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What Nicky does next.
Now that I’ve hooked you in with a picture of the perfect pain au chocolat, I thought I’d let you know what I was doing.
It’s been a bit quiet on the blog of late, whilst I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it. Writing always helps me come to a conclusion. I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I’m writing about and why. This blog has been the main repository for my written musings, though I do have another one for the legal stuff, which may come as a surprise to you.
Back in May 2011, I started writing about hotels and restaurants simply as practice for writing legal articles. I wanted to stop writing like the lawyer I am and instead to produce something a little more entertaining than one of my property title reports.
I soon realised that there was a whole world of restaurant bloggers out there and that I was, as is so often the case, somewhat behind the curve. I managed to get caught up in the whole blogger competitive thing and the Urbanspoon Leaderboard number was something I wanted to crack. The Leaderboard (which no longer exists) ranked bloggers by page views, so the more one posted, the higher one went up the rankings. I linked my blogs and came in at a sorry number 272. This was out of about 650 in London alone, many of whom had only written a couple of posts. I started to check it quite a lot to see what difference each post made and I started posting quite regularly.
For someone rather competitive and often stupidly insecure, I liked the target and it was quite satisfying to see myself go up the ranks of page views. If I’m frank, there was a little of the quantity over quality to the writing in the early reviews, although I wrote with some abandon, as I knew no-one and hardly anyone that I knew outside of clients and friends read what I wrote.
But then I started to get to know food people and PRs and people whose lives revolved around the industry of food. I became more measured in my writing. As I moved up the Urbanspoon ranks, I started getting invitations to events and would meet other bloggers at them, as well as the chef or restaurateur. I can’t say I wasn’t flattered; after all, this wasn’t really my world but I was starting to infiltrate it quite nicely.
I noticed that I was approximately two decades older than the majority of other bloggers, which was a little disconcerting. I also noticed that there was a formula to these events. Post some nice Instagram photos and write a complimentary review captures it rather nicely. I went to a few, posted a few pictures and then when I went to one which was truly terrible. I wrote to the PR and thanked her but said I couldn’t write about it. I stopped going to events.
Blogger events annoy me because they are misleading. You know it’s a blogger event when suddenly your Instagram feed is full of the same food posted by a number of different people. Very few of them mention that they are at an event. Very few tell you they haven’t paid.
I don’t buy the “I can’t afford to go otherwise” excuse either, which is easy for me to say but there have been times when I haven’t been able to afford to eat out in fancy restaurants and I can say with hand on heart that I wouldn’t have joined the blogger gravy train in order to do so.
And it’s so competitive, the whole scene. I naïvely thought that it wasn’t quite as vicious as the law (never invite competing lawyers to an event; they won’t thank you) but I was wrong. Candy-coated bitchiness is often the order of the day. And obviously I have been subject to massive attacks of FOMO. There’s nothing like Instagram and Twitter for making you feel like you’re the fat girl no-one wants to have in the team.
So I decided to stick to anonymous, unpaid reviews. and the anonymous bit is important too. No point in announcing your arrival to the restaurant by way of Twitter and pretending you’re anonymous. Yes, I’ve been guilty of that and I’m not proud of it either. Once your cover is blown, it’s game over for objectivity. I haven’t done that for some time.
But back to the trajectory and shortly after starting the blog, The Lawyer magazine tweeted that they were looking for reviewers and it seemed to be a match made in heaven. I was one of a group of reviewers, until I became their sole contributor, posting reviews regularly for the last five years. I, have for much of that time delivered a long-form weekly review to them, come rain or shine. That has sometimes had me staying up till the wee hours, not able to start the review until work commitments were satisfied. My deadline was Thursday night and sometimes that stretched into the early hours of Friday.
