NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with The New York Times’ Food critic Pete Wells shares about retiring after 12 years as a critic.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Do you have a favorite restaurant review? I do. This one was written in 2012, and it’s all about questions—questions like, when we hear the words donkey sauce, what part of the donkey do we think of? Pete Wells wrote that review and hundreds of other restaurant reviews during his 12 years as the New York Times food critic. And now he’s stepping down, so he’s here to talk to us about his tenure and the role of a critic. Welcome, and thanks for the years of great reading.
PETE WELLS: Oh, thank you.
SHAPIRO: I think you’re probably tired of talking about that review you wrote twelve years ago, disparaging Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square. But I think it points to something unusual about your work, which is the influence it can have—arguably much more than a blog or an Instagram post or a TikTok. What do you think about your power as a critic, how you use it, and how it’s changed over time?
WELLS: Well, I mean, first of all, I’ll hold back on, you know, harsh assessments like this. I mean, I think you have to admit that it’s a harsh assessment. It’s basically a long list of things that…
SHAPIRO: Oh, I call it, the epitome of a tough review. It’s like the platonic ideal of…
WELLS: Yes.
SHAPIRO: …A frying pan.
WELLS: Although, you know, I’ll point out that I’m not making any of this up. I mean, all of this stuff actually happened in the restaurant. So this is a pretty fact-based review. But, you know, I’ll reserve those hard things for places that have some kind of prominence, some kind of reputation. I would never write something like that about a place that, like, you’ve never heard of. My rule is if I have to tell people about the restaurant, it’s not worth bashing.
SHAPIRO: As one of your loyal readers who has never lived in New York, I’m curious how much you write for people who may not go to the restaurants you’re writing about.
WELLS: That was always in the back of my mind, and I think that put pressure on me — or, in other words, I put pressure on myself to write a piece that would be interesting to someone who wasn’t even a potential customer, someone who would never come but who loved to read about food, was interested in restaurants, and would come along if I could convince them that it was worth it.
SHAPIRO: How do you keep writing interesting when you have to describe the texture of a steak, a burger, or a pizza crust for the 8,000th time?
WELLS: Right. Well, you try to say it in a new way. Or if that’s not possible, I try to bring the dish to life for the reader. I tend to rely on visual adjectives rather than flavor descriptions. There’s only so many times you can say, you know, the meat is very meaty. You know…
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WELLS: …The lamb tastes lamby (ph). You just – you start talking like a kid, right? So I’m going to try to almost paint a picture. And then my feeling is if you can conjure up the picture, then the reader will taste it.
SHAPIRO: You wrote a fascinating article just a few weeks ago about the growing sophistication of AI technology that can be used to review restaurants on Google or Yelp. So what have you learned about how emerging technology is changing and might change the role of a reviewer like yourself?
WELLS: I think it’s changing by the minute. And I’m kind of – you know, maybe one good reason I’m stepping back now is I’m too old to really see things happening as they’re happening. But I think, you know, a lot of people now get all their food information from TikTok. They watch videos and they put it in a list, and then they go to that place. And, you know, it’s like – it’s a different way of consuming food information. And a lot of it is visual. It’s not based on words at all. Words play a very, very small role in it. It’s just – here’s a picture or a short film and, great, you get to do that.
SHAPIRO: And that will certainly change the types of foods that people enjoy and the types of foods that chefs prepare.
WELLS: Yeah. I mean, sometimes I think there’s a lot of food that’s just waving its arms and jumping up and down, trying to get your attention. And you never really know if it’s going to be good or not.
SHAPIRO: A cloudy soup might be the best thing you’ve ever eaten, but it’s not TikTok-worthy.
WELLS: This is going nowhere.
SHAPIRO: Pete Wells, it’s been great talking to you. Thank you so much.
WELLS: Thanks, Ari.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEITH MANSFIELD’S “FUNKY FANFARE”)
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