The role of a food critic

The New York Times' Pete Wells is one of America's best-read food critics.

He wrote that he wouldn't review Noma, a tony pop-up restaurant on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and explained why. It's very expensive in a tourist town where most of the folks couldn't afford it anyway and already sold out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/dining/noma-tulum-pete-wells-mexico-rene-redzepi.html?_r=0

Luxury goods tend to float free of the everyday world and create their own cultural context, one of wealth and exclusivity. There are many ways to respond to that, but in this case, I don’t think a review written by me is one of them.

Other critics, didn't exactly appreciate the rationale:

Wells casts his refusal to review Noma Mexico as an expression of distaste for exclusivity and preposterous luxury in a desperately poor area. Fair enough, though I’m not clear which other restaurants might fall afoul of his principles. (He is self-aware enough to recognize that he’s wading into swampy ethical waters.) But what about those of us who will never know the pleasures of spending a fortune on a piñuela sprinkled with grasshopper paste and coriander flowers? Shouldn’t we at least be permitted to read about it?

Food critics stand apart from, say, critics of most anything else in today's age. You can experience almost anything else, in some form. You can listen to Hamilton (and probably see a bootlegged copy of it, though I haven't). You can see almost anything else for cheap.

Food is different. Watching Anthony Bourdain isn't the same as tasting the food he's eating. And, to a high degree, the people who experience high-end food are rich people, because they're the only ones who can afford it.

So Wells, however rarely, took a stand here. But it's a complex stand.

I like Wells. I appreciated a "satisfactory" - but, in NYT terms, zero-star - review he did of a urban fast-food chain that has high-end chefs but just didn't serve very good food.

But he seems to relish being a contrarian and outsider, too.

 

Is not reviewing some restaurant in Mexico so notable it has to be explained?

 

This restaurant launched a 7-week run and all of its reservations were filled in just two hours.

The Washington Post had something on it a few weeks ago. Looks pretty awesome:

See photos of Noma’s pop-up restaurant in Mexico

*--This has no bearing on the OP. Either review it or don't. No need to make a spectacle of yourself.

 

Dang leftists destroying burrito stands.

Leftists Destroy Female Business Owners' Burrito Stand Because They're White

 

This has nothing to do with journalism or the topic at hand. It seems more like its own topic for sports and news.

 

That headline is insanely inaccurate. What actually seems to have happened is that they closed up shop after getting criticized. Two out of three restaurants fail within three years, but sure, blame Twitter backlash.

 

The clothes featured in fashion week are quite expensive and most folks can't afford them. The times still dedicates a large amount of space to fashion week.

 

Wow, you are a contrarian.

 

Not reviewing a popup in Mexico that's only going to exist for seven weeks? Of all the navel-gazing the Times does, this is the most craptacular in ages.

 

I know Pete. He's taken the beatings on Twitter in good humor. I don't think he should have taken them at all because he didn't need to have written about it in the first place. Let someone else write about it and play critic for the day, as they often do in travel or regional stories.

 

So the Times has already written about this restaurant from a straight-up reporting piece.

It has a restaurant reviewer and an editorial staff that has determined a review of this restaurant is not worth the time or resources. That reviewer then spends time explaining this decision in a weird "Frank Sinantra has a piñuela sprinkled with grasshopper paste and coriander flowers" piece, effectively reviewing the place by explaining why he shouldn't review it.

Not in the top million of wastes of newspaper resources this year, but in terms of thinking of your readers first, this is perplexing.