Top Restaurant Critic Sparks Outrage After Writing a Zero-Star Review of Progressive Fast Food Restaurant
5th January 2017
NYT restaurant critic Pete Wells wrote a scathing zero-star review of one branch of LocoL in California and has received a backlash as a result – some people have even canceled their subscriptions to the paper.
Part of the reason people have responded so strongly is that LocoL is a restaurant with honourable intentions – the idea behind the mini-chain is to offer good quality, healthy food at affordable prices to some of the poorest, most neglected neighbourhoods of the US.
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Fans of the restaurant jumped to LocoL’s defence, arguing the critic had been unnecessarily harsh.
“Lovely takedown piece on a small company genuinely trying to make underserved communities better through food, innovation and employment,” commented one person on Facebook.
There is the ‘progressive’ mind in a nutshell (emphasis on the ‘nut’): If a restaurant is founded on Politically Correct principles, then it doesn’t matter whether the food is any good.
On the other hand, any tendency for someone at the New York Times to engage in Actual Journalism is good news. (As is anything that tends to get people to cancel their subscriptions, I say, but that’s just me.)