I started montrealfood.com in around 1997. It wasn't called that until 2000 but the idea was there. That's fucking 11 years ago. What did I want to do? Just come up with reviews of restaurants in Montreal that would be COMPLETELY unbiased. And not just three-liners with opening hours and phone numbers.
I wanted prices, descriptions, opinions, with some amount of humor, pathos or both. Something HUMAN, something that you could trust, something untainted, something personal, something that let the reader know that the reviewer wasn't bought or sold or had any sort of agenda.
To this day, montrealfood.com has NEVER EVER HAD A SINGLE AD. Has NEVER BEEN BOUGHT by anybody, despite a million offers.
You know what? I'd like to think that due to those early efforts, some measure of equanimity has prevailed, that there are sources of unbiased opinions about restaurants about town, that accept no bribes, that have intelligence and reasoning to them, that are not merely rants nor gushing accolades.
But the reality is that only chaos has reigned. The Internet version of restaurant reviewing has descended into two camps: the Everyman Review, in which Joe from Downtown passes his jud'ment on some resto or else some pay-per-click crap Infotourist bullshit.
What's the verdict? Nothing has changed. There will always be the pseudo-review-type "martiniboys" or the shamelessly money-grubbing resto.ca resto mafioso.
You can dismiss the Gazette, Hour and Mirror. They've become clones of each other; no hint of the integrity of, say, Ashok Chandwani or Brian Kappler. Just paid review-slaves.
To whit: trying to find an entry for "Best Thai BYOB Montreal" turned up hundreds of sites, all pay-per-click or martiniboys or resto.ca "buy-a-menu" bullshit. The result that was gleaned from the tiny few that seemed to be dependable proved to be an illusion.
NO FUCKING INTEGRITY.
So I know that I'm still where I was ten years ago.
I'd post this directly on montrealfood.com but you know what? You can't say "fuck" there.
Plus ça fucking change.
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