Nikki Buchanan, one of Phoenix's last food critics, is hanging up her disguise after 42 years

After 42 years, more than 3,000 restaurant reviews and countless profiles, features and more, Phoenix Magazine food critic Nikki Buchanan is hanging up her signature wig disguise and retiring.

And here’s the thing: She’s the last full-time, at least semi-anonymous restaurant critic left in town. Now, she’s relinquishing her institutional knowledge, razor-sharp wit and top-notch palate to a host of food influencers and social media stars. And she will be missed.

Buchanan joined The Show to talk about her career, the art of a good review and the future of this craft.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Nikki. Congratulations on your retirement.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Well, thank you. And thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming in. So you really wear a wig when you go to review a restaurant?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Not necessarily. Actually, I do most of the time.

LAUREN GILGER: Do you really? What kinds?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: I have one on now.

LAUREN GILGER: Do you really? I can’t even tell.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: And I have various styles, it just depends on my mood.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. But this has to do with anonymity, right?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: It does. Although I have found over time that — well, always true if I’m going to some little, you know, mom-and-pop Thai restaurant or some place. They don’t have a PR team, they don’t keep up with all that, they don’t know who I am anyway. It doesn’t matter at all. It’s only somebody that’s sort of in that certain little segment of indie restaurants that are very chef-driven that somebody might be paying attention to that and actually even look on the list of reservations and say, "OK, someone’s coming in." There was a day I never used my own name.

LAUREN GILGER: Ah. Do you use it now?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So is this idea of anonymity in restaurant reviews sort of going away? Like, does this exist anymore?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: I don’t think it does that much. I think it’s still important. What I like about it, even though I’m not going to lie to you, I know I just had a retirement party with a million chefs there who all know my face, right? ... So that happens over 40-something years when you work with people in various ways and interview them or whatever.

But I think the thing that’s great about it is you really do get a snapshot of the restaurant as just a normal guy, just a normal person walking in. Are they giving you the same service they’re giving everyone else? Is that experience exactly the same? And I think that’s important. I think it’s valid.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. There was a time when you used to do restaurant reviews on "Good Morning Arizona" on Channel 3, right? You’d do them back to the camera. ... Just the silhouette of a wig.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Right.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, so I want to back up and just talk a little bit about your long career here. 42 years in the Valley doing restaurant reviews is a long time, and you have this like vast institutional knowledge. I mean, over 42 years, four decades, like you’ve seen just massive amounts of change in the Valley. So I have to ask, can you even begin to describe just how much the dining scene here has changed in that time?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Gosh, no. I mean, I can remember seriously in the ’80s driving around looking for a restaurant. I’m not lying to you. There wasn’t PR like there is now, right? So a lot of people have that.

Now it’s just a completely different ball game. It’s very easy to find out a lot of places that are open. That part is simple. Reviewing doesn’t feel the same. I don’t know, let me ask you guys, does it feel the same? When you read reviews, do they seem the same?

LAUREN GILGER: I think they do in kind of a way, yeah. I would say yeah.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: So you feel there’s still a critical element? There’s still a sense of, "I’m trying to give you the straight shot here."

LAUREN GILGER: Right. But so much of restaurant reviewing today is on social media, right? It’s on TikTok and it’s people who are definitely not anonymous. ... And there’s a pay-to-play aspect that happens in that world as well, right?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: I think so.

LAUREN GILGER: What do you think is lost with the loss of criticism like this?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: I think integrity and honesty. I think what happens is, I feel like my first job is to the reader. They’re coming to me to find out, "Hey, is that place worth going? Tell me if I should go there and tell me why I should or should not."

So that’s my responsibility is to just tell it straight. Do you need to be nasty about it? Sometimes it’s very fun to be or it’s very tempting to be. I mean, I’ve done that, I’m not going to lie, over the years. But mainly you’re just trying to get that information out without just slaughtering someone, but let your reader know what to expect.

LAUREN GILGER: Hard-earned dollars, where do they go?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Yeah. 100%.

LAUREN GILGER: Can you do that, you think, fairly if you’re not anonymous, if you’re on social media doing, you know, what a lot of food influencers will do today?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Well, that’s what I’m saying. Immediately, if f you’ve already made contact with them pre-visit and they’re giving you free food, please tell me what is, you know, unbiased about that? It’s a commercial, it’s an infomercial.

LAUREN GILGER: Very different than criticism. And you’re not just the last food critic left in town. There’s very few critics of any kind left in the Valley.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: I guess that’s true.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. Like I wonder what you think about that loss of criticism in general. Like what does having people who have sort of a sharp eye and are watching what happens in our cultural landscape, what do they do for a place?

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NIKKI BUCHANAN: Yeah, that’s such a great point. I mean, to me part of what has happened is that citizen criticism has been elevated, right? So every guy has an opinion and they get to express it. And look, I’m not saying — I’m not going to be some elitist and tell you that’s not OK.

But at the same time, those of us who did work at this and made this a career for many years do have a knowledge of not only the chefs and their pedigrees and who they’ve worked for and what they’ve learned, we have eaten a certain dish a million times. We know the paradigmatic best example of that dish and how to gauge that going forward, you know?

And I just think that a lot of average people don’t know that. I know that’s going to sound super snobbish and someone’s, you know, going to object to that, but I think that is the value of a critic. And that’s what a lot of people paid for is somebody to tell me, "Don’t eat that, eat this."

LAUREN GILGER: ... OK, so 42 years is a very long time, but do you have any standout meals in that time? I have to ask.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Gosh. It’s funny, it would be such a range. I mean, of course, you know kind of what happens on any given day, it’s what was your last one that was really good, you know what I mean? But of course for me, it’s a lot — there’s this, it’s half and half between all the big chefs in town where I’ve had, I still have memorable meals when I go see Nobu now at Hai Noon. I still — I went to Kevin Binkley’s new chef’s table at his own house. Right, that was insane, especially the bread course which was just nuts, you know?

So all of those kinds of things — ShinBay back in the day when Shinji Kurita was there, my gosh. You know, Chris Gross to go. So all those fancy ones, those are kind of stuck in my head. But I can tell you that at any given moment, there’s so much joy and pleasure in going to some Korean restaurant on the west side and going, "Oh my God, this is so good, and I’m loving every single bite, and it’s so sweet and humble and I — and it’s inexpensive." And there’s just as much pleasure in that.

LAUREN GILGER: Have you been able to kind of make a restaurant once or twice over your career?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: I would mean certainly people told me that last night. It was so heartwarming to have people say to me, "Man, you really helped me at a time, you know, when I needed that, we were just starting out" or whatever. And I would say to them, "Well, that’s my job." And they’d go, "Well, I know, but it still what — it helped us."

LAUREN GILGER: All right, last 30 seconds for you — which I realize is not enough time for this question — but what will you miss about it?

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Oh gosh. Well, going out to eat. I love to eat. There is no doubt about that. [LAUGHS] So that part, of course, and I think weirdly as much as I b-tch about it, I love writing. And I like the puzzle of writing. So I’ll miss that. And probably I’m going to miss getting a little ass-kissing now and then, too.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. All right, well we will leave it there. That is Phoenix Magazine food critic, longtime food critic here in the valley, Nikki Buchanan hanging up her wig and retiring from the gig. Nikki, thank you so much. Appreciate you coming on.

NIKKI BUCHANAN: Sure. Thank you for having me.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to an editing error, this interview has been modified to correct the spelling of Hai Noon.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

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