About food reviews..

“I love this restaurant because they give free flow of bread.  It’s so soft and delicious”.  You’ve heard it all before.  This is a very common food critic comment these days.  With the proliferation of social media and web blogging, anyone can be a food critic.  For restaurant owners and chefs, it can be a nightmare.  As chefs, we think “what the heck are they talking about?  Shouldn’t they be focusing on my wonderful cut of beef, the hours I spent testing and perfecting the sauce to go with the meat?” 

Although it is ideal, I think it’s a little too harsh to say that all food critics must be trained chefs because eating is extremely personal.  A dish that speaks to me may not do the same for you.  Why you may ask?  Not only may the dish be perfectly executed, staying true to it’s origin, but maybe it’s because it takes me to a certain time, reminds me of a certain person, evokes a certain nostalgic childhood memory that is only personal to me.  All of this coupled with exceptional service adds to my final enjoyment of the dish itself.

 All I ask is that if you want to be a food critic and you want to write about it, you should at least know your stuff.  By that I mean if you want to review a certain restaurant or a certain cuisine, good photography skills and words such as “this meat is so nice or they give free flow of water” just doesn’t cut it.  Please do us all a favour by ensuring that you do your research so that you can write intelligently.  If you say the dish is too salty, have you ever considered that it’s actually suppose to be that way?  Read cookbooks, go to cooking classes, build your culinary vocabulary, travel far and wide.  Understand how the dish was actually put together, what’s the inspiration, culture and history behind it?  Develop and train your palate to taste everything you come across.  Don’t limit yourself to only certain types of food or ingredients unless you want to be an expert only in that narrow field.  Food must be your life and you must live for food.  Otherwise, who will believe you?   It is only through living and breathing food, writing about it, cooking it, and tasting it will you build up an expertise and most of all, credibility to support your review.