The All-Powerful Food Critic

While reading Pete Well's review of Guy Fieri' s "Guy's American Kitchen & Bar" in Times Square, my first thought was holy crap.  This is not a review, it is any angry letter directly addressing the owner of this restaurant.  Well scathingly describes his horrible time at Fieri's new restaurant, not holding anything back.  It was quite enjoyable.  It was also effective; there is no way I am about to spend my time and money at this place if ever I find myself in New York City. 
This got me thinking, though.  Pete Well was able to cast a very dark and dank shadow over this restaurant very quickly.  What is it that we expect of our food critics?  And what kind of power does this give them in return? First and foremost we expect them to be brutally honest, and I think we can all agree that Pete Well rose up to and even surpassed this challenge.  But with that honesty also comes the power to make or break a restaurant.  In this case Well certainly accomplished the latter.  If I hadn't read Well's other review on Cagen in the East Village, I may have thought that he was overreacting a little bit (or a lot).  But the fact is that I thoroughly enjoyed his Cagen review, and he seemed very fair in his overall assessment of the restaurant. 
This brings up my second point: we expect our food critics to be seasoned, so to say (pun intended).  How can we trust our food critics to be honest if they don't have years of experience to back up their opinions?  And the more experience and louder voice a food critic has, the more power they have over a restaurant's social status.  I am reminded now of our other article about François Simon and his strict (or thorough, however you want to see it) evaluations of the restaurants he reviews.  Chefs were so scared of him that they refused to talk to the author of this article (Elisabeth Franck- Dumas, Could This Be The Most Feared Food Critic in the World?).  This guy has so much power that simply the utterance of his name will send any chef scrambling for the best ingredients, servers, and dishes he or she has to offer.  This is a food critic's power at its finest. 
All of the articles that I read for Tuesday's class have given me an interesting insight to the life and work of a food critic, and the power that each wields over our dining out decisions.