Food people, generally speaking, are wonderful people. That said, they can also be a pretty tasteless group. For all our yammering on about nurturing and decency, there is more underhandedness, backstabbing, inequity, cronyism, favors and logrolling in this bit of business—particularly in restaurant reviewing—than in virtually any other line of work I’ve encountered with the exception, perhaps, of politics.

Naturally, our current economic state doesn’t help matters much, and when a newspaper finds itself at the short end of the advertising-revenue stick, anything can happen. I know this first-hand, as a former freelance restaurant critic for the Hartford Courant who found that her most recent, negative review had been pulled from the paper’s website and replaced by a staff writer’s previously-published Courant feature article about the same place.

Were there some misdeeds—errors, the usual foodie hyperbole, oversights, unpopular opinion—on the part of everyone, on all sides of the table? Of course. This is restaurant reviewing; there almost always is.

How much did the specter of potential lost advertising revenue from this restaurant have to do with the paper’s decision to re-run a feature piece about the same place? It’s anyone’s guess, and I have no proof that it played a role in my review’s demise. But given, in the broad scheme of things, the relatively minor regrettable errors and lapses associated with the review, it’s pretty easy to go down that road.

After a review of an unfortunate Connecticut steakhouse ran in the Courant, I was inundated by emails, calls, attacks, support, snipery, wildly defamatory claims and outright threats. The restaurant insisted that my lead story never happened; I had a witness. The restaurant claimed I only dined with one companion (singular) as opposed to the companions (plural) I wrote about and they were correct; when pressed by the paper, I came clean about that.

Why was this number misrepresented? Because on the one hand, my budget was only $150 per restaurant (not per visit), and a third person would have put me way over and forcing me to pay out of pocket. On the other, critics will play fast and loose with the number of dining companions mentioned in an article, to avoid establishing a pattern and thus being recognized.

The restaurant claimed I never ate one of the things I wrote about and they were right: I didn’t. But I also never said I did. The restaurant threatened to sue the paper, claiming that if I misrepresented the number of people I was dining with, then I misrepresented my entire dining experience; the newspaper’s ombudsman, in an attempt to explain why the review was yanked from the paper’s website, cited my apparent failure to live up to the strict rules of reviewing as stipulated by the Association of Food Journalists. Fair enough.

But I say, until such a time as every newspaper and restaurant critic can be held to the A.F.J. regulations, and every newspaper actually makes it possible for their food writers to adhere to them—burn the rules.
Why? Because with the exception of a select few food journalists supported by major papers with big names and even bigger budgets, almost no one follows them to the letter, because they can’t. For the sake of clarity, and just so that everyone is reading from the same page, I’ve re-written them:

10 New Rules for Restaurant Critiquing

1. Dining sections will not take advertising from restaurants for a full year before and a full year after those restaurants (or restaurants owned by the same people) have been covered in a feature or reviewed. This is called the Heckuva Job, Brownie Rule.

2. Restaurant critics, if required by their papers to visit a restaurant more than once with multiple dining companions each time, must be provided with an adequate dining budget so that they don’t have to a) dine  from the salad bar; b) pay overages out of pocket, or c) “allow themselves to be recognized” thus having free dishes foisted upon them. (The latter is known as the  Oh, I Really Shouldn’t Rule, and breaks rule number 10, below.)

3. Newspapers shall never run headshots of any of their food writers and critics. If said critic asks the paper to remove their photo, the paper will be required to do so immediately without complaint, question, or other hesitation. This is called the I swear I’ve Seen Her Before Rule.”

4. All critics will reserve, visit, and pay for meals anonymously, either in cash or with a credit card in a different name. Moreover, if they reside in a town smaller than 30,000 people, they shall be expressly forbidden from reviewing the restaurants in that town. This is also called the “Cheers, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Rule.”

5. The newspaper shall refrain from assigning and running feature pieces about the chef, owner, and restaurant prior to the appearance of the review, lest the restaurant assume that the concomitant review will be positive. If a review is scheduled to run after the feature anyway, the editor will make it clear to the restaurant that the feature is not, in fact, the review; either way, advertising will not be an issue (see Heckuva Job Brownie, above).

6. The critic shall be required to write about the entire dining experience, from making reservations forward through to wine service, decor, food, and general surroundings. The apparent pleasure, displeasure, and dress of other patrons is fair game. This is called the Giles Coren/Times of London/Neighboring Foie Gras Creme Brulee-Eating, Saggy-Titted Banker in the Red Polo Neck Rule.

7. The critic shall not review any restaurant owned or operated by a chef who has previously given her a quote for her book jacket. This is called the Amanda Hesser Rule.

8. No critic or newspaper shall alert the subject of an impending review to the existence of that impending review until that review has been filed for publication. This is also known as the Anton Ego/I’ll Be Back Next Wednesday Rule. (See anonymity, above.)

9. The paper shall not transfer a feature writer to the reviewing department unless that reviewer is assigned a different territory from the one he previously covered as a feature writer. (The Avoidance of Logrolling Rule.)

10. No critic shall be allowed to accept free anything during the reviewing process: no free wine, and no free dishes, even if the critic’s budget prevents him from reviewing a broad sampling from the menu. (the Tough Luck, Pay for It Yourself Rule.)

Finally: Any and all restaurants, by the mere act of providing a service to the public and therefore setting themselves up for potential pummeling whether they like it or not, must understand that they may receive subjective reviews based on individual, idiosyncratic, and professionally informed qualitative opinion. If restaurants cannot cope with the possibility of negative reviews, they should find another line of work.

Former Courant food writer Elissa Altman is a regular food contributor to the Huffington Post and the author of Big Food (Rodale).