A  scathing review of Sydney’s Blue Angel restaurant by Leo Schofield set in train a court case that sent shivers up the spines, not just of other restaurant reviewers but of theatre and literary critics throughout the land. They relied on the defence of “honest opinion”  to call out sub-standard food, performances or writing without being sued for defamation. The Blue Angel case made them think twice.

Schofield was a former advertising man who began writing reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald in parallel with his copywriting career. He was famously a bon vivant and didn’t hesitate to castigate a restaurant when the food didn’t meet his expectations. In the case of the Blue Angel, his honesty proved costly.

The review was published in the Herald on 29 May, 1984. The Blue Angel was noted for its lobster dishes, and Schofield wrote at some length about the process of capturing the unfortunate creatures, live, from a large tank before they were conveyed to the kitchen to be despatched and cooked. His much-quoted description of the grilled lobster he was served pulled no punches. It was:

...cooked until every drop of juice and joy in the thing had been successfully eliminated, leaving a charred husk of a shell containing meat that might have been an albino walrus. You know the exquisite joy of breaking open a claw and sucking out the sweet meat from inside? At the Blue Angel, the carbonised claws contained only a kind of white powder.

He was equally uncharitable about the garlic prawns  (“chewy little shapes without a lot of flavour”) and the lemon sole (“a slab of overcooked fish slimy with oil”).

The owner of the restaurant, Marcello Marcobello, took exception and sued. The case went to court in 1989 and the jury decided in favour of the plaintiffs, who were awarded $100,000 in damages. The case was a landmark one. Would the restaurant review ever be the same again? Marion Frith wrote in The Canberra Times:

Could the Leo Schofield case have put an end to honest restaurant reviews, leaving the business to develop its own real estatese? Could burned medallions of tender pork take on “an interesting texture”, bad wine an “unforgettable flavour”? Could soggy vegies become “sweet melting mounds of nothingness” and old mousse develop a “fascinating crust”? Looks like it. Details of the 1989 Barbara Santich Award for Gastronomic Writing warns that writings “must not be libellous”. Organisers lament that in the aftermath of the Blue Angel case critics have been forced to reconsider the limits within which they operate. Bon appetit.

It seems that not every reviewer learned the lesson. In 2002, Matthew Evans reviewed Coco Roco, a new and glamorous restaurant at Kings Wharf in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. He criticised the food (describing the pork belly as “the porcine equal of a parched Weetbix”), the service and the expense, saying the best thing about the restaurant was the view and awarding it a score of just nine out of 20. Coco Roco failed just six months later, and the owners sued Evans and Fairfax Media. The case dragged on for  years, finally going to the High Court before being settled in 2014. Fairfax lost.

Now, food reviews have to run the gauntlet of lawyers, and anything too contentious is taken out. At least one reviewer took to photographing his food. After all, if the evidence is eaten, the poor restaurant reviewers are at a disadvantage. Australia’s defamation laws are stricter than those in the United Kingdom, where one of my favourite reviewers, A. A. Gill (sadly now deceased) was famous for his amusing viciousness.

The Blue Angel survived Schofield’s review and, as of 2025, was still trading and celebrating its 64th anniversary.