Do restaurant critics need kitchen experience? Not necessarily, says Jesse Mulligan. But there are some essential skills.
“What gives you the right to be a restaurant reviewer?”
It’s the criticism I hear most often, and though you might think it’d hurt my feelings, being called out online is much more
manageable when you realise that everyone is just doing their jobs. It’s the job of emerging food writers to fire shots at the old ones (I used to do it too); it’s the job of columnists to make their take as hot and clickable as possible; and it’s the job of chefs to boost their social media numbers by occasionally railing against the media – I get it, content is content.
Often the question about qualification is rhetorical – a way of making a point without really wanting an answer – but sometimes it’s asked with genuine curiosity. Even when people ask in the nicest possible way, “so how did you get into this job?”, I think it’s often what they’re getting at.
The biggest misconception is that a restaurant critic ought to have worked in a restaurant. Art critics don’t need to be painters; fashion critics don’t need to be designers; there is no need for a film critic to have served their time as a lighting assistant before they dare write about film. And the same is true of food critics.
I understand the objection. How can I complain about the prawn cocktail being late when I’ve never had to assemble one under pressure myself (though I could argue a blended family Christmas comes close)? Because my job is to represent the meal not from the perspective of the kitchen but from the perspective of the diner: someone who has no idea what was going on backstage either.
“How was your wedding anniversary dinner?”
“Well, the food never showed up, but that’s because of a supplier issue and a breakdown in communication between the sous chef and front of house – so all good!”
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What you do need as a restaurant critic is a knack for noticing and describing the memorable stuff about a meal. Chefs might hope that’s the food but in 12 months you’re more likely to remember the toilet door that wouldn’t lock properly. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, “people won’t always remember what they ate, but they’ll remember how the bathrooms made them feel”.
Lest this column so far feel like rage bait to chefs, I should take a moment to say that I could never in a million years do what they do, and that a great chef offers more to the world than a great reviewer, any day of the week.
Back to my qualifications: some food knowledge is good, but you pick that up along the way too. You could send a monkey out to eat in Auckland once a week for 15 years and by the end he’d have quite a bit to say on the matter. I know this is true because that monkey is me.
So, know your food, put in the yards and have some talent for communicating what you’ve experienced to the wider public. And then there’s only one more ingredient a food critic needs: kindness.
That quality took me a little longer to find, and I still fail from time to time. Chefs, diners, food writers … we are all, at the end of the day, in this together. We’re human beings with our own aspirations and insecurities and failings. The best restaurant critic will remember that it is human lives and livelihoods he is writing about, and that approaching the job with a bit of grace and humility is perhaps the best north star of all.
What you’ve asked, and what he’s shared.
Dining and Cooking