The sour business of being a food criticRestaurant critic for UK’s Telegraph Matthew Norman writes on his odd profession, from the lack of official skills required to the terrible standards of many English restaurants.
Food critics
great read 
I’m a restaurant critic living on food stamps
Ed Murrieta was a newspaper food critic with $1,300 food expenses account. Now he is on food stamps, turning canned chicken into gourmet feasts and pouring $3 truffle oil over instant mashed potatoes.
The top 100 Aussie foodies on Twitter
Chefs, critics, sommeliers and garden-variety gourmands: a list of the most influential food fanatics in the Aussie Twittersphere to follow for scoops on the latest flavour-of-the-month in dining down under.
Everything the NYT‘s food critic eats in a week
New York Times food critic Sam Sifton keeps a diary of everything he eats in a week, and your arteries may harden just reading it: 24,560 calories from dishes like maple-glazed ham, fried rabbit livers and foie-gras dumplings.
Are newspaper critics still critical?
In the Age of Twitter, everyone has become a syndicated film, music, restaurant and book critic. So do newspapers still need to publish the pontificating of “professional” critics? asks Howard Kurtz.
Ruth Reichl: Why I write about food
Is writing about foie gras and croquembouche a bit superficial when tens of thousands are lying dead and dying in Haiti? Not at all, says former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl: on such occasions, it’s more important than ever to celebrate life.
Matt Preston ditches Fairfax for News Ltd
Celebrity food critic and break-out MasterChef star, Matt Preston, has given The SMAge the flick to write exclusively for News Corp, according to The Oz.
Lethlean puts it to Stephen Downes
Stephen Downes’ essay in yesterday’s Crikey basically boiled down to “all restaurant reviewers except me are the puppets of public relations operatives and charismatic restaurateurs” writes John Lethlean.
Why wine critics are just taking the piss
The ratings and medals meted out to fine wines aren’t worth the fancy-pants label-paper they’re printed on, according to scientists. In blind tests, critics regularly give the same wine completely different reviews.
Matt Preston to stop writing restaurant reviews
MasterChef’s break-out star, Matt Preston, plans to give up writing time consuming restaurant reviews, in favour of advancing his new-found career as a celebrity foodie, according to today’s Oz Media Diary. Did anyone say “flavour-of-the-month”?
A different kind of media bias: do food writers lean towards wine?
Beer is getting a lot more love from food writers lately, says Orr Shtuhl, but why is it still viewed as merely an interloper into wine’s sacred place on the dining table?
Dining in disguise: can food critics stay anonymous?
The Seattle Times’ food critic Nancy Leson muses on the difficulties of dining on the down-low: can you get an authentic restaurant experience when the chef, owner and staff all know your face and byline?
The most overused words in food writing
From “nosh” to “mouth feel”, the words that make reviewers sound like tossers and give Robert Sietseme the heebies.
