With the departure of another old-guard restaurant critic, Raymond Sokolov of the Wall Street Journal, professional restaurant criticism is getting the last rites. Food Woolf strikes back:
But as the power of the food as entertainment grows, the force of the critic recedes. Yesterday on Time’s online magazine, Josh Ozersky wrote about the fleeting life cycle of newspaper critics and warned food lovers that web site forums like Urban Spoon and Yelp minimize the power of the newspaper critic and threaten to end the lifespan of the professional food criticism.
Is this a bad thing?
It’s not great, but the rise of the multitudes does have an upside. More voices = more people caring about food. More people caring about food = better restaurants, better products, better lives. And anyone who doesn’t take Yelp reviews (or those of a random food blogger) with a healthy dose of skepticism is a moron.
It’s worth reading the whole thing.
For the record, Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post remains my all-time favorite reviewer. His commitment to fairness and aversion to cheap shots help rein in my own impulses…at least most of the time.
Show Me Eats 
I agree about Tom S. I’m a big fan too.
Yes!
In some fashion you can say perhaps that there are now a host of professional food critics and that what we’re noticing is that the more prominent critics are now relatively less prominent.