Mercury restaurant reviews

Once again, I read in todays Sunday Mercury (or Tasmanian, to be specific), a pretty hard lashing of another eatery. Today it is the turn of Alexanders of Lenna; last week it was Scorchers, the wood-fired pizza place at Orford. A while back it was Dom's Asian at Blackmans Bay.

Thank heavens there are also 2 letters to the Editor today complaining about the Scorchers review which maybe provides a modicum of balance - but - I really think GP was TOO honest with his comments.

OK - a restaurant reviewer should do what the job description says, warts and all. But this is Tassie. And to be more specific, this is even smaller Hobart. We are a tiny little pinprick in the scheme of things. We have business people here trying their damnedest to make a living in this tiny place.

The owners of Scorchers are some of those business people. Domenic's establishment is another.

Whatever your opinion of Dom's food, there is absolutely no disputing the guy has well and truly served his Tasmanian restaurant apprenticeship qualification to be allowed to trade in peace without being written about so relatively savagely.

These are suburban (very) small businesses. They are people who have no pretensions. They put on no airs and graces about their food or their abilities. They just work bloody hard at what they know and obviously must love to persistently come back for more of the same time and time again.

In the regional areas, your name is everything. Credibility counts for so much. It is the difference between money in the till at the end of the evening or not. The lack of customers in a smaller place like Orford or Blackmans Bay is critical, and spells disaster. These are real peoples lives on the line here. This is what you are potentially affecting when you write so publicly about their businesses in The Mercury.

I possess a copy of a letter written about 15 years ago from the mother of a young guy who committed suicide. It details circumstances that to the ordinary person would not seem at all extraordinary or different.

To this particular lad, a series of casual incidents (casual from the other peoples perspectives) led directly to this guy killing himself.

Reading this letter, and thinking seriously about the consequences of other peoples reactions to things we all do in everyday life, served to highlight to me how careful we should be in our responsibility of others lives.

I know many see my expressions of opinion as too soft-cock (to use a rude but, to me, expressive word). Well I learnt from reading that emotive mums letter years ago. I learnt that there are ALWAYS two sides to every story.

Lenna is a larger business, but still deserving of a bit milder criticism than the one handed them today. To be honest, after reading the review today, my immediate thought was that I wouldn't bother going there, sheerly on Graeme's say-so and description of the food. My next thought was, "But I like Lenna, so I will go there again".

That's because I know (roughly) Graeme's food preferences. I know we don't share a lot of the same favourite foods. And that's fine. He lives his life. I live mine.

But others might blindly do exactly as directed by our bible, The Merc. That's the more dangerous bit.

So - I recommend we all make up our own minds - at Dom's, at Scorchers and at Lenna. Then if we still hate it, give it another go. Be fair about it. We all deserve a second, and maybe third, chance.