The Other Critics

Sifton Doesn’t Mean to Be a Dick About Being Right All the Time

“Listen, you’ve got to trust your gut, man,” Times dining critic Sam Sifton explains to Fader when they ask him how he can be confident assessing a restaurant’s quality. “I don’t mean to be a dick about it, it’s just like, they pay me for my opinion. If I think it’s pretty good, it’s probably pretty good.” In something we’ll take as a personal Grub Street shout-out, he also explains his propensity for describing things as “very good”: “That’s short hand. You need to take three paragraphs that follow ‘the food was very good’ to explain what you mean by that.” Carry on, then. [Fader]

Sifton Doesn’t Mean to Be a Dick About Being Right All the Time