Signed, Anonymous.
August 29th, 2007 by Brian Ries in Restaurants, ReviewsAbut a month ago, the New York Daily News hired a brand new restaurant critic with a gimmick: she’s a food blogger and she’s not anonymous. You can read here in the corporate fluff piece how she feels it’s important for “readers to have someone to identify with” and how “her radar will be tuned to determine whether she’s getting special treatment.” A bit naive, in my opinion. A lot of people seem to agree.
You can read Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires for copious examples of how recognition can affect a dining experience - her Le Cirque review is a classic treatise on the subject - but the culture of dining critic anonymity isn’t universal. At The Times of London, pics are posted with critics’ bylines; no matter where you are, a Google image search can often turn up a pic or two of even the most circumspect reviewer. Here’s my pic.
As always, I’ll be dressing in drag, undergoing regular plastic surgery and faking my own death every few months, just to keep my mystery man image intact. Maybe image was the wrong word.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:06 pm
On that new Bravo reality show, Welcome to the Parker, they have a food critic come and judge the hotel’s various food options. They all knew who she was (and she was full of it, lemme tell you), and it made me wonder how different her experience would have been had they not known who she was. I think dining anonymously defintely gives you the dining experience that any laymen would have at a restaurant, and isnt that what you’re supposed to be judging? How a meal would be for the average diner?