I went to a lecture last night, a conversation between Andy Huse, Richard Gonzmart and Gary Mormino about the recent release of Huse’s exciting new book, The Columbia Restaurant: Celebrating a Century of History, Culture, and Cuisine. An entertaining and educational evening for the most part, although a brief chronology up front might have helped the audience—the discussion jumped around in time, with lots of names to keep track of.

Near the end of the evening, Huse lamented the passing of some of the area’s great and historic restaurants, Valencia Garden, the Seabreeze, etc. He blamed restaurant critics for their demise, saying that critics are preoccupied with “new restaurants that will only be open for six months.”

It got me thinking about my culpability in the lifecycle of restaurants. First, what exactly is my job? As I see it, my job is to bring readers’ attention to worthwhile restaurants they didn’t know about, to steer them clear of restaurants that aren’t worthy and to remind them about places that are still doing a good job and should be patronized. Huse is confused about the connection between his job as a food historian and mine.

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I worked one summer in Boston for two Holocaust-survivor brother architects. Henneberg and Henneberg did residential design in a very Robert Anshen/Eichler style. From an historical perspective, theirs were really amazing houses. But that 1989 summer in Boston, no one was hiring them. Their designs were dark, low, squatty, with teeny closets, etc. In essence, they were dated and the Zeitgeist had moved on.

New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn goes to fashion week, goes to Milan—spends her time in earnest examination of this particular moment, this particular designer. It’s all fleeting, some of these clothes barely warmed by human flesh before they are passé. Yes, she is better at her job if she is steeped in fashion history. She knows all about the strange blip in the 1970s when gaucho pants were popular, but her job is not to campaign to bring gauchos back. If designers start dabbling again in flare-legged Argentine cowboy pants, so be it. She’ll report it.

What I’m saying: The food historian can be smitten by the lush and layered fabric of a restaurant’s life. Valencia Garden, say. But my job is to say if it’s still good. If the place is shabby, the food is dated and there’s a weird moldy smell, it’s my job to say so. There are idiosyncratic Florida foods that are beloved by historians. Things like deviled crabs. Fine, but truth is, most deviled crabs are huge, unhealthy gut bombs that should be put out of their misery and ours.

Put another way, my colleague Steve Persall knows about film history, has beloved directors and movies he wishes we'd all see. Still, he has to review New Moon because that's what serves readers. Or book editor Colette Bancroft devotes time and space to John Irving's new book (ouch), but that doesn't mean she doesn't have hundreds of books she would highly recommend to readers.

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There is a difference between what Persall and Bancroft do and what I do, though. If Persall slams a Spielberg movie, he's not putting anyone out of business. His negative review will not noticeably impact the movie's bottom line. With restaurant reviews, a slam can have devastating effects.

Thus, and this is important, the most important thing for a restaurant critic—far more important than knowing the names of pre-Prohibition Ybor City restaurateurs—is to have a metric that is consistent and suitable for the area in which you're reviewing. Meaning, it's essential for a food critic to keep track of what is going on in the rest of the country, and to understand how the local restaurant scene fits into that. This is not New York City. I do not evaluate restaurants here using the same metric. This is tough love: The average restaurant here is not as good as the average restaurant there. If I evaluated restaurants here using the same yardstick I would use there, star ratings would be lower across the board.

So, what I'm long-windedly saying: Yes, history is important, but a restaurant critic, a good one, functions as a barometer. What's going on RIGHT NOW in the ongoing dialogue about what constitutes good food, and how does this particular restaurant measure up?