What happens when one of your city’s most critically acclaimed restaurants changes its entire menu and culinary theme every four months? In the case of Tribune critic Phil Vettel and his approach to Next, the place ends up gets rereviewed. Every dang time. Don’t get them wrong — Chicagoist is into the fact that the critic declares the vegan menu served in Grant Achatz, Dave Beran, and Nick Kokonas’s dining room to be most definitely top-notch. At the same time, it asks, maybe some other promising and less-heralded restaurants are more worthy of that exact column space? After all, Vettel can’t even be anonymous at the iconoclastic restaurant. “Is it responsible,” the site asks, “for the most important critic in town to review the same restaurant over and over?” [Chicagoist, Earlier, Related]