It was a privilege to write for The Lawyer and I was happy to do it, but after five years I started to think about the amount of time it was taking up and whether that was something I wanted to continue. It’s not just the writing, it’s the preparation, by which I mean all the eating out. I tried go to each place twice, to give it a fair crack of the whip and I always had to have places in reserve. Sometimes I would plan to write about somewhere and it turned out to be dull, or I wasn’t in the mood, or I drank too much to remember the detail, or I left it too long between the event and the writing of it. Then I had to sneak out at lunchtime to get my material for that week. Which would be fine if I didn’t also have the pressures of a busy job.
The thing about the Lawyer reviews is that in the end, that was all I was doing and everything on this blog was written for The Lawyer, which shaped both the form and the content. I’ve stopped writing for The Lawyer, for now. They have kindly agreed to post reviews if I send them, so lawyers may not have seen the last of me entirely.
And it has been a great thing for business development, or marketing as we used to call it. I don’t do sport, that male wallpaper, so it has been a great ice-breaker. Everyone has a favourite restaurant or wants to know yours. And I have a group of clients who email me for recommendations and it’s a service I’m happy to provide, as I really do love helping people find new places to eat, away from the four or five stalwarts that make up their usual repertoire. And often I would write about lunches with clients and they did quite like the namecheck. I’m not saying I won’t do that anymore but it won’t be something I do that often, I think.
And there have been amazing friendships that have come out of doing the blog. I’ve met some truly gorgeous people who have become proper friends; our shared obsession with food a great starting point for a deeper relationship. But I can’t keep meeting new people and I want to put more into the friendships that I have already made. I don’t need to keep replenishing the pool. Sometimes less really is more.
I am not a professional restaurant reviewer and that’s not what I set out to be. I’m not planning to be a searchable resource. My aim has always been to entertain, whilst giving you a reasonable idea about what you might expect, were you to try a particular restaurant. I don’t think there’s any point in my trying to keep up with all the new openings. After you have read the usual suspects, there really isn’t sufficient time to read my take on the next big thing.
Oh and don’t get me started on the next big thing; that collective madness whipped up by PRs, press and bloggers. PRs have their job to do and that is fine but I don’t want to be a player in that particular game. It’s not for me. There’s a tinge of dishonesty around some parts of it that makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m not saying I’ll never be the guest of a restaurant or a PR (although I don’t expect that to happen often), but I am saying that I’ll never write something I don’t believe or feel, or simply to provide free publicity. I’ve never really been an insider and I don’t want to be one now, even though the odd bit of FOMO might make me think otherwise every now and again.
So if I write about a restaurant now, it will be because I really want to and not because I’m writing to a deadline or because I need to fulfil an obligation. I’m certainly not going to stop eating out but I do need to stop trying to do everything, all of the time. I won’t write to order and I don’t want to be part of any clique. And I don’t need to measure myself by page views.
Love your reviews even though I’m now comp,Evelyn out of London restaurant scene, so hope you won’t stop, and will continue to enjoy them as and when ..,
Tsk! “completely out of London restaurant scene”
That’s very kind. Will do them as the urge takes me. Will still Instagram my food far more than is necessary or polite :)
This is one of the best written and most enjoyable restaurant blogs around. I hope you continue for fun and for pleasure. It’s certainly a pleasure to read.
Very, very kind of you. I will still do them, just not quite as often as before.
You know I love your reviews, Nicky, I will miss them, but I am totally on board with you regarding the whole blogging mess. There are still some old school bloggers (you among them) who blog for the joy of the writing, and to connect with an audience of like minded people. But it is a minority now.
My own blogs are slow, verging on the moribund, as I decided last year I would stop trying to clamber up the tree. I would continue to grow my own little shrub, and if nobody came to admire it, I wouldn’t worry. It is a much calmer life, I can tell you, and I look forward to welcoming you to the shrubbery x
Still will be posting reviews, just never to order and not because I’m trying to keep up with the foodie clique. And thanks Lynne I’m looking forward to the calm of the shrubbery :)
Please keep writing. I don’t always agree with your verdicts, but always enjoy hearing your views and love your self-deprecating humour. Very few bloggers are of, ahem, a certain vintage, but those of us of a similar ilk, do have an expectation and cash. Love to try new restaurants and styles, but forget queuing or jammed in tables! Speak for us!
