Steak puts critic's career at stake

A restaurant's suit could pull the mask off Philadelphia diner.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 3, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - A restaurant critic could be stripped of his anonymity by a strip steak. Unless you believe the restaurant. Then it was a ribeye.

Craig LaBan, the restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, was ordered to give a deposition on camera in a case of a restaurant that took issue with his description of a $15 piece of beef at Chops, a steakhouse owned by Alex Plotkin. The Inquirer fought the decision, claiming that as a critic, LaBan's identity amounts to a trade secret and that if the footage went public, it would compromise his ability to do his job.

The deposition will remain under seal until the trial, which is at least a year away.

The case started with the next-to-last sentence in a Feb.4 capsule review, which read: "A recent meal, though, was expensive and disappointing, from the soggy and sour chopped salad to a miserably tough and fatty strip steak."

Chops couldn't take issue with LaBan's opinion. That's protected by the First Amendment. But it is claiming that he made a false assertion of fact by calling it a strip steak. It says that he had a ribeye, and that no restaurant critic worth his fleur de sel would confuse the two.

The Inquirer is claiming First Amendment protection. But more than that, it is arguing that LaBan was accurate.

They point to LaBan's notes and his receipt, which shows he was charged for steak frites - steak and french fries. They submitted copies of steak frites recipes from Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray of the Food Network, both calling for strip steak.

LaBan "dots his i's, he crosses his t's, and anyone who reads his reviews knows that he is meticulous, fastidious and fair, " said Inquirer editor Bill Marimow.

Nevertheless, his ability to do his job could be compromised.

The critic, who has been at the paper for nearly 10 years, takes pains to remain anonymous, wearing disguises and never using his name while dining out.

Would Plotkin still have made such a case if LaBan had called it a "miserably tough and fatty ribeye steak"?

"That's a complicated question, " said Dion Rassias, Plotkin's lawyer. "What we do know is that what he wrote was false."

In its suit, the restaurant, interestingly, took no issue with the final sentence of the review, which read: "The crab cake, though, was excellent."

[Last modified July 2, 2007, 23:17:12]