Jonathan Gold Drops Mask Of Anonymity
Pulitzer prize winning food writer Jonathan Gold is the latest high-profile restaurant critic to abandon the mask of anonymity, though he says his identity was never really secret to begin with.
Gold's long-haired, mustachioed face was revealed this morning in a cover story in the L.A. Times, in which Gold says any claim at actual anonymity was over in 2007 when his picture was accidentally published on the website of a paper he used to work for. However, he's maintained the secret identity performance because in the U.S. the ideal persists of an anonymous restaurant critic operating in secret to catch out restaurants that might otherwise deliver a lesser experience to a non-VIP customer.
"We are silent vigilantes avenging curdled hollandaise," Gold said.
However fun the critic's cloak and dagger routine might be for a person to read about, though, Gold said restaurants know the critics' faces anyway.
"A hundred waiters know my name," he wrote. "I have been called out in taquería lines from Pacoima to Bell Gardens. At chic restaurants, chefs nervously avoid my gaze. ... I have become adept at pretending not to notice that a restaurant staff is pretending not to notice me noticing them noticing me."
New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells weighed in on Twitter:
This is a losing battle but one more time: anonymity means you don't use your name. Doesn't mean you don't use your face.
— Pete Wells (@pete_wells) January 24, 2015
The cloak and dagger aspect of disguises is very romantic. Readers love it. But it was never the point.
— Pete Wells (@pete_wells) January 24, 2015
And there's never been a restaurant critic who was never recognized after some time on the job. The Internet's got nothing to do with it.
— Pete Wells (@pete_wells) January 24, 2015
Point is, what everybody mistakenly calls "anonymity" is just a sideshow.
— Pete Wells (@pete_wells) January 24, 2015
Restaurant t critics have a few tools. Passing unrecognized is a minor one, mostly useful when you're new to the job.
— Pete Wells (@pete_wells) January 24, 2015
Just over a year ago New York magazine food critic Adam Platt dispensed with his own anonymity by appearing unmasked on the magazine's cover. Gold holds him up as an example, saying the quality of Platt's reviews has not diminished at all since his unmasking.