On the one hand, most chefs place extreme value on good press -- so much value, in fact, that many of them spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on PR firms to brand them, spin them, and make them media darlings.

But then there’s that double standard: When the “wrong” writer calls. Of course, this wrongness is determined by chefs’ own personal assessments, not their publicist, to whom they are paying said thousands in order to receive a professional opinion on said matters. 

Often, this is the case when the writer who calls is a blogger.

Nevermind that some chefs blog themselves. 

Nevermind that a search of “food” on Technorati, a compendium of blogs, yields 604,854 results, and “restaurants” yields 160,699.

Nevermind that many longstanding food magazines and newspapers are now writing their own blogs, so popular and accepted has blogging become.

Nevermind that food blogs and blogs in general tend to have rabidly loyal readers who actually check out the restaurants their favorite writers recommend, and who then add their own experiences to the searchable, expansive Interwebz, embossing the name of the restaurant many times over on the permanent record that is Google.

And nevermind that Big Important Journalists read the work of smaller, work-a-day writers and bloggers. (Where the heck do you think they get all of their news?)

This double standard is maddening, baseless, wrongheaded, counter-productive, and …

Well, nevermind me. I’m just a restaurant PR veteran with a blog.