Today marks the 50th anniversary of the New York Times restaurant review. We're honoring the art of criticism in a series on the subject. It took Jay Rayner around 700 words to lay waste to a Russian empire. In a blistering review of famed Moscow restaurateur Arkady Novikov's eponymous London outpost this past February, the Observer critic pronounced the establishment so “astoundingly grim you want to congratulate the kitchen on its incompetence” and compared its cuisine to cheap Chinese food. He was just getting warmed up. “And so my advice to you. Don't go to Novikov. Keep not going. Keep not going a lot,” Rayner wrote. “In a city with a talent for opening hateful and tasteless restaurants, Novikov marks a special new low. That's its real achievement.” Harsh words, but for a professional restaurant critic, this was par for the course. As with any creative medium, the culinary arts are subjected to critical judgments. With the good, comes the bad. Or in the case of Novikov, the “very, very bad.” While some readers might think restaurant critics write with sharp knives, a poison-dipped pen and a particular appetite for disdain, those in the field argue otherwise. Their mandate is to be objective, to give an honest appraisal of the restaurant to their readers. “You still have a basic job to do; you’ve got to get it right, and that’s what people expect,” says Rayner, whose eBook “My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out” will be released on June 1. And part of getting it right means occasionally dropping, what the restaurant industry calls, the “goose egg” – a zero-star review that in essence says, “Take your hard-earned money elsewhere.” “With the negative reviews, I once said they were like chest infections and car crashes – they were things that happened to me, not things I went out looking for,” says Rayner. Hanna Raskin, the restaurant critic for Seattle Weekly , also agrees critics do not go to a restaurant because they know it’s going to be abysmal. “Not only is the writing not fun, but the research isn’t fun either. We’re the ones that have to eat that bad food again and again and again.” But before pen is put to paper, critics must get to the marrow of the matter and decide if the lousy restaurant is even worth a review. With a new hot spot opening nearly every week in major metropolitan areas, it’d be an unfeasible – and stomach-straining – task to conquer them all. “I’ll review it if it’s a restaurant that people are serious about because of a prominent location or well-known chef or local restaurateur behind it. Basically, if it’s something that my readers really want to know about,” says John Kessler, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's dining critic . Raskin and Rayner also cite the prominence of the chef, location and media campaign. If the venue in question is a little mom and pop place, it’s simply not reasonable. “The times when I haven’t written about a restaurant at all is when I realize the restaurant is not one that deserves the attention of a national newspaper,” says Rayner. To put it in stateside perspective, he compares it to reviewing a dreadful restaurant in Boise, Idaho. If no one is planning to go or already going there, the review won’t be entertaining – or more importantly, serviceable to the reader. A large part of that entertainment value is drawn from how the reviewer crafts the language of “the slam.” That means letting people know how things taste and how much things cost; a full sense of the harrowing experience often with a side of relatively good-natured snark. “We don’t want to sound like the disgruntled Yelper,” says Kessler, who maintains he’s always a half a grade nicer in print than if he were talking to a friend. “You don’t want to sound offended or bent out of shape if the restaurant is bad. You want to be a nice person about it but you also want to go to town.” Raskin also says that, in her negative reviews, the reader should infer “that it was probably even worse.” Rayner, however, serves it in the raw: what he says in the review is what he thought. “The ability of people in the restaurant business to screw things up and find unique ways to screw things up never ceases to amaze me,” he says, adding he’s in the business of selling newspapers, not restaurants. Kessler admires this cultural candor. “The English people are great because they take such glee in their snarky locution. Americans will never do that. We just can’t. It’s not in our culture to be poetic a**holes.” But, U.K. critics aren’t the only one finding glee in negativity – the audience relishes it as well. Raskin says she actually gets more positive comments from readers when she prints negative reviews. “Almost every time I wrote something negative, I get the feedback, ‘I’m so glad you’re telling it like it is. I’m so glad you said that.’ And nobody ever says that when I write a good review,” she said. To this point, Rayner cites a Leo Tolstoy quote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What makes that particular restaurant bad also makes it unique – and uniqueness makes a much more compelling story. There's also a touch of schadenfreude, or pleasure derived from others' misfortunes. “You start your Sunday morning reading a terrible review of somebody’s restaurant and as long as you’re not the chef’s mother, you’re probably going to feel slightly better for the rest of the day,” says Rayner, who at one point spoke with a clinical psychologist about readers’ penchant for social comparing. “I often say that my column is read for vicarious pleasure or brackish displeasure,” he adds. Yet, for every disparaging word written and read, these critics realize the pen is mightier than the fork. In 2003, master French chef Bernard Loiseau took his own life following a bad review of his restaurant, the Cote d'Or, by GaultMillau and reports that he would lose his third Michelin star – the highest rating a restaurant can attain by the Michelin Guide . While Loiseau already suffered from depression, some felt the reviews may have been his breaking point. In 2007, after former New York Times critic Frank Bruni awarded zero stars to restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow’s Kobe Club, Chodorow fired back. He ran a full-page ad in the Times attacking Bruni’s assessment , citing the review as a personal attack and questioning Bruni’s qualifications to be in the critic’s post. When Raskin was the food critic for the Dallas Observer, she said she received death threats. And Rayner has been invited outside for a go. “I think most critics realize it’s not just the chef or the owner you’re addressing here, but the careers of the cooks in the kitchen, the dishwashers and the servers all ultimately depend on what you say,” said Raskin. “We take this responsibility very seriously.” As journalists, they know how it feels to be subject to an outsider's opinion. “To be a writer is an act of great arrogance – to think that anybody would give a damn about what you have to say. You, therefore, have to take what anybody wants to say about you – and it’s not fun,” says Rayner. Ultimately, critics are paid for how they write, not how they eat – and for restaurants on the receiving end, that’s the bitter truth. Take Our Poll Do you have a favorite “bad” review? We'd love if you'd share it in the comments below. Previously – For restaurant reviewers, are health risks at critical mass? and Everyone's a critic, some just call it their day job
Editor’s note: Carolyn Hax has been doling out advice to readers for 15 years. To mark the anniversary of her “Tell Me About It” column, we’re republishing the very first installment, which ran in The Washington Post’s Style section on Monday, May 19, 1997. Tell us how you’ve used Hax’s advice in real life here . Read full article > >
This is the second of four columns by Karla Miller, winner of last month’s @Work Advice Contest . Tell us what you think and send your workplace questions to wpmagazine@washpost.com . I’ve been at a new job for a while now and have a problem. Three others in my group have been here much longer and know a lot of things that are not written down anywhere. Call it institutional knowledge. Often this is info I need to do my job, so I ask one of them. Frequently they give me wrong or incomplete info so that I look like a fool. Have you any suggestions? Read full article > >
This weekend, daylight savings time ends . Early Sunday morning, the clocks should be turned back an hour. For families with young children especially, this seasonal change can throw off the whole morning routine. Kim West, also known as The Sleep Lady , is a Maryland-based counselor who works with families on sleep issues. Below, she shares her advice on how to transition children through this weekend. (The tips also may be useful if holiday travel means a time change.) Read full article > >
On one side was an unconventional presidential candidate. He was enthralled with making documentaries to sell his ideas and captivated by the notion that wooing Chinese Americans could be a key to winning Iowa. On the other side was a team of political operatives shocked by the flamboyance of the candidate’s stumbles, his resistance to their advice and the dire state of his campaign finances. While he was away on a lavish vacation that they had warned him not to take, they drafted a memo raising the possibility of a graceful exit from the race. Read full article > >
BBC News invited comedians Lucy Porter, Arthur Smith, Miles Jupp and Hattie Hayridge to give their advice to Prince Harry about his traditional best man’s duty.
