Notes from the complaint department
Dear LB,
You raise a good point in your comment under yesterday's Top Ten Tuesday:
If you are going to review something, please please please have sampled it in recent memory. Why would I try something in your "Top 10" that you haven't ever eaten???
I think you'd enjoy the list more (since you say you read it anyway) if you wouldn't think of it as a bunch of mini-reviews. My reviews are only of restaurants I've eaten at recently. I think a review's shelf life is six months at most. After that I ask our Web Masters to take it off the site.
Top Ten, on the other hand, is a starting point for discussion. After all, I only review a restaurant once a week, so in the past six months I've maybe gone to 25 places. And of those I don't try everything on the menu. I wouldn't have much material to work with if Top Ten were ten mini-reviews.
I try to be upfront about which ones are my professional opinion and how up-to-date it is. I think you'll enjoy Top Ten more if you think of it as a compilation of information I've gotten from my own experience, my colleagues and friends I trust, and readers who have posted often enough that I can tell they know their restaurants. It's supposed to entertain, inform (as long as you understand its limitations), and most important, give other people a chance to agree, disagree, or let me know that a place no longer has the dish I've put in my Top Ten.
Thanks for reading, even though you get annoyed with it every week, and Happy Fourth,
Elizabeth
Comments
Agree with you about the lists. I look at them as a way to hear what a foodie thinks about various food topics. But, I really just wanted to make my own observation and this was an easy way to do it. I have attempted to visit two places that you have recently referenced here on the blog. They were Jennings and Mr.Bill's. I really was looking forward to the visits. Unfortunately, they both have really smoke-filled dining rooms or bars through which you must pass or wait for a table. I have severe asthma and smoke is one of my triggers, so we had to leave both places without sampling the food. Now, I do not suggest that everyone has to become a non-smoker, but maybe it is time to include smoking or non-smoking environment as one of the bits of information included at the end of your reviews. Right there along with the stars. Just a thought. Happy Independence Day to you and hope you finally get that All American cooking you went to Tennessee for.
Posted by: Regina | July 4, 2007 7:41 AM
hi elizabeth. just curious if you heard news regarding where edward kim is cooking? i haven't been able to get a lead and am a huge fan of his. thanks in advance.
Posted by: curious4food | July 5, 2007 10:05 AM