“The New York Times’ restaurant critic Pete Wells has written a non-review of a restaurant he hasn’t visited,” writes New York magazine classical music and architecture critic Justin Davidson on Wednesday (5/24) at Vulture.com. “He would rather not fly to Tulum and eat a $750 meal at [Noma Mexico] a temporary temple of Mexican alta cocina, an experience available only to a total of 7,000 people.… Wells goes on to disparage the whole idea of writing critically about an event that has already vanished…. I have never seen Hamilton … yet Ben Brantley’s [Times] review helped me to grasp its cultural importance…. If [Wells] can’t defend writing about a limited but extraordinary event in culinary history … then he would presumably disdain a review of an early-music performance in a Manhattan church. Indeed, he made that connection on Twitter, remarking: ‘I can’t think of a single great review of an individual concert.’ … What about those of us who will never know the pleasures of spending a fortune on a piñuela sprinkled with grasshopper paste and coriander flowers? Shouldn’t we at least be permitted to read about it?” Wells later remarked that he would retweet “great concert reviews as penance for my dumb off the cuff remark made in a quick back and forth.”
Posted May 26, 2017
