Remember the days when all you had was Zagat when you needed to pick a restaurant? The world has come a long way since then. When you Google the name of restaurants, you are presented with way too much information.
Spend some time sorting the reviews out, and you will realize that they present themselves in two groups.
- Professional reviewers who can name more types of cheeses than you can countries, spend too much time discussing the wine list, and you finish reading unable to relate to their unlimited budget.
- Amateurs who flood the comment fields with personal preference. These listings are inconsistent, and tend to skew towards the negative.
The review of food is all relative, and subjective. How one defines good, then better, all requires a basis for comparison. The aforementioned types of reviews both don’t suit my needs completely.
When the original Eat Big Apple column was published in the World Journal newspaper, it immediately garnered a dedicated following. The reason? Consistent advice, laymen terms, and clear obvious pricing info. This blog is the online extension of the articles, clear, concise, with pretty high-rez pictures.
Look for our Apple grades at the end of each restaurant review for the team’s score of the food and experience. Since this is a dynamic medium, we encourage everyone to ask questions, challenge us, or provide suggestions that we might have omitted.
Tasting and telling like it is.
When the EatBigApple book first appeared, many readers asked us why there wasn’t a score or rating for each restaurant. That was partly due to the editorial nature of the newspaper on which articles first appeared, and our belief that taste is subjective.
However due to popular demand, we’ve devised a simple Apple Scale based on the combined opinion of the EBA team.
- 1 Apple: You’ll rarely find this on EatBigApple.com, really not worth going to.
- 2 Apples: Good for a quick lunch or to fill your empty stomach.
- 3 Apples: A solid dining experience…. but for NYC, leaves some parts to be desired.
- 4 Apples: You should go. You’re going to like the food you taste, we guarantee it.
- 5 Apples: Pinnacle of dining. This is bucket list material. (After the credit crisis, we strongly advise against home equity loans for food)
