Which critic should you trust?

Imagine that you are considering dining at a restaurant you have never been to before. If all your friends like it and the professional critics like it, chances are reasonably good that so will you. When it comes down to it, though, your friends are not professional food critics. Whose advice do you place more weight on -- the friend's or the word of the person who gets paid to eat?

It is a difficult decision, because most people are inclined to trust the professional, the expert. As Sarah alluded to earlier, Jeffrey Steingarten said that he felt obligated to let go of his personal food preferences and hang-ups when he became a food critic. In order to see things from his perspective, to take from his reviews what he does, do we have to let go of our food preferences? Of course not. Everyone likes different things. The question is really why you would choose to take the "professional" recommendation. Their palate is likely to be different from your own, so why should it be a reliable source of advice for you?

To complicate matters further, is any foreign palate completely reliable? The answer is no. Consider examples of often-uttered statements about a food (carrot cake):

1. "It's my favorite restaurant and they serve the best carrot cake!" from someone who only ever eats at one place. Do they have a basis for comparison?
2. "The carrot cake was amazing, and I hate all carrot cakes!" If they hate it, are they really capable of discerning a good example of a carrot cake?
3. "The carrot cake was delicious, but completely uninspired" at the four-star restaurant, because the critic eats at four-star restaurants all the time. How often do you eat at restaurants like that?

Each piece of advice may or may not be useful to you. The way to determine whose statement to trust is to look at where they're coming from. No. 1 rarely ventures out of their comfort zone, but the food at that particular venue might be good. If you, too, hate carrot cake, you might like No. 2's choice, since it is unlikely to resemble a carrot cake at all. If you never eat at four-star restaurants, unlike No. 3, you might be blown away by the quality of the food, without even realizing that it was "uninspired."

In reality, the only critic you should always trust is yourself. Food preferences are intensely personal and have evolved over the course of human history. Your taste buds are both reliable and honest, but you will have to trust them over outside sources. In order to trust them, you must give them a fair chance. Don't eat things you really object to, but try new things from time to time. Acknowledge that there are hundreds of ways to prepare nearly every possible type of food. By trying them, you might reaffirm your beliefs of dislike or end up surprising yourself with a fresh, enjoyable sensation. In any event, you will have an accurate review of the food from a critic that you can always count on.