"restaurant reviews" news and stories

You know the drill. You and your pals want to go out for dinner, but the reliable old places are well, getting a little played out. You want to try a new place, but how do you know what the new places are, let alone which ones have good food, a good bar, or a good scene?

At one time, we might have looked back through the archives of our local newspapers for professional restaurant critics' reviews. These days however, more and more people are turning to websites that aggregate reviews from average, everyday customers like you and me. These websites, like Yelp, CitySearch, Angie's List and Yahoo Local, allow "citizen" reviewers to post ratings and reviews, and it has businesses changing their approach to marketing. Where once restaurants catered to professional critics, now they must take into account all their potential customers.

Do you use these sites when you need to make a decision about a restaurant? If so, why? And which sites do you find the most helpful?

Source

So what is Hngry all about then? Despite missing vowels.

A chap called Richard (or should that be Rchrd) has set up an online database for people to list their favourite restaurants. The site is free to use and allows for sorting by rating and is fully taggable. It also boasts a 'friend feature' allowing you to share info and invite friends to eat at a particular location. And it keeps track of coupons for you too.

It is early days of course but having logged in I couldn't actually find any restaurants. I try totally random, various food types and price limits but nothing came up. (Richard you need to add a 'home' button to the find restaurant page). Now maybe I am using Hngy incorrectly but one of the uses of a site like this is to search a database by town; say you are visiting Des Moines and you would like to find eateries there, you would enter Des Moines and see what comes up. I would expect to be able to add a restaurant to your personal list, print out directions or follow a link to a google map or whatever. But you can't do this. It looks like any searches you do is restricted to those restaurants you personally enter and tag. A little disappointing that something lacking basic functionality and any restaurant listings has been released...

What would also be clever is to link automatically to blog entries - plenty of bloggers post reviews of restaurants and to find an excerpt under the restaurant list would be very cool. Oh, how about adding photos of the food or restaurant?

So Hngry; maybe useful but it has some way to go.

There is a blog associated with the site.

Source

Originally limited to New York, MenuPages has been expanding quickly lately. The site, which features not only the hours, address, etc. of many restaurants, but also their menus and prices, so you know exactly what you're getting into before you go. MenuPages recently came to LA and even more recently launched in Philadelphia. Other cities the site covers include Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Washington.

If you've never used MenuPages before, it's worth a look, since you'll be able to determine whether a given restaurant actually has anything on their menu that you want to try, unlike straightforward restaurant reviews (and they have user comments/reviews, too), which only provide a price and the descriptions of a few dishes. The restaurant categories are more location-specific than most, too. For example, in Los Angeles, there is a distinct option for restaurants that serve Wings, while in Philly, there is a category for cheesesteak places. If the food you're craving isn't on the pre-set list, another great feature of the site is the "find a food search," which allows you to narrow down your restaurant selection to those that serve flourless chocolate cake or lobster rolls.

Source

If you follow the New York restaurant and dining scene at all, then the name Gael Greene is familiar. Gael Greene spent thirty-two years writing a column for New York magazine entitled "The Insatiable Critic." Though she was writing restaurant reviews, her columns revealed her life as a social diva, who ended up in bed with the likes of Elvis Presley as well as chefs of notable New York restaurants.

Gael Greene has a new book, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess, which is a memoir of those days and nights. Nerve.com has done an interview with the writer in which they ask such questions as "Do you think there's a connection between the physical experiences of eating and sex?" and "Do you have any suggestions for in-the-bedroom treats?" all of which she answers very straight-forwardly.

If you fancy becoming a restaurant critic, make sure you have a stash of untraceable cash, multiple credit cards with different names, and a wig.

I remember reading about Ruth Reichl's stint as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. She would go out in full disguises, changing her demeanor, her voice, everything, so that restaurants wouldn't recognize her as Ruth Reichl. Critics don't seem to be going that far these days. Restaurant critics dine with friends and family, make reservations under false names, and pay for their meals in ways that don't reveal their identities, all to provide a review based on what it would be like to dine for the restaurant's every day customer.

However, restaurants have become savvy to critics, whose reviews could crowd their reservations lines or shut them down, by educating their staff to look out for critics. They have complete "dossiers" with physical descriptions, photographs, and even explanations of crtics' idiosyncrasies.

It makes me wonder, then, how accurate those 2, 3, or 4 stars really are.