KEY POINTS:
Everybody wants to be a critic, but be warned. Praise what you see - or taste - and the creator will love you forever. Slam it, however, and they might just try to bite back.
Just ask Craig LaBan, the restaurant reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Earlier this year, he visited an eatery called Chops in the nearby town of Bala Cynwyd and made the mistake of shredding its fare.
The meal was "expensive and disappointing", he wrote in a capsule review of just three sentences. It included a chopped salad that was "soggy and sour" and a strip steak that was "miserably tough and fatty".
These few words stuck in the throat of the owner, Alex Plotkin, who responded with a libel lawsuit. While expressions of opinion are theoretically protected by the First Amendment in the United States, LaBan is accused of false assertion of fact. According to the suit, it was not a strip steak that he ate, but rather a steak sandwich without the bread - in other words, an inferior cut.
"No legitimate food critic would ever mistake, or compare, a steak sandwich with a strip steak," the lawsuit says. Never mind that LaBan praised another dish at Chops - its crabcakes.
Juries historically side with the critics in such cases, but that may not help LaBan, because of a recent ruling by the judge obliging him to give a deposition in front of a camera. He fears the images will be shown at trial and the most important weapon of his trade will be lost - his anonymity.
A photograph of LaBan on his newspaper's restaurant guide shows him with five baguettes shielding his face. Already, he sometimes takes to new spots in disguise in case he will be recognised. Restaurants understandably try to up their game if they know an important reviewer is in the room.
"Mr LaBan's anonymity is important to the process by which he reviews restaurants," Inquirer lawyers said in court papers. "If a restaurant knew Mr LaBan was in its dining room, it might put on a show for him that would not be provided to the general dining public."
His editor has also weighed in. LaBan, said Bill Marimow, "dots his i's, he crosses his t's, and anyone who reads his reviews knows that he is meticulous, fastidious and fair as one can be. In the long run, our work will be vindicated because Craig is a stellar journalist and a stellar reviewer."
Suits involving critics are increasingly common even in the US. A New Jersey winery recently sued a reviewer who, without even naming it, wrote that wines from the state in general are made with "fruit flavours that are designed to mask the otherwise dreadful plonk". In another case, a critic won a case brought against him for his description of a fish dish as "trout a la green plague".
In other countries the risk of being found guilty of libel can be greater.
In Sydney, the owners of Coco Roco, which has since closed, won a case against the Sydney Morning Herald after it called it "a bleak spot on the culinary landscape".
A judge in Belfast recently awarded a US$50,000 ($64,000) judgment against the Irish Times for its unkind assessment of an Italian eatery called Goodfellas.
- INDEPENDENT
