Love is blind. My love, moreover, has a palate lined with wood. He has no criteria or standards. All restaurants seem good to him. For him, a feast is a formidable banquet as long as it is not burnt, not spoiled, is abundant in quantity, and he can afford it.
I found myself pondering this after reading the interview given last week to Reuters by the Brit Jay Rayner, one of the most veteran, important, and entertaining voices in global food criticism.
In the article, Rayner talks about the responsibility of the restaurant critic and addresses several crucial topics. First, he establishes that he writes for ordinary people, not for erudite gastronomes. Then, when asked about food content creators and how his work has changed with the emergence of this figure on the scene, he responds that this new type of commentator would only be a problem if they wrote better than him. No one has to prefer his columns just because he is the head of the gastro section of the Financial Times, not even his mother, and as trashy as it may seem, if someone who creates food content has two and a half million followers, it means they are doing something right.
Finally, the interviewer asks him about his approach when publishing negative opinions, and Rayner is firm: “punch up, not down,” meaning to aim upwards, never downwards. That is, reserve bad reviews for those who have enough power, money, prices, or pretensions to handle them, and overlook bad experiences in small and cheap restaurants, because they will end up closing on their own.
This is where I remember Can Llesques. Can Llesques was the restaurant my husband took me to on our first date to court me.
It was a crack in the wall of the historic center of Vic. A damp and dark place like a hole in a gum. It was called Can Llesques because it only served slices of bread (llesques in Catalan) with things. These things were pâtés, cold cuts, and supermarket cheeses, all with a liquid expiration date, tasting like an old town street full of bars, at six in the morning, just when the cleaning brigade passes by with hoses of water and disinfectant.
This was many years ago and I will never forget it. It was, without a doubt, one of the worst gastronomic experiences of my life. Today that restaurant no longer exists. As Rayner says, it ended up closing on its own. But it was open for almost thirty years.
Obviously, no reputable critic ever approached to visit it and give their opinion. The critic cannot physically visit all the restaurants that exist, nor is there any obligation to do so. But, moreover, despite writing for the ordinary citizen, when he shoots, he only shoots upwards. As Rayner points out, a dive in Leicester (or Vic, for that matter) does not need the Financial Times critic to pour ten tons of pejorative adjectives on it.
But, then, who guides the customer with little purchasing power? Doesn’t the reader who can pay four hundred euros for a bad experience have more capacity to assume that risk than someone who faces the dilemma of buying the monthly train pass or going out to celebrate the anniversary?
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why food content creators have found such a huge audience. Two and a half million followers may not prove that their content is good or bad or that their criteria are more or less well-founded, but they do indicate that there is some need they are fulfilling.
Many of them work and thrive, alongside Google reviews, TripAdvisor, and the cousin who knows a place, in that sea where the big critics do not operate, the zone where the customer who finds it more costly to make mistakes lives.
If you ask me, I would say that Can Llesques closed thirty years late and that some people could have really benefited from reading a good bad review, to know what to expect before entering. Those who loved that restaurant would have shrugged off that bad review.
Tonight, when my husband comes home, I will tell him. “Do you remember Can Llesques, the restaurant you took me to on our first date? Today I saw it closed.” “What a pity,” he will say. “I liked it.” I am sure.
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