A nine-year High Court battle over a restaurant review in The Sydney Morning Herald finally came to a close this week but the result left food writers with a bitter taste in their mouths.

In 2003, then SMH restaurant writer Matthew Evans gave a damning review of the food at Sydney’s Coco Roco restaurant. The limoncello oysters (sounds appetising, doesn’t it?) were described as “sickly sweet, overtly alcoholic, slippery, salty and bitter”. Evans deemed the Coco Roco pork belly as “the porcine equal of a parched Weetbix”.