Mouth-witness accounts conflict

Today I consider food reviews of the same restaurant, Mission 261, from:
1) Linda Burum in The LA Times, a commercial daily newspaper
2) Jonathan Gold in The LA Weekly, a free weekly newspaper
3) Various users of Yelp.com, a community of critics who cover anything from restaurants to sunglasses
4) Various posters on Chowhound, a community dedicated to discussing food only, though not limited to reviews of restaurants

This is merely a review of reviews, as, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which reviewers you believe) I did not go to the restaurant itself and have no personal experience of the place.

Without pretending to too much of a system, I shall start with endings, cutting, as chowhound says, to the chow:

"Was it worth it for you?"

In line with my perverse order of attention, I shall look at #4 first.

Mr. cookie, the poster who began the Mission 261 thread, ends his review/rant with:

Next time I'll try Sea Harbour because they specialize in seafood.

An overtly personal complaint/conclusion. Mission 261 has failed to satisfy this poster's desire for seafood. But what about the "meat" dishes? What about the starches? The vegetables? How was the place priced? So far, Mr. Cookie is coming across as somewhat quirky, and not concerned with addressing himself to a broad swathe of the eating public.

One commenter responds in kind.

ml22, the last commenter, ends with:

The manager was very rude, you'd think a big place like that will have friendlier, bilingual employees.

First, please insert here a bitchy aside about making a grammatical error in a sentence complaining about other people's language skills.

Second, earlier in her review, ml22 stated that:

based on the chinese people filtering in and out of the restaurant, I was eagerly (and probably expected too much) waiting to be served

So she'll rely on our patronage as an indicator of quality, but then when it comes time to learn a little Cantonese or Mandarin, all bets are off.

But enough snark about ml22's thinly veiled racism. Let's look at what I consider to be the most interesting comment, that of the first commenter, slacker. Since it's a brief comment, I reproduce it here in its entirety:

It's just not that good. Sometimes I feel like people rave about places just because Jonathan Gold told them it's good. To me, his taste buds are very hit and miss.

Are his ears burning?

Oh. Shit. A reference to another reviewer! This just got inter-textual, folks. In this brief comment we get:

1) I don't like this restaurant.
2) Other people have raved (told yet people) about this restaurant (in a good way, presumably).
3) Those people are wrong.
4) Jonathan Gold misled them by telling them the restaurant was good.
5) If Jonathan Gold had not told them the restaurant was good, they would not think it was good, or at least, would not be "raving" about it.
6) Jonathan Gold's taste buds are unreliable.
7) In this case, his taste buds failed him.
8) He then honestly passed along that misinformation.

There's moral opprobium here, but it is unclear on whose shoulders the blame lies, and for what?

Jonathan Gold may be at fault for having those unreliable taste buds, and then spreading his unreliable opinions on to others. But of course, we all have unreliable taste buds. Jonathan Gold, however, owes a certain duty of care to his readers, being a prominent food critic and all. His unreliable taste buds need to be disciplined, kept in check somehow. This is the moral blame that attaches to those who recklessly wield power. From those to whom much is given, much is required.

The readers who raved might be at fault for relying too heavily on Gold's reviews, and (apparently) ignoring their own experiences. These sheep-like diners willingly re-bleat Gold's falsehoods. They are the unwashed and uninformed, incapable of independent thought. This is the moral blame that attaches to those who fall under the sway of an ideological despot, and, by echoing him, only reinforce his power. For the marketplace of ideas to work, we must all be resolutely independent.

Underlying slacker's comment is the assumption that his opinion matters more than Gold's or the misled masses, not just to himself, but to any and all who might chance upon this comment, because his taste buds are more accurate. We've all had this feeling, of course. It's the opposite sentiment to "to each his own" and, I believe, the cornerstone of all critical writing.

The Defense May Call Its First Witness

I'll go further into slacker's position later. But first, let's take a look at the two excoriated parties' own thoughts on the subject of Mission 261.

[T]he dim sum is already extraordinary, easily the best in California at the moment — less a teeming mass feed with oceans of congee and fleets of Sterno-spewing carts than a sort of aestheticized dim sum meal, where you sit with a pot of really great chrysanthemum tea or puer or zhu cha or whatever and a few small plates of attractive, exquisitely prepared food, the clatter of plates replaced by the contemplative sounds of a live virtuoso of the ch’in, the quiet, zitherlike instrument of the great Chinese philosophers.

That, of course, was Jonathan Gold. Who could fail to be seduced by this paragraph? Already, my finger itches to book another flight to LA. Note, first, that a lot more faculties have come into play in Gold's assessment than merely those of his taste buds. He expresses his disdain for the more common experience of a dim sum "mass feed". He is grateful for the calming strains of the ch'in, and the absence of plates clattering. The food is "attractive", meaning, I assume, visually attractive, and "exquisitely prepared", a contrast to the usual dim sum experience of carts bearing dumplings that have been making their way around the room for who knows how long.

All this before a single morsel of dim sum has made its way past Gold's (narrative) lips.

The folks on Yelp must be among those who "rave" about the restaurant. Alice C. says the dim sum was:

[v]ery fresh. The best dim sum I've ever tried in my life (and I am Chinese so I grew up eating lots of it). The tickin' checklist guarantees the freshness of the food because you have to wait for it to come as they are cooking it ("we make it when you order it" - Jack in the Box).

theo n. proclaims it the "[b]est dim sum in the US of A!" Wynne H., more reserved, says it is "[o]ne of the best dim sum restaurant and banquet hall in LA, and notably for their delicious food cooked without MSG." She also compliments them on their checklist ordering system (look ma, no carts!) and short wait for a table. "We've not had a bad dish here yet!" exclaims Calvin L..

Jerrold S. provides corroboration for slacker's accusation of "raving," saying "I would recommend Mission261 to all my friends".

Not all of the yelpers were so enthusiastic, of course, but I've chosen to focus on those who were, since they are likely suspects for slacker's accusation.

There's Accounting For Taste

So were Gold and the yelp reviewers wrong, and why? I'll go into all that, and Hume too, in the next post.