Foodie? Or not foodie?

Abstract

Following Sunday Times restaurant critic A A Gill’s strident attack on theatre reviewers, Charles Spencer, drama critic of The Daily Telegraph, hits back by examining the work of some of the many restaurant reviewers crowding the pages of the daily and Sunday national newspapers. He writes: “Restaurant reviewers tend to divide into those who might be described as the serious foodies, who fill you up with lots of hard facts and background info, and the ego-trippers, who use their notices largely as an excuse for personal rumination, slabs of autobiography and jokes... By and large restaurant reviewers are a bone-idle bunch. With the exception of Fay Maschler, in the London Evening Standard, who usually goes to three restaurants a week, they confine themselves to just one establishment. In contrast, theatre critics on daily newspapers are usually out four, five and sometimes six times a week, while Sunday reviewers will cover at least three shows and often more. The restaurant reviewers’ far from Stakhanovite approach to the task in hand increases my puritanical suspicion that restaurant writing isn’t an entirely serious form of journalism but just a jammy way of getting paid to eat posh grub for free.”