Submitted by Scott Rose, Feb 22, 2007 13:31

A paper's readership is better served if its restaurant journalists tell people where they should go rather than where they should not. A preliminary visit could be made to an establishment to see if it merits a favorable report. Any that do not could not be reported on. Mr. Bruni plucks the rotten sweet potato out of the ground when he says that these evaluations are subjective. What he loathes, somebody else could love (one man's meat is another man's poison). What motivation does any newspaper have for telling its readers where they should not go to eat? There is at least some unsavory aspect of "blood sport" to very negative restaurant reviews, and there are definitely some writers and readers that enjoy that unsavory aspect and its attendant schadenfreude. People put a lot of their resources into launching restaurants, so a reaction like Mr. Choderow's to an extremely negative review is more than understandable. This ultimately, however, shouldn't so much be about restaurant owners and reviewers as about the people reading the reviews, because it is much more helpful to them to know of a good place to go than one that should, in the opinion of some journalist, be avoided.

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