A few days ago, an industry friend posted something disappointing on social media. She’d ordered some fairly expensive take-out from a prominent Chicago restaurant, and her experience had not been ideal. This was one of those increasingly common situations wherein restaurants require a ton of at home assembly for take-out meals, and without going into too much detail, the delivery was not correctly packaged and made a bit of a mess. Understandably (at least in a pre-covid age!) she posted a complaint on her social media.

Here’s where things went off the rails. While many of the comments contained sympathy or disappointment, several instead expressed anger, sometimes quite vehement anger, at the thought that she would dare to criticize a restaurant during this pandemic. Restaurants are suffering, so the logic seemed to go, and the industry is in a free fall, so consumers should simply accept what they are given, grateful that there’s really anything left aside from whatever is in their freezer drawer.

Once I started looking, I saw this sentiment popping up all over the internet. Food criticism, both amateur and professional, isn’t appropriate right now, because of the immense stress the restaurant industry is under. Bitterness about Yelp reviewers seems to have hit a new high, which is quite a feat given how high it was among chefs before the world descended into chaos. People complaining about their food online seem to almost-universally face at least some degree of reproach. So, as someone who has spent many years being paid to write about food (and some years being paid to criticize restaurants), it led me to ponder: what are the ethics of criticism during this complicated time?

It’s worth noting that this sentiment has existed long before the pandemic. A segment of the restaurant industry has always felt that criticism is somehow inappropriate; that all food writers should, in fact, be food boosters, and that restaurant critics are mostly those who can’t actually cook, spending time and energy impugning the life’s work (and potentially affecting the livelihood) of dedicated culinary professionals. I’ve fallen victim to this before when I’ve given a bad review: “Won’t you feel awful if the restaurant closes?” I’ve been asked, or “why don’t you focus on the positive, rather than the negative?”

My answer has always been the same – my job is not to be a booster for the restaurant industry. They have paid professional PR for that task. My job is to represent the consumer, the average diner, the people shelling out their hard-earned cash in order to purchase food. And if in so representing the consumer, restaurants (especially bad ones, or mediocre ones) get hurt, that’s just part of the risk of doing business. Don’t charge a fortune for bad food, and I won’t call you out for charging a fortune for bad food.

But right now, everyone has become a booster for the industry. Every story I wrote (before Dish shut down) during the pandemic was trying to help a business I cared about. My social media posts have encouraged donations to restaurants, boosted up innovative operators, or expressed sorrow about restaurants who are closing. I’ve felt a sense of responsibility to use whatever influence I have to help my friends and colleagues who have worked their entire lives to serve us great food and provide a sense of belonging, as their businesses, lives and identities have been yanked out from under them by this virus.

However.

I’m still a critical, consumer focused person. There are still restaurants doing well, and restaurants doing badly. There are amazing values to be had for consumers, and terrible ripoffs. Despite the newfound sense of the restaurant industry as a group of heroes, the same restaurants that cut corners, failed health inspections, put out bad product and used subpar ingredients… probably still are doing all those things, along with some new companions forced into less-than-ideal practices by economic circumstances.

A simple example of this ethical dilemma: There are a ton of restaurants doing beer and wine sales to go right now. Many of them have come up with incredible deals, selling wine and beer (some a consumer would be hard pressed to access at a store) for reasonable prices. In some cases, these are prices akin to retail, allowing the restaurant a profit margin between the wholesale and retail price. In other cases, restaurants have offered wines at a markup, but a markup significant smaller than their standard restaurant markup in the before times. But other restaurants continue to offer wine at the sort of 3-4X markup that implies it’s being served in a glass by a server while you’re at a table.

Anthony of 2019 would have probably created a spreadsheet, done a bunch of math and made a list of best bargains, calling out some of the potential vultures and directing consumers to bargains. But now…I’m given pause. What if a super marked up wine is the only way a restaurant is paying its employees’ health insurance? If consumers are willing to pay it, and have the disposable income, maybe that’s just part of the way we work now.

Or take the many, many restaurants that have attempted to escape the vampiric clutches of delivery services like GrubHub and are offering their own delivery. This is great for restaurants, but often not so great for consumers. A few weeks ago, I ordered a fairly huge feast from a restaurant I love. I went right to the restaurant, instead of through a third party service. I scheduled delivery a day in advance, to try to minimize the burden on the restaurant, and made no special requests. The food was scheduled to arrive at noon.

At 1 p.m., I called the restaurant. They informed me, without even a hint of a sense of apology, that things were running late, and they hoped I’d get it by 1:30, but maybe it would be more like 2. If I had been using GrubHub, I would probably have gotten a chunk of cash for this, but in this case, I was seemingly expected to just accept it as part of the growing pains of the new normal. And I did. And the food was excellent. I said nothing on social media, I sent no angry emails. But I wondered a bit about where to draw the line.

This won’t end when restaurants re-open. Some places will be better than others about implementing social distancing but keeping a sense of atmosphere and engagement. Some places may even break or bend the rules. As an industry advocate, am I expected to continue to not comment negatively on restaurants for… how long? Until we are fully re-opened? That will still likely be a time of serious recession. It’s not like the restaurant industry is ever going to be easy. And if consumers who have experienced job losses and pay cuts have even LESS money to spend on food, shouldn’t those of us who have the ability to do so advise them where and where not to spend it?

I don’t claim to have any comprehensive answers. As I move forward, my only approach is to critique with compassion, to try to distinguish between honest, one-off mistakes and systematic low-quality disasters; to pick the things that are the fault of the restaurant and the fault of the circumstances. That bottle of champagne arrived flat? They didn’t know that when they sent it. Your food got a little smooshed in the package? It happens.

But if food was seasoned totally wrong, or ingredients were missing, or that rare steak was sent well done? I think it’s still worth commenting on. Without filtering out some of the negative, the places that continue to excel, to do amazing food in a time of strife, won’t get enough meaningful attention. And at the end of the day, even when an industry and a world is suffering, it’s worth making sure that the people who are trying hard, who are doing the right thing and who are bringing joy to diners hiding at home for the third consecutive month get the accolades that they genuinely deserve.