This week, Jesse Mulligan honestly responds to some feedback about last week’s Dining Out review.

I have an important question for you.

A dear friend took me out for lunch over the weekend. She has done almost all there is to do in the world of food, including putting out
a cookbook and owning one of our most famous restaurants. We had a lovely meal and at the end, she said: “Now, Jesse, we need to talk.”

She’d read a particularly brutal review I’d written of a restaurant last week, and she didn’t like it.

“How would you feel?” she asked, “if that business failed and you knew that you were part of the reason? What you write has a big effect on people’s lives.”

“My Granny always said if you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all”, goes the logic. And I have to admit, I’d sleep a lot better on some Tuesday nights if I knew I was going to be making people universally happy with my column the next morning.

So why do we publish reviews that are critical?

It’s about trust. I do believe the words I write impact people’s lives and livelihoods and one of the things I’m proudest of is being able to send readers to a restaurant that is brilliant, but not busy. I reckon 80% of my reviews are me saying, “this is great! You should come and support it!” and I know from experience that readers do. What’s that got to do with the bad reviews? If I wasn’t honest about the places that need work, you wouldn’t trust me about the places that are wonderful. Would you take the advice of a movie critic who told you every movie they went to was fantastic? No, you’d find somebody willing to warn you away from the bad films, knowing that you could really trust them on the good ones.Having said that, this isn’t Manhattan in the 1980s. One review is (I’m sorry to admit) not going to be the making or breaking of a restaurant. These days Aucklanders are getting their information from Instagram, TikTok, Google and various online-only magazines. I am just one voice among many. Of course, internet reviewers also have to get paid somehow, and that’s often by taking money from restaurants to say nice things. All the more reason for you to have at least one reviewer whose opinion you know you can trust.People like reading them. This has a more complex effect on our decision than you might think. If we know a review is likely to deliver a lot of clicks, we need to be even more sure that its publication is justifiable, independently of that. Restaurants we review tend to fall into one of four categories: hidden gems, big players with big names behind them, restaurants in high-profile locations and those which are getting a lot of hype. It’s the last three that come with an expectation of quality. Readers are likely to go there and expect them to be brilliant. It’s our responsibility to give them an authoritative call on whether that expectation is justified. That’s why you won’t see me reviewing any old neighbourhood place and slating it.Owners of struggling restaurants are the visible victims of my reviews, but what about the invisible victims – people who wasted their money eating there? The humiliation and despair of spending my limited money on a bad meal was the reason I got into restaurant criticism in the first place – I wanted to save others from what I’d been through. During a cost-of-living crisis, it’s not difficult to imagine people giving up on restaurants entirely – why would we risk a couple of hundred precious dollars on somewhere that might not be any good? Hopefully my reviews will help them feel good about getting out there to support hospo and those working in the industry.Despite all of the above, we publish critical reviews very rarely and I actually still do sometimes walk away without writing a word. I do it because I can see that a restaurant is really struggling, and the owner is already completely depressed, and I have the time and money to write about somewhere else instead. Because of deadlines and budgets, I’m not able to do this every time (nor would I, for reasons already discussed). But you should know that about once a year we swallow the cost of the meal and pretend it never happened. For perspective, I’ve written around 400 reviews for Viva where the message is “come and spend your money here!” I’ve written about 20 where the message is “avoid this food at all costs”.

That’s what I think, but what do you think? I am writing for your benefit, after all. Would you prefer me to only review good restaurants? Despite all I’ve said above, does writing about the bad ones still feel unjustifiable to you? Let us know, in our poll below. I can’t promise the referendum will be binding, but I promise to take the result seriously.

What you’ve asked, and what he’s shared.