I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better.

This is Pete Wells’s last column as restaurant critic for The New York Times. Read more about his 12 years of reviewing here.Last week, the restaurant-loyalty app Blackbird introduced a new way to pay for dinner. Customers check in on the app on arrival, pick a payment source and tip percentage, and then eat. Ben Leventhal, one of the app’s founders, explained what he called the “best part” in an Instagram video…