Jan 30., 2004
The Do-it-yourself Restaurant Review
You might not think of yourself as a restaurant critic, but if you eat out more than once or twice a year, you are. Every time you decide where to go, you're mentally "reviewing" places you've been. It's a bad review when you decide not to return to that place where you got cold soup and no bread. Tell someone about some great new spot you found, and it's a good review. You're doing just what we do. All we have is a bigger audience.

This is hardly rocket science. You needn't know precisely how to make a tarte Tatin or a proper pierogi (although it doesn't hurt). Nor must you have a clue about running a restaurant. After all, we're not chefs or restaurateurs. What we are is customers, and what we do know is how we want restaurants to treat us in exchange for our hard-earned money. The success of any restaurant hangs on the reviews of its customers, and woe be unto the restaurateur who overlooks that fact.

A "good" review rests on two basics: comfort and food. "Comfort" casts a wide net over such things as hospitality, service, price. Take atmosphere. Oh, we may use fancy words like "ambience," but what counts is whether it helps you enjoy your meal. Were you sitting in a draft? Looking into the sun? Was your chair comfortable? Did you have to shout to be heard over the din of a hundred conversations bouncing off a hard floor and a low ceiling? Or have to whisper because you were smushed elbow to elbow with strangers at the next table. Things like this can make or break a meal--and a restaurant.

All the senses count, but nothing enhances atmosphere like the aroma of good food, and there's nothing worse than the opposite--the odor of cigaret smoke, say, or the disinfectant they mop the floor with.

Good service, when you get down to it, is also a comfort thing. The key is whether it enhances enjoyment. Is the staff hospitable and friendly, or do they make you feel you're messing up their coffee break? A restaurant ought never be snooty, but many of them overdo the best-buddies act when servers call us "you guys" and pose those awful, cliché questions. "Are you still working on that?" is what you'd ask a ditch-digger, not a diner. "Did you save room for dessert?" casts you more as a receptacle than a customer.

Give us a polite and quietly efficient server who knows the menu and can discuss food knowledgeably (and, if need be, talk wine and help order it). Good servers have the customers' pleasure and comfort at heart. Watch for these things next time you go out: Do they bring each course when you're ready, or when they are? Do they silently make sure you have everything you need when you need it without your having to ask? Do they avoid rushing you but never keep you waiting? Do they check early in every course to see that all's well and quickly fix anything that's not? Do they then leave you to enjoy yourselves without constantly interrupting your conversation (or, worse, pouring more of that $50 wine you hoped might last the entire meal)? Do they keep your table neat and clean or make you you sit and stare forever at cold remnants of dishes long since finished?

Price is part of the comfort equation. It's easier to be comfy when your evening is costing you $35 than when it's costing you $135 but, while your comfort level is beyond the restaurant's control, they can always make you feel you're getting your money's worth. If you've saved up for two years for an an anniversary at Tapawingo, you have a right to expect more than if you'd gone, say, to Taco Bell. Too many restaurateurs dwell on how hard it is for them to make a living, and not nearly enough on how hard you work for the money you spend with them.

After all that, the food part of a review is easy. It boils down, in the end, to whether you liked it or not. If it wasn't fresh you probably didn't like it. Ditto if it was raw or burned or tough, or too salty or too bland or too mushy. Maybe it matters to you whether the coq au vin was made with wine from Burgundy or the fish was really Dover sole and not just halibut or flounder. But the bottom line question for most folks is, "Would you order it again?"

And after that, only one question remains, and it's the biggest one of all: "Would you go back?"