Restaurant Critics Can Still Break the Algorithm
What Pete Wells' career says about dining, diners, and why restaurant critics remain our last frontier against AI
SUNDAY LONG READ | Critics, tech, humans
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On July 16, Pete Wells announced that he would soon be stepping down as the New York Times’ restaurant critic, a position he’s held for over a decade. It was big news in our little world. As far as New York restaurants go, not only is Wells’ word bible, it can also be wildly (and delightfully) unpredictable. There was the infamous and viral Guy Fieri takedown—ok, fine, no one was expecting the Times to fawn over Flavortown—but there was also Per Se’s demotion from four to two stars, with Wells deeming the service “ungenerous” and likening the mushroom bouillon to “bong water,” or the giddiness he got from going to Señor Frogs.
But praising Wells’ career isn’t the point. If you want to cruise his varied greatest hits, the Times has rounded them up here. What is interesting, however, is that Wells and others, your Robert Sietsemas, your Helen Rosners, your Ruth Reichls, and so on, represent the last bastion of the critic whose, well, criticism actually matters. In a world in which the omnipresent algorithm seems to guide everyone’s collective taste and cultural consumption, these scribblers, their subjective takes, and the anachronistic ways in which they go about their business, still informs how and where we dine, and thus can dictate, to varying degrees, the success or failure of a restaurant. As The New Yorker put it in their 2016 profile of Wells …
“There are restaurants that exist to have four Times stars. With fewer, they become a kind of paradox, or at least a source of investor derangement. Some years ago, before Wells joined the paper, Eric Ripert, the chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, told him that without four stars his restaurant would have to close.”
In that same profile, we’re given a David Chang confessing to the night sweats an impending Wells’ review had caused him. The restaurant in the crosshairs? The now shuttered Momofuku Nishi. The inevitable review? According to Chang, “something akin to a diagnosis of terminal cancer.”
Politics aside, one of the most common gripes about the algorithm is its ability to flatten culture. If a program is good at grouping data to predict future trends, those trends are going to look a lot like the trends we’re all currently consuming. Over time, the algorithm gets better, culture gets flatter, the prophecy becomes more and more self-fulfilling. It’s why air space exists in everything from living rooms to cafes, or why pop music all sounds the same (Chappell Roan notwithstanding). Name the last important music critic … Lester Bangs? Condé Nast shut down Pitchfork earlier this year, but according to record label insiders, the site hadn’t mattered, as far as streams and ticket sales go, since “at least 2018.” Now Spotify matters, that’s it.
Same goes for movies. Ebert’s dead, so too Siskel. Sure, Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott, Richard Brody, and others have some sway among cinephiles, but for the rest of us there’s Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps art and theater critics wield some power, but, broadly speaking, that’s niche territory. Beyond fashion insiders, can anyone say if Balenciaga’s last runway show got praised or panned? And would either scenario affect the brand’s sales or cachet? And how about books? A glowing Michiko Kakutani review is nice, though does it move units as effectively as #BookTok?
We’re not saying dining is immune to the algorithm. Car critics, viral dishes, #fyp, Taylor Swift, and every vocal-fried, ring-lit video on TikTok all make the social media soup that determines what restaurants get the lion’s share of business. But, restaurant critics, those incognito diners still beholden to their own tastes, can break the algorithm to a degree that critics in other industries no longer can. Take, for example, Wells’ aforementioned Per Se review, penned in 2016, back when Thomas Keller’s temple of haute cuisine still represented the epitome of New York City fine dining. Could an algorithm have sniffed out all the subtle ways in which the spot had stumbled, from the “chewiness” of the lobster to the “rage-inducing” cost of the truffle risotto to the restaurant’s general “no-fun house” vibe, or just the straight-faced possibility “that Señor Frog’s is a better restaurant than Per Se?” And even if an algorithm somehow did, would it trigger an apology from Keller the way Wells’ review had? Fast-forward to the relative present, and Wells was still at it, putting off-the-radar places like Mam and Spice Brothers on the map while the rest of us phone zombies were still ogling viral videos of rigatoni.
This is not to say that critics are infallible. They can miss – and that’s a feature, not a bug. A critic can be wrong, but the silver lining there is that it gives them the ability to be daring, to take big swings, and that’s something our algorithms, by the very nature in which they cull data to give recommendations and predict or perpetuate trends, can never do. Algorithms are safe, not risky, built to serve us more of the same based on our behavior; they satiate rather than surprise. In contrast, a restaurant critic can deliver highs and lows more dramatically.
The last interesting thing of note is what all this says about us as diners. It says, we would argue, that dining still matters. As restaurant-goers, we still value the personal opinions of anointed critics because dining still constitutes a major event in our lives. The same cannot be said of other forms of entertainment, like music and movies. By and large, we stream those at home, in sweat pants no less, passively consuming each medium while we simultaneously flick through our phones, brainrotting on TikTok. Restaurants, on the other hand, are immersive, full sensory experiences, that require time, money, attention, and even travel. Thus we want a guide whom we trust to vouch for places, take down the unworthy, and unearth spots we would’ve never discovered on our own. We want restaurant critics, in other words, to do what all great hospitality should do: surprise and delight.
Yes, even in the age of the algorithm, a restaurant critic still counts. Here at The Supersonic, we’re looking forward to the first review penned by whomever fills Wells’ big shoes.