Restaurant Criticism Requires Substance and Not Triviality

Angelenos are fortunate that Ruth Reichl isn’t our only restaurant critic. She so often overlooks what is good and unusual in new restaurants.

If we were to act solely on Reichl’s recommendations, we would all be scrambling for seats at the only four or five institutions she repeatedly recommends. The culinary diversity that our city represents, the variety of tastes and styles that make us the restaurant capital of the country, would have been stillborn.

And she would have accomplished such mayhem by constantly quoting a gaggle of friends whose apparent qualification for culinary criticism is that they are willing to be her quests.

I admit I am not an unbiased reader as I am a part owner of the new Westside bistro Lunaria. And in that capacity, I find myself in the company of several of Los Angeles’ most prominent restaurateurs--including the owners of Le Chardonnay, L’Orangerie and La Serre--who have felt compelled to challenge her capricious reviews.

I am not so pretentious to assume that our four-month-old restaurant has no room for improvement. My objection to Reichl’s style is her substitution of triviality for constructive comments and her disregard for anything unexpected.

Although we have long been familiar with Reichl’s penchant for blanket criticism, her attack still took us by surprise. In the short time we have been open, publications such as Beverly Hills 213, Los Angeles magazine and Orange County magazine have recommended us warmly. The Times itself has already raved about executive chef Dominique Chavanon. And our most important critics, our patrons, are returning week after week and giving us our best reviews through word-of-mouth referrals.

What we have at Lunaria is a different dining experience. Perhaps that is where we lost Reichl. We do not aspire to be a place set with silver, nor a trendy hot spot.

The founder of Lunaria, Bernard Jacoupy, is renowned for creating elegant restaurants, but he felt the Westside was ready for his idea of a California bistro--comfortable and casual surroundings with excellent food at reasonable prices. To this we added live jazz entertainment to make Lunaria a place to relax for an entire evening.

Reichl’s complaints about the noise level were all the more startling since those few restaurants she routinely praises are among the noisiest in town. We purposely avoided the “high-tech” look and sound that make conversation almost impossible.

There is no way I can address all of Reichl’s comments since she took 2 1/2 pages to criticize everything, even down to the waiters’ uniforms--an item that doesn’t usually interfere with the typical dining experience.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, Reichl generally comes to bury restaurants, not to praise them. It is sad that many readers will not take the opportunity to even try a restaurant as a result of her particular bias.

It is time for Reichl’s palate to mature and her eye to sharpen, to appreciate a wider variety of dining pleasures. There are thousands of restaurants in the Los Angeles area and only 52 weekends to review them. If The Times’ readers follow her taste, they will be missing out on too much. They deserve better service.

And those of us in the restaurant business deserve better treatment.