Meeting the Challenge of Restaurant Critics

Years ago when I was a young chef working in Los Angeles, there was an infamous food critic named Lois Dwan. She had been working for the Los Angeles Times forever and was a formidable fixture in the restaurant community.

This was the early 1980's and food in California was in the

midst of enormous change. Lois, who had been a practitioner of the old-school Los Angeles cuisine, was unprepared to review young crazy chefs like me. She was notorious for getting the ingredients wrong in almost every dish. Often she'd give longwinded praise or criticism for a dish she purported contained garlic, when in fact there hadn't been a clove of garlic within 20 feet of the food.

When a critic doesn't understand the concept of certain dish, the food experience and the resulting review are typically negative. On the other hand, if a critic is well informed and competent, suggestions made in a review can be of enormous help, providing the overall tenor of the piece isn't too destructive.

My pivotal encounter with a critic came when I owned a restaurant in Seattle called Rover's. I was 28 years old and full of myself, to say the least. Ruth Riechl, who is now the editor and chief of Gourmet magazine, was the new critic for the Los Angeles Times. Ruth was so brutal in many of her reviews of Los Angeles restaurants that all of us were terrified to have her write about us. Ruth understood food in a way that was threatening, because more often that not she was right about her criticism or benediction. We took her evaluations to heart.

Ruth traveled to Seattle to check out the burgeoning restaurant scene and consequently wrote a review of Rover's to be published in the Sunday section of The Los Angeles Times. When I heard that she was coming I was sick with dread. I was sure that Ruth was going to crucify me and I was going to have to find another line of work while I paid off my business debt. I was so sick with dread that I was almost unable to read the review. But once I saw that she enjoyed her experience and supported what I was doing, an enormous weight was lifted. For an absurdly long time I was filled with pride and for having passed what I considered the test of a lifetime.

From that experience I received one of the most important lessons of my life: if you work hard with honest determination to produce a quality product, even the harshest of critics will notice that effort.

My reviews over the years have not always been stellar, but I try to see things from the reviewer's perspective and to learn from them. I've had to grow a tough skin, while at the same time retaining enough humility to admit when I am wrong and do my best to correct those problems. Even the most famous of chefs have experienced failure and disappointment. The fame of the successful ones derives from persistence and the willingness to rise to the challenges of improving their craft.

If you have the courage to excel in life there will always be a price to pay. But the price of dealing with criticism is much better than the cost of spending life hiding out on the couch.