer to convey the evaluations sent by normal restaurant-goers, which publishers then tally and organize. Due to its success, this kind of food writing has a great impact on the industry: the most prestigious and authoritative media outlets can make or break a chef with their write-ups.

Food and restaurant criticism shares editorial and cultural elements with another important literary genre, traveling guides, which have played a fundamental role in shaping contemporary leisure habits. For instance, critiques of restaurants and shops are often organized in itineraries that can vary in range from a neighborhood to a city or even to a whole country. Travel guides often contain a section dedicated to eating out, where authors not only give advice about restaurants, markets, and shops, but also introduce readers to foreign culinary traditions, often functioning as a cultural intermediary. As a matter of fact, a critical analysis of travel guides and their food sections can provide useful information about the preconceptions and the bias of one culture toward another: different kinds of food can be framed as appetizing, scary, disgusting, strange, or familiar, thus appealing to different categories of travelers and consumers.

Following the advent of the web 2.0, food blogging and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have become increasing influential. On established outlets connected with publishers, readers are on the receiving end of the message even when websites include forums and the possibility to respond to posts. In the case of blogs and social networks, however, individuals are able to make their voices heard through words, photograph, videos, and audio. The common use of digital video recorders, audio recorders and cameras make posting of multimedia very easy and inexpensive. As a consequence, many food lovers now keep track of their cooking experiments, restaurant outings, and the dishes and wines they have tasted, giving their opinion and often positioning themselves as connoisseurs. At times, these practices have elicited criticism among food professionals, who feel that people judging their work do not have the experience and the credentials to really understand what they are talking about. At times the criticism becomes comedy, like in the video Eat It Don't Tweet It.

Whatever their evaluation, online interactions subvert the usual communicative roles where experts exert authority and claim legitimacy to judge other people’s work, by affirming that everybody can be an expert. At times the popularity of certain blogs turn their authors into celebrities, who then move onto food writing, TV shows, and even movies.