By Jean Godden

Years ago, I reviewed restaurants. Not fulltime. I was one of a staff of four restaurant critics, writing reviews part-time for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, while holding down a full-time job as the P-I's four-day-a-week city columnist.

Reviewing restaurants might seem everybody's dream assignment. What could be better than taking a companion to a fancy eatery at newspaper expense? And, besides that, getting paid for four hours overtime for writing about the experience? 

I lucked into the trophy job following a colleague's resignation. Paul O'Connor, the Seattle P-I's regular restaurant critic, had just left to take a job in Chicago promoting that city. (Later he took credit, maybe not wholly deserved, for persuading Boeing management to relocate its headquarters to the Windy City.)  

After Paul left, the P-I editors thought its restaurant critics had grown jaded, the result of eating out too much. What would work better, they decided, was to have four critics, each with a specialty, each writing once a month. Better still, it would save on staff salaries:  four hours pay a week versus 40.

To fill the glamor job, Features Editor Janet Grimley offered P-I staffers a chance to try out, writing a sample review. When the top four were announced, to my surprise I had been chosen. Each of us would have a specialty. One critic would review family restaurants; another would assess restaurants for hip young people, and still another would critique sports eateries.  My own assignment -- definitely not a hardship -- was downtown adult dining. 

Picking a restaurant, inviting a "companion" and consuming first-rate meals seemed sheer gravy. But I quickly discovered there was a downside. That became apparent when I first sat down to write about the restaurant experience some days after our review visits. 

Since this was before cellphones, I had written notes with a pen and reporters' pad, hidden in my lap under a napkin. Writing blind, I would produce scribbles, some hard to decipher. That explains why I once described eating "a delectable strawberry shortcake" at Vito's, a favorite political watering hole. 

After the review appeared, Vito himself called. He was happy with his two-star rating. But he said, "Never had strawberry shortcake on the menu. You probably ate the bread pudding."

Next downside was the need to visit incognito, avoiding any special treatment. I learned to book a reservation using a phony name. More than once, I would arrive and, having called days in advance, might forget who I was supposed to be. 

One disastrous time I booked reservations as "Virginia Richmond," but took columnist Emmett Watson as a companion. Bad idea. The restaurant owner recognized the city's star columnist and gave us rock-star treatment. I had to return later: alone, anonymous and at my own expense.

Then there was the scramble to obtain as much information about the food as possible. Unlike today when you can often check menus on line, it helped to steal a menu. For that purpose, you were better off dining with a guy who could tuck the bill of fare inside his suit coat. I will never forget one time when the menu came encased in bulky wooden covers and my dinner companion clattered all the way out.

After completing restaurant reviews, I would hand them over to Mary Lynn Lyke, my exacting line editor. Sometimes Mary Lynn would insist on a rewrite. She might demand to know more detail about desserts or appetizers. 

Her constant complaint: "You told us what the meal looked like, but what did it TASTE like?" We English-speakers have a pitifully small vocabulary for taste; there's really only sweet, sour, salty and bitter. If only one were French and could use terms like succulente, pateuse or croquante. 

Today's restaurant reviews, which I dutifully read and admire, make it plain that Seattle has become a more sophisticated restaurant scene than it was in my eight years of eating well. Perhaps the change is due to well-to-do techies who eat out often. Restaurant reviewers like the Seattle Times' Providence Cicero respond with lists of ingredients and preparation methods. I am often sent to the dictionary for definitions of culinary terms such as "sous-vide" and "pairing chicharron with lamb tartare and smoked aioli" before I can decide if a restaurant would be worth visiting.

But at least Mary Lynn, my one-time editor, would approve and, unlike the old days, not demand a rewrite.