I want to start by saying that it feels a bit gauche to write about restaurants, and eating for pleasure, while millions of Americans lose their SNAP benefits and struggle to feed themselves and their families. If you have the means, consider donating to Northwest Harvest – they support more than 350 food justice organizations throughout Washington state. I have an automatic monthly donation set up with Backpack Brigade, a non-profit that sends low-income kids who may not otherwise have anything to eat over the weekend home with food every Friday.
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From Saturday to Tuesday, before the election dominated the news, the top story on The Seattle Times website was “Seattle’s Canlis is not quite what it used to be, says our critic,” by Bethany Jean Clement.
Canlis is Seattle’s most famous fine dining restaurant, built in 1950 by Peter Canlis and still family owned and run by his grandson, Mark Canlis. At $180 a person (not including tax, tip or drinks), it's a special place to get engaged, celebrate an anniversary or a big birthday, and the only Seattle restaurant I know of with a strict dress code. Newsletter editor Sophie Grossman told me, “The detail I remember most vividly from the first time I went there was that when we got to the front door to leave, they already had our coats and they had warmed them up for us by holding them up to the fireplace.”
But in her article, Clement says both Canlis’ signature service and long-celebrated food were lacking: “Over the course of several recent visits, the food was overwrought, mystifying and almost entirely unpleasant to eat — with one experience a somewhat stunning outlier.”
She describes meat as “chewy,” cold elements, like slices of raw albacore tuna, “unsettlingly warmed by a pool of corn puree.” Frisee is over-salted, and a “tuile made with local scamorza cheese and a fermented pepper sauce ... was eye-wateringly sour and bitter, like punishment for vegetarians.”
This review has ruffled a LOT of feathers. Many commenters are calling it a takedown, some accusing Clement, a Seattle native and decades-long local food reviewer, of writing it simply for clickbait. Many believe negative reviews shouldn’t exist at all. Why not focus solely on the positive, skip the bad reviews, and choose to uplift restaurants that are putting out delicious food?
It’s a complicated topic, lacking a black-and-white answer, but here are my thoughts:
A negative review in a powerful publication can have a big impact – it can lead to job losses or even an eventual restaurant shutdown; livelihoods are at stake. One commenter said they showed up to a half-empty Canlis dining room on Saturday night, and were told that half the reservations cancelled after the article came out. But should a legacy restaurant be held accountable if the food and service is seriously slipping?
Clement reports that on one of her visits, the grand total for dinner for two came to $573.39. If I was planning to spend money like that, potentially saving up for months for a special dinner, I’d like to know if the food has been disappointing.
A meal is obviously subjective, but I think Clement did her duty as a seasoned critic by describing the experience as objectively as possible – she didn’t say she didn’t like the Wagyu-wrapped oyster, she said it was “distressingly chewy.” The duck had a “stiff layer of unrendered fat.” A piece of okra “had a stiff, deep-fried carapace, then a viscous interior with a bitter taste.” Waffle-cut potato chips were “oily, heavy and stale.” Kalbi beef was “almost too tough for the steak knife; a diner at the next table also sawed away with difficulty at theirs.” This sounds less like personal taste and more like improperly cooked food. Does anyone like tough, chewy steak or stale potato chips?
We are living in a time when thousands of people consider themselves restaurant critics: writing Yelp reviews, confidently opining about meals on social media and publishing “The Top 42 Matcha Lattes in Seattle” lists on underfunded websites that can’t afford to pay for their reviewers’ meals. But the vast majority of these content creators are not adhering to the journalistic standards Clement does: visiting a restaurant several times before writing a review, not accepting free meals and attempting to be anonymous.
To be honest, I don’t always follow Clement’s reviews. I have read them for years, and enjoy her writing, but after trying some of her recommendations, I found that our tastes are often not aligned.
I learned 20 years ago that it’s important to find your critic. I started reading movie reviews in high school, sometimes letting them influence whether I saw a film or not. But in 2005, when I started working at Seattle’s KIRO Radio, we had an in-house film critic. Tom Tangney and I had remarkably similar taste; we first bonded over a mutual love of Todd Solondz films (Palindromes had just come out) and preferred indie and foreign films.
It was only then that I realized: Reviews are most valuable when you know the reviewer’s taste. Tom’s reviews were valuable to me, and I learned to disregard the opinion of another local critic with conservative, prudish taste and a penchant for big-budget action and superhero movies. Sometimes knowing that your tastes don’t align is just as important as knowing they do. But in this case, I don’t feel like I have to share Clement’s taste to find value in reading about the missteps she outlines in her review. I also don’t think she wants to publish negative reviews like this.
To her credit, Clement speaks to the personal angst of writing negative reviews in this 2022 piece.
The other context to consider with this controversial Canlis review (which Clement includes in the piece), is the clown car of internal changes the restaurant has experienced this year. In April, executive chef Aisha Ibrahim announced she was leaving, along with her wife, executive sous chef Samantha Beaird. A new executive chef was promoted internally in June and then one of the owners, Brian Canlis, left the business to pursue another project. New restaurants are usually given a few months to get their footing before being reviewed. Was six months enough time for the new chef to find his flow? Should people expect mediocre food and service while that happens?
Like I said, it’s complicated. But because of the high price tag, I think a respectful review, written by a critic who has experienced Canlis’ food over decades, is fair. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Only a handful of tickets are left for this Saturday’s Food Fight with Rachel Belle, featuring America’s Test Kitchen hosts Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collins Davison! November 8 at The Neptune Theater in Seattle. Your ticket includes a copy of a new America’s Test Kitchen cookbook.
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Rachel Belle
