The perils of writing restaurant reviews

People often ask me, "how do you review a restaurant?"

It is really a good question, as a restaurant review is a different animal than a book review. A book review must engage the book in a way that goes deeper than a consumer report. Sure, I want to know if the book sounds like a waste of time and money, but often a book review contributes to my own understanding of a book. There is a little of that in restaurant reviewing, but mostly my readers want to know, "is X place worth the Y amount of money that I will spend there."

The dangerous part is that people look for wildly different things in a restaurant. Some insist on being dazzled by new combinations, new uses of techniques, etc. Others want food just like Mom made it. Still others are just happy to have passable food that someone else cooks and cleans up after.

So I try to offer accurate descriptions, so that the reader has an idea of exactly what to expect.

The hardest type of restaurant review is one of a restaurant that is mixed, food wise, but with excellent service and super friendly waiters. I had one of those to write yesterday. If the food is all bad, then it is easy, but when some dishes are really good and some are mediocre, it gets hard. Writing the descriptions of the dishes is easy, but when it comes to the stars, you think of the super friendly people and you have to balance that with the mixed food and you try to come up with some system.

I have a system, although it is not perfect all the time. Certain kitchen gaffes get automatic knock-downs. Zero stars is reserved for a restaurant with bad food and food poisoning. If a place is on the borderline, then service really comes into play. Even then, there is technically correct service and warmth and friendliness. If a waiter does not know something, makes up an answer, and then gets defensive when mildly corrected, that costs points. Certain things are givens, like clean bathrooms. If a bathroom is dirty, what must the kitchen look like?

One thing that I can ignore if everything else is perfect is when all of the dishes are garnished the same. However, this is one of those items that can cost a restaurant in a borderline case.

The reason I try to have a system is that I review every type of restaurant, from a burger stand to restaurants with international reputations. I have to review them according to their type, but there are those things that must be done right if a place insists on being in the business of selling food.

However, even in those things, there are cultural differences that must be taken into account. Explorateur is objectively better cheese than velveeta, which is barely a cheese at all. But velveeta does have a place in the world, and a critic who complains about Billy Bob's Burgers using velveeta is probably out of his league.

There is a Bay Area food critic who misses this distinction all the time. He does not understand that Italian American food is a related but ultimately different animal than Italian food. Instead of discerning whether or not a red gravy is a good red gravy, he laments that it is not a true bolognese. When this critic is reviewing a four star French restaurant, he is pretty good, but when he jumps into Guido's House of Spaghetti, he misses the point entirely.

On the other hand, when I eat classic standard modern American fare, I often wonder, "what would this be like if it were given the Alice Waters treatment?"

For instance, we all know and love gringo tacos: filling of hamburger meat with taco mix seasoning and tomato paste, iceberg lettuce, cheddar cheese, etc.

Now, what if we were to make top shelf gringo tacos? Would they work? If we were to use organic mixed greens, Englisch farmhouse cheddar, organic dry farmed tomatoes, to mix our beef with a specially prepared seasoning mix and demiglace?

So, at the end of this little musing on the job of restaurant criticism, I give you a new iron chef assignment: create gourmet gringo tacos. Then report back.