Message: | It actually is possible to write in this town for a long time and still not be known if you are careful about it. If you make reservations under a different name than your own then there is no way anybody will know who you are until the end of the meal, and even then only if you pay by credit card. (Perhaps not even then. I know I'm not the only writer in LA who has a credit card in a different name.) Given the high staff turnover rate at most restaurants (and let's face it, also the degree to which most servers and managers don't really pay attention to their customers) it is possible to go to a restaurant more than once and still not be known. The only time at which you must reveal who you are is when you're doing an interview, and many of those can be done by phone. The trend toward grazing nemus and small plates has been a boon to reviewers, who can sample many different items without anybody on the staff thinking that's an odd dining pattern.
I have been writing since '87 and have only been recognized a few times, and then mostly in odd situations. Once I went into a restaurant and the guy behind the counter was someone I went to high school with. In that case I assigned another writer to do the actual review. Some writers do allow their pictures to be printed in their own newspapers, a practice which I do not believe in. It is unfortunately generally unavoidable in the case of books, since publishers want a smiling face on the inside back cover.
Some newspapers, especially local weeklies, do set up reviews by advance arrangement with a restaurant and send a writer out with the meal comped. These papers can be recognized by any discerning reader because the experience is invariably positive. They also have an identifiable pattern of reviewing only advertisers. This is one step up from Sony Pictures inventing a critic to give positive reviews to their godawful movies, but only one... |