Abstract

Revenge of the Fettucini

For a dark moment in the history of free speech, in spring 1988, the State of Connecticut actually contemplated licensing restaurant reviewers. A bill was introduced in the legislature requiring critics of any nutmeg version to have spent at least six years in "the food service industry," or to have graduated "from a recognized culinary arts program. But worse than Connecticut was in store for critics of food and other sauced-up substances. You may have noticed, all over the place, a new litigiousness. Jazz critics from three New York dailies "Rolling Stone," and "Billboard," were invited last summer by the director of Jazz at Lincoln Center to an Upper West Side pent-house dinner, only to find that they themselves were on the menu, for in sufficient boosterism.