ottawa foodies

Does anyone know if the Citizen has discontinued their restaurant reviews?

Peter Hum has published reviews lately

Peter Hum

Ottawa Citizen food editor, restaurant critic, jazz writer, blogger, dogsbody.

twitter.com/peterhum, phum@ottawacitizen.com

ottawacitizen.com

Doesn't do restaurant review every week (none since April 5th). Busy doing other articles. e.g. Jazz ... Theatre (High School and amateur?) ... Arts Scene etc.

Looks like The Citizen is run a bit differently these days compared to the days of Ron Eade and better yet, Anne DesBrisay.

@Capitaldining posts 2-3 reviews a month. Some may disagree with me IMO there is no better reviewer than Anne Desbrisay (who writes these) and I find her reviews a pleasure to read. I find that she is an excellent and honest writer and she has never led me astray with her reviews.

I know there have been reviews but they used to be part of the Wednesday food section before they were moved to Thursday. Also, they were published every week and if there wasn't one in a particular week, there would always be a little notice saying "so and so will return next week" or some such thing. I agree, Captain Caper, that the Citizen is run a bit differently these days, and not for the better, in my opinion.

It beggars belief that in this day and age of declining newspaper sales that they would cut back on anything food related. Especially restaurant reviews.

Why do you think restaurant reviews are obviously valuable to newspapers? Online sites are probably eating newspaper restaurant reviews lunch weeks before it could even be served by the newspaper. Never mind the demographic differences between newspapers and restaurant goers.

Newspaper reviews seem to take a more thoughtful approach IMHO than the online forums (except for ottawafoodies of course;). Newspaper reviewers go back to the resto a few times and stagger their visits based on time of day and day of the week and take these things into consideration. Reviews on sites like restaurantica or yelp have plenty of reviews along the tune of "I had the worst meal of my life at this place" or "This restaurant is the best restaurant in Ottawa". That is not very helpful to me. I will in fact scan the online reviews because there are in fact good ones out there but I like balancing things out with newspaper reviews too.

Just to chime in, I actually find Hum's reviews quite good, and he hits on spots that I'd like to try out. He is much much better than the other person they had doing reviews for a while (don't remember her name, it as after Debrisay and Eade.)

Peter Hum has a review of the Albion Rooms in today's Citizen.

Antipazzo review: ottawacitizen.com