Giles Coren reviews the Criterion, London

And that’s because I tweeted it.

Suddenly aware that, with the monetisation of online news being only months away, newspapers in solid form are going to reach fewer and fewer people, and that we (journalists) are all going to have to metamorphose into what Nathan Barley calls “self-facilitating media nodes”, I registered on twitter.com, the online soundbite-orientated networking channel made famous by Stephen Fry, Lily Allen and a billion savvy little media consumers (whom I would have once called “sad-arse friendless weirdos”, but now know better), and got tweeting.

I promised, in messages of no more than the maximum 140 characters, to deliver instant verdicts on restaurants I visited, from the table, as opinions came to me. A dry run at Sofra in Mayfair (“full of hedge-fund fools forking down bland, ugly, totally unTurkish chain food. It’s McD’s in curly slippers”) went down well, and soon I had 2,000 followers (Lily Allen has 1.3 million, Fry has 800,000, even my little sister has 5,000), so I told them I’d be going for a full twitrev at the Criterion that evening.

This lot – young (apart from Stephen), digital, unlikely to eat there should they live to 102 – were not going to care about the history of a 135-year-old restaurant, or that it’s been taken over by a 21-year-old Russian, or what that means. They don’t give a crap for context, considered reflection or pellucid prose, they’ll be open to a random three-second cyber-happening, and they’ll take or leave it as they find it.

So I tweeted 19 times from the table, using my clunky old Samsung. With an iPhone or the like I could have seen the responses of my followers, and responded on cue (and that will come), but, scraped off my Twitter page and stuck on to this paper one, the review looks like this:

<heading off to review criterion by phone-tweet from inside, but my crappy samsung makes loud bleebs when texting - don’t know how to stop it>

<Hmmm. My manhattan is a bit sweet. Nice carpet though>

<nice waiter. Ordered grouse risotto and mutton>

<Oh, and a 2001 pessac leognon>

<Claret served far too warm>

<Her first day as a waitress?>

<Great starters, mind>

<Would it kill them to take away my empty manhattan glass?>

<And what’s with the disco music?>

<Who the fx fkkdup ipod shuffle is this?>

<My lamb is cold and smoked!>

<And they still haven’t taken my manhattan away...>

<Can i be arsed with pudding? No. I’m sure it’s fine. Bed and Mad Men>

<Small bowl of goldfish by the sink in bogs. Why?>

<And so many chavs going out for fags...>

<And why no candles?>

<esther says it’s like eating in the natural

history museum>

<How much longer do i have to wait to pay?>

<woohoo! Home. en precis: criterion is totally bridge and tunnel but decent cooking, clumpy service, room v gay in a great way. bed time. Xx>

And that was it. And, you know, I don’t think a rezzy review needs ever to be much more than that. Okay, there was no room to make my usual mockery of the terrible punctuation on the menus (oh, how Lynne Truss would have adored the “sentence”, “pan fried diver caught king scallops”), and I didn’t poke fun at Russians for ALWAYS having to have sushi on the menu regardless of its being totally out of place. Nor at the very old-fashioned, flouncy service from some of the waiters, whose hilarious posture while pouring the wine had Esther quietly singing “I’m a little teapot?” – but then I guess that the sort of day-trippers the Criterion is after will probably think that’s how posh service is supposed to be.

And I didn’t have room for Esther’s catty little observation that, “Maybe the lighting is so bad because Russians only have dinner with teenage girls or women who’ve had so much Botox they don’t need flattering lighting to look nice.”

For the odd gag opportunity lost, however, I got in return the thrill of live online reader response – and loved it: my pomposities occasionally pricked, my misconceptions corrected, my general presence appreciated.

It makes those letters below, even though they are mostly e-mailed and quicker than an old-fashioned “letters” page, seem comically 20th century. For, as I sat and ate and opined, this was happening:

ButtonC Whatr are you having? Apparently the ostrich fillet is very good

j0annepsi ask waiter for a fictitious cocktail and see how he reacts.

eatdorset Criterion was never about the food -- ever. It was all about ‘the atmos’. Met my wife there

RupertNeate what’s the etiquette for tweeting at the table?

Heidistephens Who showed @gilescoren how to use Twitter? Fool.

LouJane I hope the Criterion kitchen aren’t following your tweets otherwise you could be eating some...well, who knows?

carlmwilkinson giles, this is the future of reviewing.

i_ericmurray bugger me he goes on a bit

clairus_bearus That’s just blasphemy - dinner isn’t complete without pudding!!

paulkidder Campest Tweet EVER? @gilescoren: Would it kill them to take away my empty manhattan glass?

LivvyPotts outrageous, who are these common people? shoot them.

joodeetee It’s made me cheery that @gilescoren is on Twitter now. I don’t know what this says about my priorities but suspect it may not be good.

whatalamename2 having a good night then? lol

willmarch Because you are posh! We get polo mints and you get Tropical Fish

martyj21 do a runner !

saraallom @gilescoren Tweeting his resteraunt reviews minute by minute. tonight- the criterion. do not miss

mafiamonroe I bet blokes wash their hands in the bowl so the fish eventually end up swimming in a bowl of p***. Nice.

Naomi_101 Your waitress has probably found your tweets and is crying in the bathroom! Or maybe they think it makes a nice decorative touch

seannch Is it possible to be v gay in a bad way?

lisamacario thought you might like to know that @gilescoren is now here. Follow for real time food reviews and his toilet habits

EleriFairy jeez you’re hard to please. Don’t ever come eat in my restaurant, you’d hate it!

And so on, and so on, and so on. It really is the future, I’m afraid. But I’ll be here next week, and for as long as The Times puts ink on paper, and I will write properly, and not do it like this again. But I will continue to twitrev other restaurants, and if, for example, I eat somewhere new and dazzling, and fear that by the time my review trickles out it will be impossible to get a table, I will tweet immediately so that you, and only you (as long as you’re hip to twitter.com/gilescoren) will have a chance to be one of the first through the door.

O brave new world, that has such tweeters in’t!

The Criterion

224 Piccadilly, London W1 (020-7930 0488)

Cooking: 7

Clientele: 3

Mobile reception: 8

Score: 6

Price: £50/head sans grog.