bad or bad night?

the recent silver seafood and pho 777 threads made me think. at what point can a restaurant objectively be said to be "not as good as it used to be," or, for that matter, "much better than it used to be?" i ask, becuase when i read a review, good or bad, i wonder, among other things, how many visits the review is based upon and how far apart those visits were.

i suppose that if one is a regular at a restaurant, this is an easier call to make. or, if one knows of a management or chef change or a change in kitchen philosophy, the determination might be made on a few visits to the place. i get the feeling decisions are, for better or worse, made more arbitrarily. i'm guilty on occasion of this, myself. after my last visit to saussy, a restaurant i'd very much enjoyed the one other time i went, my wife and i both had terrible meals, all around. i've since learned that there'd been a management or chef change, so i feel less guilty about my decision probably not to go back, but i still feel like that might be unfair to the restaurant. maybe the kitchen was short-staffed? maybe there was a delivery problem as to ingredients? maybe there was a problem with kitchen equipment ...

of course, in the end, taste is subjective, so one man's bad restaurant might be another's good restaurant.

The SS and 777 downhill reviews came from long time boosters who had dined there dozens of times. When the ships were righted, that fact was gleefully published here. I think that's the typical way that you'll see negative reviews here: not pans for their own sake (unless the experience was so remarkably unpleasant that it stands on its own), but criticism that addresses a place formerly lauded here or in other fora.

Of course, some places, especially new ones, might just be bad and a poster might be doing a public service by saying "don't bother," if, for example, it's BBQ using liquid smoke or a bistro using frozen quiches from Safeway.

Most bad experiences are more complicated. If they are well-explained, and put in the proper context (either by the OP or others), it seems to me that more information is a good thing.

I think we can all agree that the "Cafe X sux, try cafe Y, it's my favorite," review is not worth much.

I think that this crowd is pretty cautious about throwing a bad review out on a restaurant based on one experience. More often than not, if I have a bad experience, I'll verbally tell others on the board, ask them to see what they think and then give some feedback.

I don't really consider what I write about a food venue here to be a review, but a report based on my opinion of the experience. A review, in my opinion, is usually based on anonymity and other factors.

Case in point: some on the board dislike Cafe Iberico, but it is easily the Chicago restaurant I visit most. It's my individual experience at a place that dictates whether I return, not necessarily a report on LTH.

I've also headed to places others have recommended here and have been disappointed-GO FIGURE.

Foodnut wrote:I don't really consider what I write about a food venue here to be a review, but a report based on my opinion of the experience. A review, in my opinion, is usually based on anonymity and other factors.

Recently, I was invited to have lunch at a place, which I soured on after a long stretch of good experiences. They wanted to introduce me to the owners, which really I wasn't very interested in. I knew once they knew who I was, they had read my comments, I would always get a better service. Later any friends who come along will also be identified for potential preferential service. I don't want or seek this preferred service, I want what they offer everybody. If indeed it is a true turn around, we'll get to know each other in the natural evolution of being a semi-regular customer or my choosing to introduce myself.

I have returned to this restaurant once recently. Another friend has returned several times. We've kept our cameras in our pockets and our perceptive questions on mute. The resulting meal still didn't match what I experienced before. Yet there are new things on the menu worth evaluating. So I will go, dodging what disappoints me, to try the new menu items.

If I have a bad experience in a new restaurant, especially one I know nothing about, I am really not very inclined to invest time and money to double-check my impression. A salaried restaurant critic whose worth his salt will go several times for a cross section of the menu and service experience. Until someone divines me with an expense account and the salary (but I can manage well with just the expense account!), then I will take that approach. When it is Me-Myself-and-I-Inc., a restaurant has usually one-shot to make me happy; which is really typical of most consumers. One rarified example of repeat visits to a restaurant I have never taken a shining to: Brasa Roja, though people whose opinion I respect love the place; I don't.

Long ago, Vital Information made the case for writing about each restaurant experience as a snapshot in the day of a restaurant's life. If the restaurant has an overall good track record, and there is a singular bad experience, then you can dismiss it for a bad day. If after a long stretch of favorable impressions and there is a bad experiece reported with several more following, then there is a downhill trend which begs reconsideration of the restaurants favored status.

The saddest situation of all is the very good restaurant nobody chooses to visit. So we all keep chugging along walking past thresholds into the unknown dining experience. Hoping to find the next jewel to support with our money, time and enthusiasm. Ultimately that is what keeps me motivated to try new restaurants on a very regular basis.

I most certainly believe in consistency over time. It is most ideal to be able to visit a place multiple times before passing ultimate judgement in your mind. Nevertheless, as Cathy2 said, we are not paid to eat nor are we all independently wealthy. Therefore, we can paint a larger picture by sharing our experiences in the interest of learning, growing, and enjoying.

foo d,
You have touched on the heart of the purpose of LTHForum.com, in my opinion. We are not all individually capable of passing the most professional, complete judgement of one restaurant (bakery/deli/what-have-you).What we can do is share and collect our information to form a more complete view across time and across tastes.

