Eaters Gonna Eat

Food bloggers, eh? Don’t you just hate them? Well, some of you do, and it only takes a quick shufty around the Twittersphere to happen upon criticism ranging from the general backhanded slur (‘tosspot blaggers’) to the vein-popping Stone Cold Steve Austin-style tirade (‘YOU ARE A STAIN ON SOCIETY’). Hating bloggers seems a strange preoccupation when you really think about it, like despising a swimming club that you aren’t a member of: essentially, anybody on this planet can decline to have anything to do with them and go on with their lives in a happily-ever-after fashion. There's no need to firebomb the local piscine for their stance on the backstroke.

The big question is, what motivates this verbal assault? Maybe we bloggers deserve an online beatdown every now and then?

The most common caricature of the blogger is the catchy term ‘blagger,’ although I’m not sure if it’s the weapon of choice due to its core of truth or the fact that it handily rhymes with blogger. The truth is, a lot of bloggers do accept invitations from restaurants and brands to review their efforts, but there isn't necessarily a problem with this unless the review that follows is biased. As a fellow restaurant punter, I don’t give two hoots if a restaurant has decided to comp some food in the hope of some decent PR (and it's questionable anyway that the reach of bloggers is a sound investment); while, as a blog reader, I’d like to think I’d pick up on those nasty pasties who consistently pay their dinner bills with public praise, and an unfollow would follow. If I ever find a blogger who doesn’t write negative reviews (and I have), then I’m not interested. Nobody’s that lucky.

Negative reviews: maybe that’s it? Maybe it’s all those restaurant-destroying, livelihood-nuking shitty reviews that bloggers are always writing? Do you remember the time that one blogger wrote that bloody review, and that top-notch restaurant had to close, and that genius chef lost his job, and his likeable family had to live in a poorly maintained static caravan in Doncaster? You don’t? That’s because it didn’t happen. I’ve tried in vain to find one example of a restaurant being damaged by a blogger's review. In the age of social media there are myriad outlets for thousands of opinions on every establishment; one dissenting voice in a sea of praise isn’t going to cause a restaurant meltdown.

Obviously there’s one subsection of the culinary world that will never appreciate food bloggers’ negative reviews: the chef who's being criticised. In my local ‘hood of Manchester, there have been one or two spectacular reactions to negative reviews in recent memory. In response to a review of his restaurant Damson, chef Simon Stanley retorted on Twitter thus: 'nobody cares what you write on your self gratifying [sic] blog … So fuck off back to your classroom you fat knob'. The reasoning usually degenerates into insults (as in chef Ernst Van Zyl’s tweet referencing 'a review a few weeks ago by a man with tastebuds like that of a dog that licks his balls & arse daily'), and revolves around bloggers not knowing what they’re talking about.

But guess what? We don’t. We're not chefs, restaurateurs, or journalists. The problem seems to be with the premise that that’s what a great number of people who read blogs want to hear: opinions and observations from someone like them. The man in the street, the woman in the cafe, the dude in the takeaway, the lass in the pub, the bloke in Aldi. Of course, some bloggers are self-obsessed, freebie-chasing hacks who got into food writing for all the wrong reasons – but your common-or-garden food blogger is just your average food nerd who wanted to write down what they ate, and talk to other average food nerds about it.