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When I first heard about Zagat.com, I was a hesitant. After all, there are numerous free restaurant reviews on the web, and the idea of paying for such a service seemed a little silly. After a little thought, however, I reconsidered. After all, we're talking about Zagat, the top restaurant guide, which has yet to fail me; the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of City Search.To be honest, the site is pretty amazing. Like the restaurant guides, it organizes its reviews based on location, price, cuisine, and several other considerations. Moreover, it also offers reviews of hotels, nightspots, and attractions, basically applying the Zagat experience to almost every aspect of city tourism. Even better, for people who live in cities that aren't covered by the guides, it includes user reviews of hundreds of local eateries.
Of course, there's still the cost. Zagat charges $4.95 per month or $24.95 per year for premium membership. At first, this seemed a little high, but then I did a little math: the basic Zagat guides retail for around $15 apiece. For less than $25 per year, the online site gives its users ALL the guides, as well as a variety of other services. Best of all, the site can also be accessed from mobile phones, making it possible for users to enjoy their Zagat without having to tote around the unwieldy books.
I have to admit that I have one or two problems with Zagat (mostly, I'm just ticked off because they tend to be a mite bit snobbish about Bronx restaurants). Still, as I said, they have yet to give me a bad suggestion, and I have learned to trust their reviews implicitly. Luckily, I can now access them even when I forget to pack the books!
2-15-2009 @9:17AM JohnB said... Popular sites like Yelp allow you to judge reviews based on what other reviews that person wrote. A lone 5 star review by a under 3 reviews account? Likely worthless. A bunch of 4 and 5 star reviews from frequent reviewers? Gold.
Zagat has no such public filtering, and is paid?! No thanks!
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2-15-2009 @10:03AM Harlan said... Zagat has a wealth of extremely interesting information that they don't use. Netflix does correlational analysis to figure out what sorts of movies particular people like, and what other movies similar people like. Zagat could do this, but doesn't. Their ratings don't scale well, as different people go to Masa and restaurants in Queens, and so a 27 in one place is not comparable to a 27 in another place. It's just not that good a resource. Yelp is a little better, mostly because it's free.
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