If you fancy becoming a restaurant critic, make sure you have a stash of untraceable cash, multiple credit cards with different names, and a wig.
I remember reading about Ruth Reichl's stint as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. She would go out in full disguises, changing her demeanor, her voice, everything, so that restaurants wouldn't recognize her as Ruth Reichl. Critics don't seem to be going that far these days. Restaurant critics dine with friends and family, make reservations under false names, and pay for their meals in ways that don't reveal their identities, all to provide a review based on what it would be like to dine for the restaurant's every day customer.
However, restaurants have become savvy to critics, whose reviews could crowd their reservations lines or shut them down, by educating their staff to look out for critics. They have complete "dossiers" with physical descriptions, photographs, and even explanations of crtics' idiosyncrasies.
It makes me wonder, then, how accurate those 2, 3, or 4 stars really are.
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