As your resident GHS food critic, I have had a successful run, from a breakthrough collaboration at McDonald’s back in September to my review of debatably the best burger in town last month. Unfortunately, there comes a time when every critic must put away their notes and graduate.
For my last article, I didn’t want to write about food, but about the future of food reviewing on our Explosion website. Whether our next reviewer comes during the upcoming school year or in a decade, I just wanted to leave some notes for those upcoming food analysts, who seek to continue the Journalism food reviews tradition.
The first thing I will get into can be described in one word: expand. By this I mean that future food reviewers at GHS should broaden their palate by trying different cuisines or new foods that have not yet been evaluated. For my career, I have stuck to my most-liked foods, which is not a bad thing, but like they say, variety is the spice of life. The more options we have, the more we must be consistent with the blogs. Since some people have not tried out the food that we may have, they will fall back on our reviews to help decide their next meal.
Further, we can never be too specific. People tap into our food reviews for the details of what we have eaten. They need to understand why that food should be on their to-do list for that day. Being too broad and general in our reviews will leave the readers in the same place where they started. We need to make our readers feel sure about why they need to go and order a specific food item.
On top of being specific, we should be authentic. Being true to ourselves, and to what we truly feel, will make our articles that much better. We reviewers need to tell the truth of our experiences with certain restaurants. We can’t only say what our readers want to hear, because the goal of being a food critic is to be honest with our reviews.
The most important aspect of critiquing food is in the writing. As reviewers, we need to bring our best writing to make our assessments. We should always have a great hook, a great description, and a list of adjectives that entice the reader to read more of our reviews. We need to bring our A game when it comes to writing our reviews.
On the topic of writing, even though we need to be descriptive in our reviews, we should always try to get to the beef of the argument. In other words, we should get straight to the analysis of the food, while being descriptive as possible at the same time.
Finally, I just want to say to future Explosion food critics to always be themselves. If they did not have a great experience at a restaurant, they must let their readers know why. As critics, we have the power to say what we believe, but only to an extent.
And one more thing I would like to say to my readers: it was a fun ride. I really enjoyed bringing my ideas to the food scene of Glendale, and I hope my loyal readers will continue supporting the next food critic here at GHS.
Stay hungry, Nitros!
