Posted by Ed Levine, October 9, 2007 at 7:14 AM
The (Michelin) stars must have been truly aligned for Serious Eaters yesterday, because Michelin introduced its 2008 New York restaurant ratings two days after the Wall Street Journal ran a piece questioning the validity of online restaurant reviews written by bloggers and eaters who don't pay for their meals. (Full disclosure: Contributors to Serious Eats, Slice, A Hamburger Today, and Ed Levine Eats who review restaurants pay for their meals unless explicitly stated otherwise ).
The juxtaposition of these two events provides a perfect opportunity to discuss the relative merits of reviews and judgments rendered every which way, from on high (Michelin and the New York Times) to online (Yelp and Zagat).
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Posted by Ed Levine, October 16, 2006 at 6:26 AM
In the movie "Dirty Dancing" there's a great moment when Jerry Orbach,
"Baby's" (Jennifer Gray) father, apologizes to Patrick Swayze for falsely accusing him of impregnating an old girlfriend. Orbach says to Swayze:
"When I'm wrong I say I'm wrong." In an effort to emulate Orbach I say this to Tim Zagat: When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong. A Serious Eats reader who worked for Tim and Nina informed me that "while I can say many disparaging things about Zagat, but I'll tell you this: Tim takes those ratings as serious as a heart attack." There are indeed many things to take issue with regarding the Zagat ratings, but apparently my charge on Friday isn't one of them. I stand corrected.
Posted by Ed Levine, October 13, 2006 at 7:44 AM
Like everyone else in NY I look forward to the new Zagat Guide coming out every year. This year's appeared this week, and it was mostly the same old same old. But there was one thing I noticed that stuck out like a sore thumb. The Best Newcomer was Telepan. Guess what? Telepan, a restaurant I really like by the way, is less than a five minute walk from the Zagat's house. So I find it very hard to believe that Tim and Nina Zagat eating there quite often didn't affect the Best Newcomer ratings and outcome. I have interviewed Tim many times, and we are always cordial and friendly when we see each other at events, but at some point he should fess up that his personal preferences and opinions matter more than other individual Zagat surveyors.
Other Zagat tweaks came from Steve Cuozzo at the Post, who noted the discrepancies between what the Zagat Guide says is the average cost of the meal, and what the meal actually cost. He cited both Gramercy Tavern and Chanterelle as places where the check will most certainly be higher than what the Zagat survey reported.
That said, let's face it, we all love the Zagat Guide for its easy to find addresses and phone numbers, its indices, and its handy shape for throwing it in your jacket pocket. I don't love it for the ratings, which I find woefully out of whack, or the blurbs, which are way too cute and don't really convey much useful information.