You don’t always agree with me? Shocking :) But thank you. Will still be doing, a bit less regularly though and there will be very little in the queueing department.
Ahhh good. You’ve found your voice So what you need to do now is expand your vocabulary :)
Little themes may be good. Choose a theme but have a familiar thread running through them.
I have to say that my heart sank when I started reading this, as it felt like a Dear John letter, bidding goodbye to the world of blogs with the sweet/sharp tenderness of a roasted peach.
But no! Instead I bit into the perfect Granny Smith, feeling all the crunch, a swell of sweetness and a hint of acid. Hurrah, I thought! She’s back, rebooted to factory defaults!!
Ride on, our glorious guardian of gastronomy, valkyrie of vittles! (now where did I put my night-time pills…?)
Please don’t ever stop reviewing restaurants! I used to read a lot of food blogs but then unsubscribed to almost all of them because it was obvious that they were writing glowingly favourable reviews due to the fact that the restaurant or PRs had invited them and were footing the bill. You are one of very very few credible reviewers. I almost always check your site before I try somewhere new! I wish you could write more, never less.
Annie and I hope that you will continue to share your best experiences in your unique style when the mood suits. It gives us great joy to read them.
Not stopping Howard, just being more selective. And thank you.
Thank you – I really appreciate your comments. I will be reviewing, just not quite as often as before and not necessarily always in the same format.
Great decision, because it’s the right one for you…I am at a similar crossroads, so I totally understand. Will always read whatever you post whenever you post it! x
Always enjoy your reviews, you’re the only food blogger I have on email notification and not just in my RSS feed.
Glad you’re continuing.
That’s really good to hear, I’m so pleased that you enjoy them. They will be slightly different and probably a little less frequent.
I came to the same position as Lynne not long ago – I’ve had myself removed from the databases (that I know about) and have stopped accepting invitations and freebies. I still like writing my blog, but I am too old to keep up with the Joneses and I loathe the way the blogger has become a celebrity. Nobody needs to see pictures of me eating my tea. They don’t even really want to see what I am having for my tea.
I would probably enjoy seeing what you have for your tea X
I certainly hope you don’t give up altogether! Your reviews are always among my favourites.
Commenting on the blogger/PR relationship, I do agree that the scene has become quite corrupt, but there are still plenty of bloggers who don’t post fluffy, gushy prose about literally anything that gets tossed their way. In my experience, the gushing types tend to be the ones that try to one-up each other (bitchy behaviour, buying followers on social media, etc.) I.e. not worth the time of day.
I guess that for most, blogs start as hobbies, and for many people going to an event to meet fellow hobbyists is quite good fun. I go to the occasional one myself (though I never post beyond Twitter/Instagram because, as you say, they are useless to the prospective diner. I still get many invitations though, so I don’t think it’s a problem for PRs if you enjoy events but don’t want to post on your blog about them.)
As for review opportunities, I am not against them as a blogger, but I do agree it is both dull and disingenuous when a flurry of bloggers all post about the same restaurant at the same time. (There’s a place called Dalloway Terrace that has been especially guilty of this lately. Snooze.) I do personally accept review opportunities every now and again, though I’ve learned to be very picky about them. I have had a couple of occasions where I couldn’t honestly recommend the restaurant to anyone, so I’ve written to the PR and explained why I won’t be writing a post. Always feels a bit awkward but they generally seem grateful for the feedback.
All that said, it does sound like you’ve made the right decision for you, but I do hope it means the rest of us don’t have to wait too long in between your reviews. Best of luck with everything! x
Thanks for that. I always enjoy your reviews too. I’m just evaluating what I’m doing and why and as you say, something that started as a hobby turned into something resembling an obligation. The one-upmanship is also fairly toxic and I’m better away from that :)