Waiter, cheque please
Karl Wells ‘Dining Out’ no more
After 14 years and more than 700 meals, Karl Wells is setting down his knife and fork — he has decided to end his restaurant review column.
“And so, dear Dining Out readers, I bid you a fond goodbye,” reads the last line of his final column as he ends a culinary era in this province during which he endured as a popular, respected critic of the restaurant and food sector.
“We’re certainly going to miss Karl, and based on the reaction to his reviews, our readers are going to miss him, too,” Telegram managing editor Steve Bartlett said. “He’s suggested restaurants we should try, and things to look for in food. I know I’ve dined at places after reading his reviews, and also found myself asking, ‘Is that the taste Karl was referring to?’ We could never replace Karl, but we can introduce someone or something new. We’re looking for new ways to review restaurants or discuss food trends. If any readers have ideas, I’d love to hear them.”
While Wells came to the realization it is time to wind down the column — the weekly deadline became a grind — he is not giving up writing, and hopes to do more travel and feature writing. Anyone who has chatted with him knows he has an in-depth knowledge of a range of subjects.
“If I were planning to give up writing altogether, it would be hard,” he told The Telegram in an interview.
“I see myself writing until the day I can’t draw a breath. Whether anybody reads it or not, I will always be typing out something on that computer.”
As he decided to end his column, Wells took stock and realized he had reviewed some restaurants several times.
The criticism didn’t always go over well. But Wells always kept in mind first and foremost those who would be paying for a meal in the restaurant being reviewed.
There were plenty of people who, regardless of whether they planned to try a particular restaurant or not, enjoyed his descriptive writing and the window he offered into the food and ambience of local eateries.
Wells steadfastly followed his rule of never taking a free meal.
And his reviews were never predictable.
Rather than stick to one style of restaurant, he has reviewed every kind of local fare — from Wannie’s Dawgs hotdog stand on the road to Lamanche Provincial Park to national and international fine dining best-of lists’ darling Raymonds on Water Street in St. John’s.
“You can’t be a restaurant reviewer here without going to all kinds of restaurants. You just can’t,” he said.
“People used to say to me, ‘How can you give a restaurant like Raymonds four stars and then go to another restaurant — not Raymonds by any means — and give them four stars?’
“My answer to that is it’s the food on the plate. If it’s the best fish and chips, the lightest batter, the crispiest batter, the most succulent fish, the most beautiful french fries, it can be four-star fish and chips.”
When Wells began writing Dining Out for The Telegram — he had previously contributed to a national website as this province’s restaurant critic — he kicked it off in September 2004 with a review of Sun Sushi, which had just opened on Duckworth Street.
Fourteen years later, there’s a sushi restaurant on practically every corner of the downtown.
Friends suggested he would quickly run out of places to critique, but culinary tastes have changed dramatically and the number of restaurants has grown.
Wells has also seen a huge shift in the range of ingredients available from local grocery stores that years ago were limited to staples like apples and oranges, cabbage and carrots. Now there’s exotic produce. He’s says he’s happy to see the St. John’s farmers’ market expanding to a new space.
“We have all these boutique farms around St. John’s. … It’s a wonderful thing. It’s changing the palates of Newfoundlanders. It’s making food so much more interesting,” he said.
While the oil boom broadened restaurant opportunities, in the past few years the economy has slowed and the dining out climate is dicey.
“I think mainly because of the economy, it’s going to be a rough row to hoe, as they say,” Wells said.
“It’s people with money who support restaurants, local restaurants — (I’m) not talking about chains. The local restaurants downtown depend on people with money, and when money is tight, that is the first thing people start cutting back on. Some of these people, they lived in restaurants — on expense accounts, for example.”
Wells laments that some good restaurants have gone out of business, such as Aqua and The Reluctant Chef.
“As long as the economy is sluggish and not looking great, I actually think we will see one or two more restaurants close, but I hope not,” he said.
He freely admits he doesn’t like chain restaurants. He reviewed some if they were unique, but mostly avoided them.
Each year with Dining Out, Wells selected a Top 10 list from the restaurants he’d reviewed that year and — perhaps a sign of his ability to spot a good thing — most are still open.
While Wells has friends who are chefs that are not in the business, and is an accredited personal chef himself, he said he was never a part of the restaurant community, nor did he hang around with the chefs whose work he reviewed.
It was all part of keeping the reviews ethical. He said there’s a trend on the web now for some bloggers to ask for free meals in exchange for positive reviews.
“That’s terribly unethical,” he said.
“Thank God I have had way more people say to me, ‘You were right in that column — dead on. Thanks.’ I would have to think hard to even come up with somebody who actually said to me, ‘You said that was a good restaurant. It wasn’t. I went. It was horrible.’”
Growing up, Wells loved reading movie and theatre reviews, and was fascinated the first time he saw a restaurant review.
He comes from a family of good cooks, and co-hosts the show “One Chef, One Critic” on Rogers TV, which finishes airing new episodes in June after 10 seasons. He is also the author of “Cooking with One Chef One Critic,” a companion cookbook to the TV series.
Before retirement, he was the beloved weatherman for CBCTV.
Asked about how he handled backlash when a restaurant didn’t get a good review — besides restaurateurs and chefs taking offence, sometimes he got bashed on social media — Wells said he took it mostly in stride.
“I expected it. I don’t blame people for being upset. It’s not nice to be criticized,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you say 99.9 per cent of the review is good and that one small portion is critical.
“I did go from being extremely well loved when I was a weatherman to having to be a pariah in the eyes of some restaurant owners. It kind of comes with the territory, so I did mostly brush it off. I didn’t like it when it got really personal.”
Wells, as recognizable as he is, is mystified as to why he ever got a mediocre or outright bad meal.
“I was in television almost 30 years by the time I started writing restaurant reviews. There was no way people weren’t going to know it was me, and yet I would go to restaurants and they would serve me a burnt hamburger,” he said.
All any cook or chef had to do was make him a good meal. The worst thing they could do is overcook a meal, especially fish.
“I do firmly belief bad reviews don’t close restaurants. If they are no good, they’re going to close anyway. They close because they serve bad food.”
Other times his review buoyed a restaurant.
“I was told many times a review had people beating down the door after the review is published. It’s great, I love that.
“That’s not why I write. You are writing for your readers. They are the only ones that count.”
From now on, he can have a relaxing meal in a restaurant. But that doesn’t mean he won’t post a line on Twitter or comment on Facebook. And if something new opens, you might just see a Karl Wells story about it.
Bon appétit, Karl.