WOM 620

The paywall comes to food criticism

Would you be prepared to pay exclusively for the opinions of a restaurant critic, and what would you expect for your money?
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. Would you pay just to read another review of a 3 star restaurant? Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Since the first web user publicly sneered about a meal online, the demise of the restaurant critic has been loudly forecast. Like many such predictions of death, it has proved to be premature.

Working on the rough calculation that there are seven web years to every normal one, the big guns of UK reviewing have hung in there for a Methusalan term and their influence shows few signs of weakening. It has been suggested that the Times paywall has reduced the audience for the brilliant Coren and the magisterial Gill to that of a couple of mid-weight food bloggers(a fact which, given their public antipathy to bloggers must gall them immeasurably) but, in general, none of the various attempts to shake up the world of restaurant reviewing have truly done so.

Five human years ago, (35 web years if you're keeping count) big food community boards based in the US were talking a good game about the superiority of crowdsourced reviews. Places like eGullet and Mouthfuls remain an interesting place to read opinions from a reasonably informed user base, though they have never formalised their reviews.

In 2008 Steve Plotnicki's Opinionated About Dining food board made a sort of leap forward by polling members of his private community for reviews and then publishing the results.

In the UK the Harden brothers have created a new model of reviewing based on an annual survey of reader feedback, and a moderated and editorialised summary of its results as a guide, in book, web, iPhone, BlackBerry and - coming soon - iPad form.

But now Fay Maschler, one of the UK's longest standing and most respected restaurant critics, has pushed out from her traditional media beachhead at the Evening Standard with a bold new business model for critics.

Let me say at the outset that I am hugely sympathetic to Maschler's project. It's tough out there and any attempt by writer, critic or otherwise to innovate is fair game - newspapers are not the source of income they once were and in the future will be even less so. But what's actually on offer here?

Page One is a nicely designed website containing recommendations for 100 London restaurants by Maschler and her team (Simon Davis, her partner in restaurant consultancy A Private View and Divia and Joel Cadbury). According to the site, "in the opinion of the founders of Page One there are only 100 restaurants you need to know about at any one time" and they claim to offer members "speedy, elegant access to privileged information" which, according to the press release, includes "insider advice" on matters such as who to know and where to sit.

For your £100 annual membership fee you get a password and instructions for logging on "in an attractive gift box".

Yep. That's a hundred notes for a password.

The reviews are good - not inspiring or shockingly different - in fact, if you're a fan of Maschler, there's a good chance you'll already know her opinion on many of them. Suffice to say there are no surprises or discoveries on the list so far.

Like all experiments in this area, from the Times' paywall downwards, this raises important questions. When information is exclusive, it's worth paying for. Charged-for content from the likes of the FT and the Economist offers a perceived commercial advantage through the quality and exclusivity of their analysis. Racing tip sheets, for example, or their less creditable brethren, investors' newsletters, are worth the money if you're going to benefit from being the first of the few who know. It's easy to understand why people would pay for the benefits of this sort of information, but less easy to identify exactly what you'd be buying with a subscription to Page One.

Sometimes, club-like benefits make a purchase worthwhile - I'd certainly be happy to chip Maschler, Davis and the Cadburys a ton for a tiny bit of their influence in, for example, actually getting a table at any of these places. But as it stands, I'm wondering where the attraction in this fascinating offer is, and who's likely to buy.

In times of declining newspaper sales the critics have to look to new ways of staying relevant. From what I can see, no single brand from Michelin through Hardens to Page One seems to have got it 100% right yet, but the market is out there waiting to decide.

As with so many areas of the media, Google is the biggest threat and greatest opportunity. We won't end up replacing the opinions of our critics with another single trusted brand - not bloggers, craigslist, foursquare, toptable or yelp - we'll simply Google the name of the restaurant and treat all the opinions that come back with an open mind. That means that any brand, be it guide, critic, reviewer or other online entity is playing for the first time on a level field with a hugely increased and viciously hungry opposition.

This is a brave attempt to try something new in a confused and rapidly changing media landscape. It's a first step into the 'new' media for a respected voice, but in the end, the success of Page One boils down to a single question: is access to the opinion of any critic worth £100?

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