Last month, Glenn Reynolds wrote here at The Atlantic about ” The Unexpected Return of ‘Duck and Cover’ ,” recognizing the Administration for taking the dangers of a domestic nuclear attack seriously, and for publishing guidance on what people should do to survive in the event we’re ever hit with one. Yes, the advice is essentially the same as what the Truman Administration promoted in 1951, in a now-famous film short featuring Burt the cartoon turtle. And yes, the turtle’s main recommendation — if there’s an atomic explosion, get down and hide – went on to enduring ridicule as an absurd classic of early Cold War cheery paranoid kitsch. But, Reynolds explains, “duck and cover” was actually solid advice at the time; and it’s solid advice now. This week, he returns to the subject on his PJTV show “Instavision”:
Foaming at the mouth, rolling of the eyes, assuming serpentine characteristics in the face or body: all classic signs, explains Father Gary Thomas, of demonic influence. Father Thomas, pastor of the Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga, California, is an avid Giants fan and a 28-year veteran of the priesthood. He is also a practicing exorcist; in the fall of 2005, Father Thomas traveled to Rome to complete a year-long training course under the tutelage of a master Italian exorcist. The story of his training inspired The Rite , a Warner Brothers film starring Anthony Hopkins that opens in theaters Friday. Despite this fictional portrayal, Father Thomas is also the embodiment of a new trend in the American Catholic church: Long the purview of American cinema, Catholic exorcism is being reclaimed, publicly, by its real-life practitioners. A factual account of Father Thomas’s training has been published in a book by journalist Matt Baglio; the Discovery Channel recently announced the airing of a reality show featuring the accounts of trained Catholic exorcists (though the Vatican has denied any official involvement with the series); and last November, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois convened a two-day conference to discuss the practice of exorcism within the Catholic Church. “If a priest has the power to cast out demons, that’s a lot of power.” The Catholic Church does not maintain official statistics on exorcisms. Yet Bishop Paprocki estimates that there are only around 30 priests in the United States qualified to perform the Rite of Exorcism, and he argues that these priests must contend with a growing number of exorcism requests. The exorcism conference included sessions devoted to canon law and the dangers of an improperly performed exorcism, and the bishop hopes to eventually create a network of exorcists that extends across the United States. He also envisions the establishment of a formal program to train the next generation of exorcists. “The priests who have this responsibility get exorcism requests from all over the country,” he explains. “We want to prevent these priests from being overburdened.” Roughly a quarter of active bishops in the United States registered for the event, underscoring a growing interest in the Rite of Exorcism–a ritual that has remained, among American Catholics, relatively obscure. Historically, Catholics in the United States have been concerned with successfully assimilating into a majority-Protestant culture, explains Mathew Schmalz, a Professor of Religion at the College of the Holy Cross. They began to distance themselves from religious practices that came across as odd or out of place: the 1949 exorcism that inspired the 1970′s film The Exorcist , for example, was the last to be held in the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Today, however, broader changes within the church’s leadership and its flock have brought attention back to the ritual. Many of today’s Catholic worshippers are drawn from immigrant communities with a strong tradition of religious exorcism, explains Schmalz, and their members are accustomed to seeking priestly assistance with the expulsion of satanic influences. He believes that the movement also stems from an effort to reclaim the centrality and distinctiveness of the priest’s role. “There is a feeling that priests’ lack of specialness is among the reasons for a decline in interest in joining the priesthood,” he says. “If a priest has the power to cast out demons, that’s a lot of power.” Father Thomas, however, points to more insidious forces: he views the rising demand for exorcisms as a consequence of increased involvement in the occult. And once the door has been opened to satanic influence, he warns, it is both difficult and dangerous to close. An improperly trained exorcist can place both himself and his charge in great peril: “As a cardinal rule you never talk to demons,” he says. “Demons are, by their nature, devious, and they lie. They can engage you in all kinds of conversation to throw you off track.” The priest recently conveyed this advice to Anthony Hopkins, one of the stars of The Rite–a film that joins a long tradition of dramatic fictionalized depictions of the church’s battles with the devil. Yet the reality of Catholic exorcism, cautions one Pennsylvania-based priest, is far more banal. “The worst people do is growl or make noise,” he says, “although I had one client who repeated the first three lines of ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ over and over again–and that drove me crazy.” Rather than a spectacle of spinning heads and violent tantrums, he says, a true exorcism does not necessarily lend itself to the big screen; the real torment and suffering is internal.
