Food blogger's Private Affairs

There's been a buzz on the internet about the food blogger who refused to pay for his meal at Private Affairs.

At first glance, it does look like the food blogger was arrogant, unreasonable and too presumptuous to think that he's entitled to a free meal just because he was a food blogger, but after his clarification, I do think that he should be entitled to a free meal if it was really like what he had claimed - that he was invited to a 'food-tasting' affair (no pun intended), except that he should have kept to just one partner rather than 3.

From the first report on yahoo!, I would think that the blogger went to the restaurant to try out the food on his own accord. So naturally, I thought the restaurant spokesman painted a rather strange scenario when it was mentioned that the staggering arrival of the 4 different guests made it difficult for the chef to prepare the meal. I did not understand why they had to make special arrangements to cater for the four guests when they are running a restaurant. It was only after the second yahoo! report that surfaced which cleared my doubts: the blogger was invited by the restaurant to write a review on the food.

To me, it was justifiable that the blogger did not expect to pay for his meal. I am not sure about the arrangement, but I would think the restaurant should set aside the kind of food they want reviews done on and not allow the blogger to decide what food he fancies. I suspect the lapse in the proper procedure had thus resulted in the whopping bill of more than $400.

A 'food-tasting' event should not expect payment - I would think most people would agree on this. And he was 'invited'. It was not as if he went there uninvited, ordered as many dishes as he liked and tried to get away with nil payment just because he was a food blogger.

Of course, I am not in the best position to comment since I have no knowledge of what actually transpired. I have learnt that reports or articles are not necessarily accurate since they are written by mere human beings. But judging from the nasty comments following those reports, the blogger has made many enemies - the commenters dismiss what he clarified as 'lies', 'defence', 'damage control', 'cover-up' etc and I have good reasons to believe that restaurant-owners would think twice about inviting him for a food-tasting session in future.