World Hum | Travel | Restaurant Criticism: Is Anonymity Possible, Post-Google?

Travel dispatches from a shrinking planet

Wine Spectator Gives ‘Award of Excellence’ to Fake Restaurant

Madrid Crash: MD-80 is ‘One of the Safest Planes in the Sky’

Headed to Angkor Wat? Beware the Dengue.

How Should I Spend My Time in Spain?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

Paul Theroux: Invisible Man on a Ghost Train

Jim Benning asks the author of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” about his new book, aging and the challenge of disappearing in the age of the BlackBerry

Eat Ceviche in Lima

Grab a Cusque�a and get comfortable. As Nicholas Gill explains, a trip to a Peruvian cevicher�a can be an all-day immersion in good conversation and raw seafood.

Unsentimental Journeys: Wrestling With Paul Theroux

Bronwen Dickey considers “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Great Railway Bazaar”

My Travels, My Feet

After taking one too many headless torso shots of herself, solo traveler Sophia Dembling started snapping photos of her feet around the world, from the Grand Canyon to Red Square

Affairs to Remember—On-Screen and Off

From “Roman Holiday” to “Before Sunrise,” Hollywood has understood the appeal of the overseas fling. Eva Holland explains the staying power of the big screen Euro-romance.

Seven Reasons to Have a Foreign Fling

Sure, having an overseas romance is fun. But Terry Ward points out seven other benefits to cross-border love, mon petit chou.

TRAVEL BLOG

9.12.07

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

Photo by pixeljones via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Posted by Jim Benning • 9.12.07
Categories: Weblog • Food: The Moveable Feast

Permalink • Comments (1)

COMMENTS

If you like Dessert salads after your meal I’d say that MESQUITE HEAT 5030 S. Rangeline RD Joplin MO is your place.

Actually the Salads were SUPPOSED to be the start of the meal, But they brought them after bringing out the main course.

This wasn’t a one time thing either.
It happen both times we visited MESQUITE HEAT, and the visits were months apart.

Also it doesn’t matter how you order your steak, it’ll be however they feel like bringing to you.
Certainly don’t expect the managment/owners to do anything about the uncooked steak that you,ve sent back twice.

I would give them a 2 on a 1-10 scale just because they have nice decor.

By on 9.13.07 at 09:54 AM