Think restaurant critics are unfair? This chart comes from the The Daily Meal which looked carefully at the first six months of new New York Times food critic Pete Wells' reviews and found that he's so far handing out a lot more stars than his predecessors Sam Sifton and Frank Bruni. The Daily Meal looked at 27 reviews by each of the critics and found that Wells reviews issued New York restaurants 50 stars, which is a whopping 14 more than Sifton, who's now the paper's national editor, doled out in his first six months, and three more than the more generous bestowed. 

But where things get especially interesting is how those stars were delivered. Though Wells awarded more stars in total, he seems spread he spread them around: 15 of his reviews have been two-star. Sifton and Bruni seemed to be more comfortable delivering one-star reviews when they first took on the job.

And The Daily Meal notes initial reviews are not necessarily predictive: though Sifton was much more star-stingy in his first six months than Bruni, the two critics ultimately finished their tenures with the same star average: after more than five years and 264 reviews, the average Bruni verdict was 1.6 stars; Sifton, who wrote 100 reviews in two years, averaged 1.4.

For much, much more statistical analysis on the Times food critics, check out The Daily Meal's full report. 

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Serena Dai