I'm probably alone on this, but newspaper restaurant critics drive me up the wall.

The Dallas Morning News is a good example. They (she) never review a restaurant that the average Joe has ever heard of, or would be interested in visiting. The critics go "gaga" over overpriced restaurants with "celebrity" chefs, whose restaurant will be out of business in about two years as they don't provide what 98% of their potential customers want; good food at a good price. Once their restaurant closes, they will re-open another restaurant, usually downtown (Dallas), where no one wants to go, and again they will get rave reviews for their exotic menu, exotic drinks, innovative chef, and the clock will start ticking on their two year stay before closing again.

http://www.guidelive.com/resta...other-planet-3-stars

She lost me in the first paragraph. "I’m sipping a splendid cocktail, called Oil Money: Red River Texas Rye Whiskey and Cocchi Vermouth di Torino with a splash of Pineau des Charentes and a dash of peach bitters. It’s thoughtfully mixed, deliciously nuanced and mindful of balance." Yeah, that's what a real Texan wants; a 4-year-old whiskey and plenty of phoo-phoo.

My advice is to get to Dish Preston Hollow in the next two years, if not sooner.

I wrote an email to Leslie a few months ago indicating that she was reviewing restaurants for 1% of the population, and that most of her favorites were now closed, and questioning whether that might be sending her a message. I got a nice reply along the lines of, let's agree to disagree. I didn't expect anything different.

While I thought she was too easy on her favorite chefs, late last year, many other chefs apparently thought she was too hard on them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...d390a3340_story.html

I think with all the Trip Advisor and Yelp reviews, newspaper restaurant critics should be outlawed, or Gov. Abbott should have the Texas National Guard at least monitor their activities.

Thanks for listening, I feel better now.

I've read some of her other reviews and I was unimpressed.

That cocktail description sounds like a parody of how to describe a drink, "deliciously nuanced".

OTOH, that describes so many of my posts......deliciously nuanced......

There are so many sources on the internet - yelp, trip-advisor, google. I would look at those way before any restaurant critic.

Mike

Can you spell, "Free Food"??? Maybe even some grease under the table.

There was a NY Times reviewer who was angered that someone else 'discovered ' a new restaurant .She then went there and her review trashed it [calling prosciutto raw bacon etc]! She should have been fired immediately.
There was an honest reviewer who did it right .Never had his photo in his column, never used his name in making reservations always went in a party of 4-6 people to get their comments. He also never reviewed a restaurant that hadn't been there for at least 6 months. He found new ones would work very hard but after 6 months would slack off !
BTW publicity can destroy a restaurant as happened to one in Toronto. Fine food , good service without "decor" etc . The weekend paper wrote them up but that went to their heads . Quality and service went down the tube so it was immediately crossed off for us !

I've been to restaurants with a newspaper reviewer before. They apparently recognized him and pulled out all the stops for us. It was good, but not really representative of the typical restaurant experience.