When posting negatively, as Will said, I believe most people here are reasonably judicious. Personally, when I post negatively, as I did recently with Bacchanalia, I try to make it clear how many visits this judgement is based on, and whether or not I think it's possible that it was "just a bad night" or if the problems are simply endemic to the restaurant. I think most people here tend to do the same. When a blanket statement is made, the poster is often asked to elaborate.

The engineer in me tends to classify and rate things quite often. I try my best to keep these classificiations out of my posts as one man's rating and classificication system is usually quite useless to others. But, this may be the right thread to share a bit of it. When I don't like a restaurant, I will generally put it in one of the following different categories, from worst to best:

Not for me or anyone else: I hated it, I find no reason to ever return, and I will not recommend it to anyone on the planet.

Not for me: I hated it, I find no reason to ever return, but there may be others who would enjoy certain aspects of it. I am more delicate when reviewing these.

Not for me, but......: I didn't care for it, but in the right situation, with the right crowd, it can be tolerated. On this basis, I may return.

Deserves another shot: I didn't care for it, but it showed promise, I may have ordered wrong, or I think they (or I) had an off night.

There is also the temporal nature of dining. Cathy mentioned Vital Info's excellent point about each restaurant experience as a snapshot in the day of a restaurant's life. What's good or bad rarely stays that way forever. This returns us again to the purpose and value of discussions on LTHForum.com.

Thank you again, moderators.

Best,
Michael / EC

Well put, eatchicago. What is so great about LTH is the ability to search for any and all aspects of food here and then find out what some people's experience was at the time of their visit.

I would have never stopped at Friendship Chinese for Honey Walnut Shrimp, Snappy's for shrimp, or a few places for Oaxaquenan tamales, without the forum.

So many variables apply in the restaurant industry: supply, demand, staffing, timing, attitude, weather--you name it.

Here, though, you find out whether these variables make the restaurant or food option short-lived or long standing.

I miss so many closed places, I just wish they could have stayed around forever. Sometimes they stay, sometimes they don't and some you may wish they would go away but won't (Wishbone on Lincoln, for me), but you don't have to frequent it, and I can tell others here why I don't frequent it.

I truly believe that LTH might have the ability to make or break a restaurant....so let's not diminish the power of this medium, either.

Let's also keep in mind that we all have different tastes. Recently I tried a Cantonese restaurant that many people on LTH have raved about in the past. Between my wife and myself, we ordered about 6 different things. We were not impressed at all. There was nothing wrong with the quality of the food and there was nothing with an offensive taste. It just didn't suit out tastes. We also found it extremely expensive compared to other places in the neighborhood.

But the point is, there is nothing really wrong with the place, Many people obviously enjoy it. It just wasn't our type of place. If I thought they used cheap or spoiled ingredients, I'd have no problem blasting the place. But when it's just my own personal tastes that differ from the norm I won't say anything.

HI,

A friend was listening to Ruth Reichl of Gourmet magazine interviewed on NPR sometime ago, who told me this anecdote from the interview:

Ruth Reichl was conducting a review of a top flight New York restaurant. She came one evening with a pseudonym and fictious personna of a midwestern housewife enjoying her first occasion in a 4-start restaurant. The staff and service was condescending and poor. She returned a few nights later with reservations under Ruth Reichel and received service fit for a Queen. To her credit, she wrote her review from both the perspective of how the midwest housewife was treated as well as from her lofty position.

I can understand, Ruth Reichl getting a preferred wine or dish reserved for special guests. What I will not understand is treating someone as an inferior, whose money was just as green as Reichl's. I truly hope the restaurant was ashamed of itself. Though somehow I doubt they were ashamed of their conduct, probably angry at getting caught and any lingering bad publicity.

Food Nut wrote:I don't really consider what I write about a food venue here to be a review, but a report based on my opinion of the experience. A review, in my opinion, is usually based on anonymity and other factors.

.

Well put!

I am sure I've been just as guilty of this, but I detest the idea of posters speaking for the community, and by its extension, collective "downhill alerts" or otherwise saying like this is the community's pick for something. OK, I think it's fair to say something like, "a lot of people enjoy LTH (in fact as someone who does not like the place, I can be especially objective in saying that.). I mean every time I went to Silver Seafood, I liked it a lot. I never seemed downhill to me. On the other hand, I love La Quebrada but have had bad meals there. Make sense?

I say, describe your meal, what you thought and WHY you thought that.

Rob

I reject utterly the idea that I have any of the responsibilities or obligations of a Phil Vettel type reviewer. At most you could say that the accumulation of datapoints from different people here is comparable, roughly, to what a Phil Vettel produces after several professional visits. But I personally do not share the reviewer's professional need to visit multiple times and evaluate a host of things to produce a rounded view of a restaurant, nor their desire to be anonymous to guard against getting special treatment (though the irony is that the only time I think I've ever really gotten something because they thought I was somebody-- at Moto-- was NOT a time that they knew who I actually am). I'm just a guy, I go some place, I write about it, I either add to the existing views or encourage others to try it for themselves. That's all.