An Irish restaurant critic has won an appeal against the libel judgment granted in favour of Goodfellas, a Belfast pizzeria.

Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner explains the nuance of his bitchy craft.

From the Comment Is Free section of the Guardian:

At issue here is not the bitchiness of restaurant critics (though we can certainly be that). It's the way juries interpret what we've written. Apparently, they don't like it when we cut up rough on bad kitchens preparing appalling food to be served in dreadful restaurants.

What they fail to understand - in this case because they were misdirected by the judge - is that there is a huge difference between sharp criticism and actually getting something wrong. If I say that the soup must have been made from a packet, and it wasn't, that's a libel. If I say - as, more or less, I once did - that a soup tasted as if it had been made from a packet, which is remarkable given that they must have made it themselves, that is not a libel. Cruel, possibly. Critical, certainly. But not something that's deserving of its day in court.

Restaurant criticism - indeed, any criticism - is just another form of journalism, and governed by exactly the same laws. As of today, there isn't a law against writing a really, really bad review. It's called fair comment, and yesterday's ruling upheld that principle. Those of us who do the job know this. Many of us, myself included, cut our teeth on other beats. In my time, I've covered everything from murders to war crimes trials, race crime to mental health, and in all of those subjects, knowledge of the laws of libel comes in handy. Now that I write about restaurants, it's pretty useful, too. This libel case has changed nothing.