Introduction: Is Criticism the Mirror of Food?
The word “criticism” often carries a negative connotation in daily conversation. For some, it means “smearing,” and for others, “humiliation.” However, criticism is not merely about distinguishing right from wrong or comparing the beautiful with the ugly; it is about understanding the essence of something and sharing it with others. Especially in the world of gastronomy, food criticism is not just an evaluation tool but also a cultural duty. This is because when food is placed on the table, it is not just nutrients—it is a story: the collective masterpiece of the soil, the climate, the people, and history.
My aim in this article is to understand how food criticism contributes to gastronomy, its historical development, and its place today. A food critic is not simply someone who describes “what was eaten”; they are a guide who speaks the language of flavor, writes the philosophy of taste, and appeals not to the public's stomach, but to their mind.
In the Banquet of History: The Birth of Criticism
Food criticism is not an invention of the modern age. Figures such as Marcus Gavius Apicius in Ancient Rome, the hedonist poet Archestratus, or the 19th-century French intellectual Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin did not pass into history merely as the first “gourmets,” but as the first commentators. They consumed food not to be full, but to understand. Brillat-Savarin’s work, The Physiology of Taste, was the first manifesto declaring that food is not just a physiological necessity but, on the contrary, an aesthetic experience.
However, modern food criticism in the true sense was born in 1803 when Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière published his yearbook, L’Almanach des Gourmands. This first “honorary auditor,” who went undercover in the streets of Paris, examined restaurants not only for flavor but also for ambiance, service, and even stains on the tablecloth. The confidentiality ethos of today’s Michelin Guides is actually an inheritance from these first steps taken by La Reynière.
The Michelin brothers, in the early 1900s, transformed a travel guide they printed to sell tires into the world’s most prestigious gastronomic award over time. Stars became symbols that determined not just quality, but the very fate of a restaurant. However, for some chefs, this system became a curse rather than a compliment. The suicides of Alain Zick and Bernard Loiseau cruelly demonstrated the psychological burden that these stars carry.
Criticism: Art or Profession?
Today, being a food critic requires being both an artist and a scientist. Pulitzer Prize winners like Jonathan Gold opened food criticism from an elite club to the public by discovering small eateries in the ethnic neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In Türkiye, names like Tuğrul Şavkay, Vedat Milör, or Artun Ünsal drew attention to this field, yet they could not establish a formal institutional education or a professional status for it.
Food criticism does not seek an answer only to the question of “how delicious.” It reads the story behind the menu, the chef’s vision, the origin of the ingredients, and the rhythm of the service. For this reason, a successful critic must also be a good writer, a sensitive observer, and a cultural anthropologist. Measuring flavor is easy; explaining the context of flavor is the difficult part.
(To be continued next month: “Flavor in the Digital Age: From Yelp to Instagram”)
Assoc. Prof. Murat Doğan
