I quit my job. Okay, maybe I took a sabbatical from my job, but
either way I am in Montana for the next two months, finishing a novel that has
nothing to do with food and writing a series of food reviews that have
everything to do with first impressions.
Is it fair to judge a restaurant on a lone
visit or a single meal? No, but what food review is fair? The average food
review is written by some haughty food elitist making his opinion sound more
important than that of the average Joe. He makes multiple visits and performs
an analysis of the service, the details, and the consistency. He angles his
article to the patrons who label themselves “foodies”, his peers in food
appreciation.
We, as chefs, love foodies because they
line our pockets. They try our specials. They order multiple courses. We also
show them disdain because they write amateur reviews on Yelp and tell us how to
do our jobs, when they have no educational background or credentials making
them qualified to do so. They watch endless hours of cooking shows and throw
elaborate dinner parties for their friends, telling themselves they know
better. They buy these reviews as gospel, and believe them to be ruthless.
So the reviewer gave the restaurant a
second, maybe a third chance to prove their worthiness of a positive review.
What good does that do the average diner? The dictionary defines a foodie as “a
person having an enthusiastic interest in the preparation and consumption of
good food”. I feel I’m justified in saying that any person choosing to eat at a
restaurant, no matter the caliber of that restaurant, is hoping for a good meal
and quality service. Despite being perhaps less enlightened than your upper
class gastronome, their opinion is actually more ruthless: if they have one bad
experience, they ain’t comin’ back. Chefs, with all our knowledge and
experience, still often fall into this category of diner. We work long hours,
we only get one day off, and we’re not wasting our free time patronizing a
restaurant where our water glass is never refilled, the burger is mediocre, and
there’s no toilet paper in the bathroom.
It is with this class of diner in mind
that I begin the “Average Jo” series, a simple, comprehensive
first-impressionistic guide to restaurants that asks the question, “Would I
come back here?”
Comments
Post a Comment