Redeeming Restaurant criticism #2, or Pirates yes they rob Ozersky?

The previous post promised, so we return, reluctantly, to considering Mr. Ozersky's analysis of the nature and function of the restaurant critic in 2011. We've seen that Ozersky is glad to see him go, and clearly has some sort of personal beef,* but beyond that, let's see if there is an argument here. Something like a premise for the post pops up here, albeit with more Sifton Slams:

The institution of Times critic, though once unassailable, has been battered by changing times. It didn't help matters that Sifton often took the jocose tone of an alt-weekly blogger** or that his review choices sometimes baffled even his admirers. And if the Times is confused, what will all the lesser papers do when they rethink their own restaurant reviews? 

For one thing, review by committee, so you can avoid issues like "Sifton's noted antipathy to fine dining or Bryan Miller's oft noted Francophilia." Again, the passive voice is Ozersky's Honeycomb Hideout.

Also, get rid of the stars, or use them more, or something:

The stars, remember, aren't just vague signifiers, like the "dope track" asterisk a music blog might put on a playlist. They represent an absolute value judgment, made with all the paper's vast authority behind it, about restaurants' relative merits. Or, Better still, how about doing away with them altogether — because we all know that no one at the Times, or anywhere else, has any idea what the tiers are in today's fragmented food scene. 

Curiously, the thesis of Ozersky's video rant is that there is some meaning that inheres in three stars, but all this is too much like a student arguing about grades for the Cod to delve further. 

The anonymity thing, Oz has a point, but the final one I cannot bear to excerpt: 

Food writing can be tough, but it's a breeze next to restaurant reviewing. How many ways are there to say something is delicious? And how many ways can you say a steak is tender or tough? Critics don't want to strive over such tedious tasks; they'd rather speak to the spirit of the age, make funny asides about the crowd, and position themselves as social observers with a keen and far-seeing eye. That's why over the past few years many have used their columns to pen wry, H.L. Mencken–esque drolleries that serve nobody but their own egos. Let's make no mistake here: the restaurant review is a service feature. Its purpose is to tell people whether they should or should not go to a place to eat there. A broad aside about the room is fine, but food is the main product a restaurant sells; that's what the critic should be focusing on. (Service matters too, but critics rarely get to really experience it the way civilians do.) In my opinion, having fought the urge so often myself, a restaurant critic should take no cheap shots, keep his opinion of hipsters and snobs strictly to himself and stick to talking about the food. He or she needs to order a lot of things and write about all of them. Period.

It's like Andy Rooney and Phyllis Schlafly had a baby who got a gig writing about food for a newsweekly. If Ozersky were writing about almost any paper besides the Times, the "service feature" concept might make sense. Instead, Ozersky insists that in the age of the Yelps and the blogs, (who will tell you what there is to eat, and if they like it) it's the job of the lead DI/DO critic to, um, tell his or her readers what they ate and if they like it. The scale of both NYC and the Times make the idea of the Wednesday review as a make or break for decisions for diners untenable -- indeed a glowing review likely has a Berra effect in the short term. There may be a dowager ensconsed on the upper East side somewhere who never looks at Eater, or Yelp, or Zagat, or whatever, reads the Wednesday Times, and if the review is three stars or better, peels of her white cotton gloves and directs her chauffeur to take her to the restaurant reviewed that day. For the rest of us, if the institution of the Times critic is to survive, a little zeitgeist along with the info about the steak will help considerably. 

 *As you watch the clip, you can almost sense the iPad turning into a Big Chief tablet, and a curious hunting hat manifesting itself on Ozersky's head.  

**WTF is an "alt-weekly blogger"? A rung down from someone whose writing for an alt weekly appears in print? 

Comments

[Myrna Minkoff]

I agree with Josh's article 100%. But points for your Ignatius J. Riley comparison - I've made the same comparison myself and Ozersky loved it.

- FOJosh

[Fesser]

You agree with your friend 100%, even when he contradicts himself? I could use friends like that.