My Take On Food Critics

Food critics get paid to critique restaurants and the chefs that create the menu, recently a well known food critic in Hawaii passed on, and I'm sorry he did, I did not know this guy, but from what I understand he was a harsh critic, and restaurant owners prayed for a great or at least a decent review. I understand journalists have that constitutional right to write, and share their opinions at times. However, the power that some critics have on the masses is enormous, and I was just thinking if I was a restaurant owner, and had some critic come in and destroy my establishment through his or her columns, I'd be worried and pissed at the same time.

Say I am here on Maui, which I am, I have a good local following, but some hot shot pen pusher comes in and just hates me, and my restaurant, and he pens it, I can't help but think, there goes some business, maybe, maybe not so bad, but I do think there would be more bad than good.

I do think restaurant owners who have a following, don't need to have some hot shot critic come in and critique their establishment, if you're selling your product, you're okay and good to keep on going. No one needs in these economic times to have a bad review, your local customers will let you know right off the bat if our filet mignon sucks. Yeah, you don't need the critic in there. And with social media, there's a good bet, people are Facebooking or Tweeting your dig now anyhow, that's better, you get real feedback from real customers.

Critics are part of that industrial age, who needs them, outsource your own critics, your customers are the best ones. Again, I'm all for honest feedback, but if my meals need a makeover, I don't need a critic telling the whole world about it, my local foodies will do, and we'll get to making it more valuable again. All I'm saying is critics suck, from music mags, to movie reviews, who needs them. I go by friends, "Hey Ron check out this movie it's great man." "Hey Ron try out this restaurant, it's good." I'll go by word of mouth, and then again, maybe critics do serve a purpose for people far away... What the hell, critics are there, restaurants are there, hopefully a bad review won't bankrupt some mom and pop on Main Street USA right? It can happen, I mean a bad review can crumble someone without a heavy stash of cash. Bad news travels at the speed of sound.

Imagine, a full load of passengers on a 767, a hundred of them read a bad review of your restaurant, and all of them said, "Yeah Jim the foodie said 'Ron's suck' let's not go there." That's a hundred possible customers that will not show up. I'm a student of business, and numbers, so yeah a food critic giving a bad name to a dig can kill it. Sorry, I think I'm right.