Unlike George W. Bush, Tony Blair didn’t have his legal counsels give the opinions he wanted to hear, he just ignored them. Blair now says he thought the advice Lord Goldsmith, Blair’s attorney general, gave him before the Iraq invasion was…
President Obama is seeking the advice of former President Bill Clinton, who dealt with his own “shellacking” in 1994 and a hostile House during his second term 16 years ago. On Friday, Clinton and Obama will meet to discuss ways to move Obama’s agenda…
An interview with Casey Neistat and the debut of his doc film on Kanon vodka Video pranksters Van and Casey Neistat have been making movies together since 1999 when the debut of the iMac spurred the brothers to start editing videos at home. Over the last decade the duo’s provocative antics and DIY aesthetic has taken them from early viral fame (2003′s guerilla anti-Apple campaign ” iPod’s Dirty Little Secret “) to the Bicycle Film Festival entry ” “Bike Thief ,” in which Van repeatedly steals his own bike—obviously and in public without any argument from the hundreds of passersby. Now the subjects of their own HBO show, The Neistat Brothers , the series launched earlier this year and chronicles the video adventures and artistic short films of the team. Most recently, Casey joined forces with Kanon Organic Vodka , traveling to their Swedish headquarters to explore the history and process of the brand behind the spirit. We’re pleased to present to you the exclusive debut of the resulting love-letter that combines documentary footage with homemade stop-motion animations. The short officially premieres tonight at NYC’s Jane Hotel, also kicking off a weekly party called Jane Doe and Kanon Vodka Mondays. Below read what Casey had to say about the filmmaking process, his feelings about vodka advertising, and why NYC natives will suffer after the apocalypse. How did you get involved in the project? I’ve known Harry [of creative agency The 88 ] for a really long time and we had been looking for fun projects to do together. The brief was extremely vague, which I always find very exciting. We wanted to do something cool and we didn’t want to do anything “advertisey.” Putting an advertising label or a commercial label on this project would be a misfire. A vodka company is literally just booze in a bottle so what really differentiates those booze in a bottle companies it is branding, it makes them who they are. And that’s why so many vodka companies are so douchebaggy, because its just stupid advertising, but I think there is some interesting stuff with Kanon. It was explained to me that there is a 100 year old farmhouse that used to be run by a family of only five people, and that the CEO is a molecular biologist who is the head of the distillery. The whole thing just sounds romantic and interesting. It’s surreal. What was the process like? Seeing the physical distillery was nuts. They built it inside a building from the 1600s and they retro-fitted it with the most modern technology. My favorite shot in the video is of the mad-scientist dude that drives in a fancy trunk—that’s the guy that owns the distillery—he’s a really awesome dude who is crazy smart who just dropped a breadth of knowledge, and is extremely well-versed. There’s very little he doesn’t know about, we talked to him for like two days and we never got sick of what he had to say. He built the company from his own heart and own two hands. But anyhow, to see this guy keep this thing running covered in grease, it was very romantic, crazy, and sweet. The whole thing is understated almost. What’s your advice for aspiring filmmakers? Learn how to work with your hands; I’m totally serious. I won’t hire someone or date a girl who has not worked in a restaurant, and that’s the honest truth. I don’t think you know how it is until you’ve worked in a restaurant. The reason why I’m sending my super intellectual 12-year old kid to tech school is because I don’t believe he would succeed in this world unless he first learned to work with his hands. I’m not a cynic, but don’t you get frustrated when you meet all these NYC born-and-raised kids and they are super academic and are really crazy smart and so worldly because of their experience in the city, and they are totally fucking incapable? If the apocalypse were to come, they would totally just die immediately because they would have no idea how to do anything. They’re helpless. One of my first questions when I interview prospective employees is “do you know how big a sheet of plywood is?” Most people don’t, and say they are different sizes, but it’s 4′ x 8′ Anyway, working with your hands is a very American thing that we kinda lost here, but it’s an important skill to have. With additional reporting by Margaret Kaminski
