I have written complaints to establishments and recieved freebie invites back. This than allowed me to appreciate to restaurant and return on other visits. I think that it should not be considerred a bribe but a genuine and noble gesture towards a digruntled customer. Is'nt that the proffesional way of doing things? The review was already done. What could Le Cirque gain at that point?
Just what the world needs, 100,000 amateur food critics...OMG! Scarey. If you want to be a critic why not declare open season on all computer companies who haven't perfected a computer to be compatible with MS. What about retail stores who repackage returned (often faulty) merchandise and sell it as new. Consumer goods that don't work or fall apart within a short time. What about lousy service in stores and government offices. Why pick on restaurants. If you really want to know something about restaurants get a job in one for a few months, then lets hear your "critique." When you're "critiquing," restaurants, ask yourself what kind of job your doing when you're at work...Man...make me soooo crazy...Why does EVERYONE wanna be food critique. Go have another hamburger. Then get a life.
If you are reviewing a restaurant I don't really think it right to take a free meal. In any other profession that would get you fired. Did you know that you were called a “a world-class mooch" by and article in the NY Mag?
You go! It is refreshing to see that "ordinary people" can have a voice in deciding what is great dining and what is not. If only fashion were as responsive! Bloggers are not just amateur reviewers. They provide information not only for foodies, but to real people who are just learning the joys (and the power) of good food. There are enough culinary resources out there that intimidate and discourage readers from having fun with food and thus developing healthy eating habits, using food to draw families and friends together. I will be checking back often to see how you are stirring things up!
Deborah Dowd
http://play-with-food.blogspot.com/
Both your experiences just go to show what can be so frustrating for diners--those who are deemed "special" i.e. food bloggers, with their increasing power over the life and death of a restaurant, get special treatment. It doesn't matter that everyone in that restaurant is paying an exorbitant amount for their dinner, only those who are of interest are treated well. It just reinforces to me how much I want to avoid restaurants like that.
Unfortunately, you were outed..something a good reviewer never wants. The folks @ Le Cirque knew it and they "worked" you.
You are so good at the graphics ( kind of a Robert Crumb of the food blogger world- a complement). That's an area no one does as well as you. Mexican novela meets Warhol meets foodie, cool stuff!
Folks like Schrambling and Michael Bauer are still incognito. And no one has ever seen Kim Pierce from the Dallas Morning News ( dont even know if Kim is a girl or a guy). Now that's under the radar.
But you are an entertaining fellow! Keep the fun coming.
You raise a good point, csl. There are governance and transparency issues that need to be thought out carefully. For our site (http://nycnosh.com), we try to remain as anonymous as possible and to keep the photography quick and done in a way that disturbs nobody. That said, we've been asked a few times about who we were and whether or not we plan to write about the food we're eating, and of course the only ethical answer is 'yes.' So we try to return to a restaurant without the camera to determine if we can spot a difference in service or food. We'll also chat with people sitting near us sometimes, just for a bit of reference, and on the rare occasions when a chef has sent us something unusual just to impress us, it becomes apparent pretty quickly.
I think an article about the new power of food bloggers might want to consider what responsibility accompanies that new power, and I don't think that Adam has. What happens when his low profile, which had been a large part of what made his blog so charming and interesting, is no more? Should he pretend that nothing has changed? Should he accept free meals from Alain Ducasse and Sirio Maccioni without much (or any) soul-searching? Should he, like Shelley of Pink House, accept (almost ask for) post-review gifts without disclosing this to his readers? I guess it's fun to find that bloggers have power, but less fun to discover that maybe this should change how they go about their work.
a couple of months ago when i dined at eleven madison park (the new chef is one of my faves), my dining companion tongue-in-cheekly blurted out "she's a food critic" to our waiter. even though i quickly said "no i'm not !" , and i had no camera and took no notes, halfway through our meal the chef daniel humm came out to our table to say hello.
3 months prior to that, when i dined there with another companion who had called ahead to pre-arrange a 13 course tasting menu to go with some special wines he had brought, the chef did not come out to say hello to us even though this was a much more expensive meal.
chefs and restauranteurs are aware of the power of public opinion to impact the success or failure of their restaurant, whether from a paid writer or an unpaid blogger, it's part marketing, self preservation and common sense. let's face it, most people with jobs treat their bosses who sign their paychecks with more respect than their co-workers , so the concept of "VIP's" exist everywhere in life, not just in a pricy restaurant.
go bloggers !!
Adam, I still don't understand why you expect good food at Le Cirque. Food isn't what it's selling. You might as well complain that the snacks at Great Adventure are nutritionally unbalanced. What people go to Le Cirque for is what you got the second time you arrived, and what the common gourmet-on-the-street will only get if he/she writes a scathing blog review!
But is this a good thing? You left Le Cirque this time with a better impression of the restaurant and the Maccioni family because they treated you like a celebrity, but they only did that because you embarassed them the first time and because they now know that people read your blog. If they really cared about anonymous customers, you would have been treated well to begin with.
The free meal demonstrates the power of blogging, but it doesn't get the Le Cirque staff off the hook for being jerks. I doubt they treated every customer so well that night, and someone will always have to take the loser table. We can either support these places or not. If I get an invitation to a free meal in response to a bad review, I just ignore it. Let the restaurant prove itself to new customers.
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