Dec. 29, 1980: A few days after the incident involving Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila at Red Medicine, I came across this piece by the late David Shaw on the relationship between restaurants and restaurant critics.  Long-established restaurants are almost impervious to bad reviews, while other establishments languish or close despite favorable coverage, Shaw said. He also noted that most new restaurants in Los Angeles County don’t last a year. Shaw,  a Pulitzer Prize winner who died of brain cancer at the age of  62, was quite a bon vivant and I’m sure he relished the reporting on this story. 

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