Back OT, what has happened to this food critic really boils my potatoes,
cuts my cabbage, and jerks my beef.

An outrage!

Usually though, I’d still give a restaurant a try despite negative reviews if the food sounds good enough.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2010/09/04/271334/Govt-to.htm

Uh, no. They fear food critics because their voices are backed by professional experience, often appear in publications with large audiences, and often have followings of people who take their food seriously.

Many, if not most, professional food critics visit a restaurant at least a few times, and try several items on the menu. Frank Bruni, the former NY Times critic, often went with friends and made everyone order different things so he could try many dishes at once.

I’ve never read a review where a critic ate only one dish and made comment on another. Critics describe the dishes THEY eat. The generalizations would come from the quality of service, which they can only experience on a handful of days.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/restaurant-owners-defamed-jury-finds/2007/09/19/1189881595499.html

However this is a civil tort and only leads to damages, not imprisonment(!).

As an aside, I would like Asia-philes to remember this sort of stuff when preaching to the rest of us about what a dynamic, exciting place Asia is artistically/culturally/culinarily/whateverly.

The idea is that open justice is the norm – anyone can see everything that happens in court – but that this is counterbalanced by a requirement that anything you publish about what you see must be accurate. So you don’t get, say, a person being accused of rape and then the newspapers only reporting the adverse allegations but not the matters put forward which might exonerate them. Sort of an enforced media responsibility. I know that is quite an alien idea from a US perspective though – again it comes back to a lack of positive free speech rights.

Xeni,
I didn’t see anything gender-specific or familiar in the Taipei Times article or in the words of the restauranteur, and I’m a female reader. Have you been following this story elsewhere?

“Blogger needs to learn a lesson about the dangers of slander.” That’s what I see the restauranteur saying.

I agree with taj here. The WAJAB (We Are Just A Blog) defense, used by many prominent blogs often (ahem!), is very weak sauce indeed.

Something to think about: Let’s see what happens when one of the alleged Vancouver rioters identified by the online-justice-mob commits self-injury (or worse).

Go to the Taipei Night Markets and there are more cockroaches than you can shake a stick at. Because… Get ready for it… that’s what happens when you open an eatery near the equator on a beautiful island.

Why the poor blogger is getting such a smack-down though, I have no idea. Roaches are far from rare in this part of the world.

The beef noodles served by the Taiwanese bully in question however contain sinew from lab macaques and cadaver drippings…

I read it on the internet somewhere. . .

Citation needed for blanket assertion.

As to the whole ‘everyone’s a critic’ movement. I like what tripadvisor now has introduced, basically a rating of the raters, I was once stuck in a hotel in Pamukkale with tons of great reviews, but later found that they were all from ‘people’ who only ever wrote ONE review … later I found in that hotel that the youngsters there were online all night, creating new online personas and write reviews (at the same time bashing neighboring hotels)

One more thing … I have also heard from 2 small upstart hotels that they have been basically blackmailed by guests ‘give me discount, or you will find bad words on booking.com … ‘

sigh … and NOW i want to have those noodles and that beer !!!

(Can someone sneak in a sticker among their ‘accepted cards’ display saying ‘as featured on BB’ ? :D

“Blogger needs to learn a lesson about the dangers of slander.” That’s what I see the restauranteur saying.

She called him a bully for letting people park haphazardly.
Think about that. How does letting people do what they like on the street make someone a bully? (And without knowing the words in Chinese it’s hard to judge how over / under the top that might be to say.

I am all for freedom of expression. BUT, people can’t just post lies and falsehoods that harm others with impunity. Female, Male, or Other.

Give a restaurant a good review, however, and watch the people lining up, oblivious to the double standard. This is part of the reason there are no genuine review establishments such as Michelin in Taiwan; they’d be sued out of the country. This may also be why Taiwan’s movie industry has been stagnant for so long. In fact, there are many serious repercussions originating from this aspect of Taiwanese law/custom. Each incident that comes to light spreads on the Internet, beyond the borders where the judge has no authority, and impacts Taiwan’s international image.

Most meals I just want a decent meal, reasonably priced, and served promptly. I suppose I could write positive Yelp reviews of restaurants that manage that, but they would be pretty boring.

If a restaurant consistently cooks my hamburger to order, gets it on the table in a timely fashion and charges reasonably, that’s a wow for me. I would find that kind of review more useful than whether or not the breast of pheasant en crépine was rubbery.

If I have a good meal, I tell everyone that I know to eat there, because it’s in my self-interest to make sure that a good restaurant stays open. I hate it when I find a great place to eat and it closes for lack of business, which is incredibly common here in Disney Arrakis. Seasonal tee-shirt tourists and rich centenarians are not a good economic base for a vigorous restaurant culture.