SF Eater: Michael Bauer Retires as SF Chronicle’s Food Critic After 32 Years His last review will run later this summer

When a few months ago he longingly spoke of his family in the Midwest and its low cost-of-living it sounded to me, at least, that he was contemplating a change of scenery in the near future.

This should be a big step forward in so many ways.

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What’s next for Chronicle restaurant criticism? by
Paolo Lucchesi

So starting this week, we’ve launched a nationwide search for The Chronicle’s next restaurant critic. We want someone who has fresh ideas about what is next, and the restaurants that truly matter (and don’t matter) in 2018. We want someone who loves to examine the politics of caviar as much as the virtues of sourdough.

Let’s get the ball rolling:

Who do you nominate to be the new restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle to succeed Michael Bauer?

Our very own @mariacarmen.

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But if Maria doesn’t want the job, then I’d nominate someone who appreciate and can write eloquently about the entire range of cuisine of the Bay Area, low end, high end, immigrant food, obscure stuff, American food, etc., e.g. Luke, Jonathan.

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awwww! Blushing!!! thank you for that vote of confidence! I’m nowhere near in that league, but i do enjoy doing it.

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And what league are we talking about? :slight_smile: A curiosity about various food and culture, a good palate, writing skills? Arguably many professional critics have gaps too.

Or, why not just have a few combo food critics/ writers instead of just one critic? Solves the problem of having to pretend to know anything about a cuisine that a critic knows nothing about.

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thank you again, very kind.

hah - i kind of like that idea!

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I’m guessing they’re not going to push the anonymity angle. With Facebook, et al., that’s gotta be an impossibility these days.

Anonymity is less of an issue if the critic goes to more mom-and-pop places. There you can show up and eat 20 times and they still won’t know that you are the Chronicle critic.

About half way down the page Preeti Mistry had some interesting comments.

I see that there is a ‘Build Poll’ feature in this software under ‘options’ immediately above and to the right. If we could generate a list of 10 or 20 names and then run a poll, the results could be interesting.

I really liked Anna Roth when she wrote for the Chronicle.

Looks like Anna Roth is living in Brooklyn and doing some work for Eater.com

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Thanks for posting this. She needs to come back here!

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For the sake of convenience, here’s Preeti Mistry’s twitter post on the retirement of Michael Bauer:

Mistry appreciates critics that have a real curiosity about culture and cuisines other than their own. She says, with Bauer, “the vibe you got was that he didn’t really feel like he needed to educate himself on the difference between, you know, Burmese food and Thai food and Nepalese food and Pakistani food.”

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Soleil Ho is the San Francisco Chronicle’s new restaurant critic!