Pete Wells signs off but has 12 years at the table left a sour taste?
In his final column as restaurant critic of the New York Times it’s less a valedictory wave and more man waves his fist at the sky.
This isn’t all about Pete Wells, the now former critic of the New York Times. If you follow these kind of things you’ll know that after 12 years in arguably the most watched restaurant writing job in the dining world, Wells stepped away from the table. I wasn’t going to touch on this until I reminded myself that the origin of this newsletter was the behind the scenes - the between meals.
This week I read both his column announcing his move away from the dining trenches (After 12 Years of Reviewing Restaurants, I’m Leaving the Table) and his last column in the post, which has drawn a lot of hospitality industry comment. In, I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better, there’s much to unpack, for operators, diners, and those of us in food media. Two pieces of writing that are Wells’ own well-earned opinion, both personal to his lived experience as a critic in a global city and of where he finds himself after so long in the job.
In his explanation of leaving the table I found myself transformed into some over-expressive TV extra nodding, grinning and gurning in the back of the shot as the lead takes his moment. If I’m being self critical, that’s what this is. As I said, my first reaction was not to write about this, that there’s little value in critiquing the critic. But this is more what I took from it, how it lines up with my experience, and also how it could inform the direction some of us take.
Incidentally, if critics on critics is your thing, you might want to go back to my interviews with Bill Addison (Los Angeles Times), Marina O’Loughlin (formerly of Sunday Times), Myffy Rigby (Swill), Anthony Huckstep (Deep in the Weeds) and Tim Hayward (Financial Times).
When you’ve done this for long enough, whether your “beat” is the Five Boroughs or, as I find myself, a state that’s ten times the size of the UK or four times larger than Texas yet with a population of less than 3 million, there are parallels even though the landscape is very, very different.
Wells writes that “the number of restaurant critics is getting smaller every year,” which is undoubtedly true. You can maybe blame social media for that and the decrease of critical power (not something Wells gets into), which seems to be the favoured approach of some critics or mastheads. Bemoaning social media influencers is a trademark move of many legacy media brands. Or more likely it’s that the weekly review model is expensive and some publishers don’t equate it to money well spent.
You realise after a few stunted conversations with civilians that the world’s smallest violin plays as a restaurant critic voices their woes. Perversely it’s chefs, somms and front of house pros that often get the whinges that we might have. Wells says “we tend to save our gripes until two or three of us are gathered around the tar pits. Then we’ll talk about the things nobody will pity us for, like the unflattering mug shots of us that restaurants hang on kitchen walls and the unlikable food in unreviewable restaurants.” Too true.
“One thing we almost never bring up, though, is our health,” he says, and that in comparison critiquing movies “won’t, as a rule, give you gout.” Perhaps this is true of Wells and his peers but I do find myself discussing health both physical and mental with other critics, with newer writers in the space, and hospo folk.
A few months ago I hobbled into an interview with a chef having just been in the doctors examination room, which handily was just down the street. “Are you ok he asked.” My answer, “yeah, apparently it’s not gout” I said of my mystery ailment. And then followed an informal chat about diet and the dangers of our two professions. I don’t feel adverse to talking about these things.
On “food writing’s most impressive omnivore,” Jonathan Gold, Wells says “his knowledge inspired me. It also tormented me — there was no way to catch up to him.” I resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that I cannot eat at every new opening, every hole in the wall, and neighbourhood gem. And nor do I want to. I can experience, I can know about things, and have the tools to find what I need when I need it. But I don’t have to eat everything to do my job and shouldn’t feel the that I have to (as I did early on). Because, mirroring what Wells came to understand, “I am not my job.“
Compared to the personal insights of his decision to step away, his final column as critic is less a valedictory wave and more, man waves his fist at the sky. As I said up top, these are Wells’ well-earned opinions. He’s done the miles, or the calories, and weighed up the cost, but is his assessment of the state of play more about 12 years of eating for a living than where we find ourselves?
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