The death of the food critic
Since I started this blog, I’ve been getting myself into the food critic mind state. I’ve also come to learn about a few of the struggles that food critics face in this modern era of sensitive restaurateurs and defamation proceedings.
Gordon Ramsay has made a lot of money out of turning his expletive-laden kitchen ‘reviews’ into a highly successful TV franchise. I posted last week about the 12-year-old food critic, taking NY chefs to task with his unassumingly child-like demeanor but with the palette of a connoisseur .
Food critics play an interesting role in the hospitality industry - they can make or break a restaurant. But do people really pay attention to food reviews? Would you let a food reviewer decide your opinion upon a particular food spot? How much damage can a bad review do?
The Coco Roco restaurant remains one of the landmark food-critic-defamation cases in Australia’s history; the prime example of the power (or powerlessness?) of the food critic. In a nutshell, Matthew Evans, a reviewer from the Sydney Morning Herald went and reviewed a swanky new restaurant at King Street Wharf in Sydney. Despite the elegances of the glamorous interior, the food was shithouse and the reviewer delivered a pretty harsh critique.
Here’s a link to the review.
In response to this damning review, the proprietors of the restaurant, Aleksandra and Liliana Gacic and Branislav Ciric, were understandably distressed and sued the publisher of the Herald and Evans for defamation, citing the fact that business had suffered considerably as a result of the poor review.
The case for defamation was, at first, thrown out of court by the judge, but the restaurant owners appealed the decision. The case ended up going to the highest court in the country, err..the High Court, where the High Court, in a judgment of 6-1, supported the decision of the NSW Court of Appeal, which had concluded that the article was defamatory.
It’s an important case in terms of media regulation, because it represents the first time that a restaurant’s owners sued for defamation, not because of damage to personal reputation, but due to damage to the business’ reputation as a result of the harsh review.
Personally, I didn’t think that there was a case for defamation. Surely the purpose of a review is to provide an honest, accurate assessment of the food and dining experience at a particular restaurant?
The veteran critic and writer Leo Schofield, who himself has been sued for defamation before, said it was a bad precedent: “If a poor review leads to diminished returns at the box office of the theatre, are we going to now say that it is due to the review and not to the quality of the work?”
This is the first post of a few where we’ll be exploring the issues which are entwined with the modern food critic.
Until then, buon appetito..
