Food Critic

EVERYONE'S A CRITIC With the proliferation of dining guides, there's no shortage of restaurant reviews out there. But how reliable is the information customers are getting? First, a moment of realization and then panic spreads through the restaurant, one of Manhattan's toniest, from the front of the house to the back and downstairs to the basement where the chef is yelling the ear off of some poor, unwitting reservationist. "How did this happen?!?" he screams. "…

…gns of slowing, that wave is only likely to continue to grow. Yet some restaurateurs, like New York's Danny Meyer, wonder when enough will be enough-or if enough is right now. "There comes a point when there's just too much information about restaurants," he says. "The public has become so much more savvy on its own. They don't need to be told what to do, where to go." Even if they are just regular customers.