Restaurant Criticism: Is Anonymity Possible, Post-Google?

Many restaurant critics treasure their anonymity, slipping into restaurants and sampling dishes without fearing they’re getting special treatment. But as Regina Schrambling writes in today’s Los Angeles Times, that’s becoming increasingly difficult to do in a post-Google environment. “After Google, the rules are being rewritten by the hour,” she writes. “When any human being is searchable online not just verbally but visually, how can a critic possibly hope to retain anonymity long enough to give a restaurant a fair evaluation? Throw blogs into the mix and it’s a mashup of Facebook and a masquerade ball. In the last month, a youngish but old-style critic adamant about his anonymity has been involuntarily outed for all of cyberspace and thousands of magazine readers to see, while a blogger-turned-critic happy to bask in the limelight has been hired by a newspaper that puts her pulchritude on prominent display with every review.”

All of that prompts the question, is anonymity critical in fairly assessing a restaurant?

Opinions vary, but Los Angeles critic Jonathan Gold, whose mug was splashed across newspapers after he won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, told the Times he “noticed absolutely no difference in being recognized in restaurants. None. Zero.”

That said, Gold ventures into the kinds of hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants we love, where the owners and chefs probably aren’t expecting big-name critics to walk through the door often.

Related on World Hum:
* Restaurants ‘Nudge Diners’ in Campaign for Zagat Votes
* And the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Travel Writings Goes to?

Related on TravelChannel.com:
Anthony Bourdain: Good Places to Eat (Video)

Photo by pixeljones via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

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