Australian food critics were left spluttering into their napkins after a court decided that an unfavourable review of a Sydney restaurant was defamatory, opening the way for the owners to claim damages.
The critics said the decision could lead to reviewers of theatre, music, literature and art fearing to speak their minds in case they were sued.
The case centres on a review of Coco Roco restaurant published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003. Matthew Evans, then the newspaper's chief food critic, dined at the restaurant twice and was not impressed.
He said the flavour of oysters soaked in limoncello "jangled like a car crash" and that a sherry-scented apricot white sauce that accompanied steak was a "wretched garnish" that he scraped off.
Awarding the restaurant nine points out of 20, he concluded that "more than half the dishes I've tried at Coco Roco are simply unpalatable" and that the food was overpriced.
Coco Roco closed three months after the review and the owners, who had spent more than Aus$3 million refitting the restaurant, blamed it on the reviewer.
The affair has been in the courts for months. In the latest ruling, the high court of New South Wales found that the review was an attack on the restaurant as a business.
"Business capacity and reputation are different from personal reputation," the judgment said. "Harm to the former can be, as here, inflicted more directly and narrowly than harm to a person's reputation."
The Sydney Morning Herald's current chief restaurant critic, Simon Thomsen, said yesterday the judgment meant that now "anything short of hagiography will be defamatory".
Veteran food critic Leo Schofield said the ruling set a bad precedent. "If a poor review leads to diminished returns at the box office of the theatre, are we now going to say that it is due to the review and not to the quality of the work?" he asked. David Griffiths, executive chef at Wildfire, one of Sydney's best restaurants, said it was laughable to suggest that one bad review could close a restaurant.
The court's decision comes after a jury in Belfast recently upheld a restaurant owner's claim that a review in the Irish News was defamatory and awarded him £25,000.