Well written! I wasn't expecting the Arachnopode to come back as anything but a throwaway joke.

So, I think this is where I draw a distinction -- if we're talking about the guy who is like "I could make this myself! Why are these portions so tiny! Why does it cost $xxx!" then I understand how that's sucking the passion out of cooking, since like ... you're not paying to grandstand about how the guy who's feeding you is a dumb scammer.

But, the guy who goes there and is trying to understand what's going on? Like I don't know, it feels like of all the people sucking the love of your craft away, the guy who is ultimately a little too overenthusiastic and would commit a party foul if you ran into him at a mixer or something definitely doesn't strike me as the worst guy there -- certainly not to the degree the film focuses on painting him as unequivocally The Worst Person There of the diners. In fact, he's probably the most common, since we all have that one passion we focus on highly and love to talk/think about.

I suppose I'm talking about Holt's character here. It feels like he's a pitched up version of ... everyone who saves up to go to a restaurant and is excited about it? And it feels weird to dog on that specifically.

Right, but I just feel like the "everyone's a critic who can't hang when their mouth is on the line" is better targeted at the likes of the food critic? Like, it's hard to blame patrons who are ultimately kind of regular joes for being excited about what they're eating and liking food, especially if they generally try to see where the chef is coming from. And for the record I'm not denying that maybe you could put someone from the general foodie archetype in the room, but to make him specifically the worst person (bringing his date to die, etc) feels remarkably off in terms of the hierarchy of shitty people. It's almost like the writers knew that his own sin wrt the chef wasn't enough to die, so they needed to give people something else to latch onto to kill him off.