Fillet

Restaurant
Review

Jim Dixon

The More Simple the Recipe, the Better

Everyone thinks I have the perfect job. "You mean you eat at really good restaurants and someone else pays for it?"

They want to know just what makes me qualified to pass judgment.

Only one thing: I like to eat.

Eating is one of the few habits we all share, although each person's enthusiasm for it varies considerably. Many people think they could review restaurants, and they're pretty much right. When it comes down to it, you either like what you eat or you don't. And in the end, the word-of-mouth reviews matter most. No matter what the paper reports, most people go to a restaurant because someone else told them they liked it.

Restaurant reviews are highly subjective. Of course, there are a few cut-and-dried indicators of quality. The most obvious is food poisoning, then dirty silverware, or any detectable odor. But regardless of whether the Hollandaise was too lemony or the tiramisu lacked sufficient mascarpone, it's just an opinion. You either like it or you don't. That's the only thing that matters.

Here's what I like: I like smaller restaurants, where the kitchen is run by someone with a passion for food. I like the rustic simplicity of Italian cooking and the rigorous structure that made French cuisine the standard by which all others are measured. As a native of the Northwest, I love the food we grow, catch, and, collect. I especially like oysters. I'd rather eat pasta, vegetables, or beans and rice, but I love rack of lamb, a thick pork chop, a rare hamburger. I like ketchup on my fries.

When I'm reviewing a restaurant, I order a variety of things to get a feel for how the kitchen works. I focus on the food, and my wife Judith helps by pointing out such details as an inexperienced waiter or uncomfortable furniture. It usually takes three visits to cement an opinion.

That's the easy part of the review. Finding an interesting way to describe what I liked takes a little more work. The general adjectives used to describe food aren't much help. Most have become clichés - I once swore I'd never use "savory" in a review - and the rest tend toward hyperbole. Critics love to write that a certain dish "worked," - a wonderfully ambiguous term that connotes approval without requiring much explanation. I'm guilty.

I've learned that a detailed description of the food is as good as anything. I try to convey my own sense of enjoyment or disappointment by showing you what went into a dish, what it looked, smelled, and tasted like. I'll tell you if I liked it. I know a review is successful when someone tells me that reading it made them hungry.

Critics have power, and should take their responsibility to be fair seriously. Personally, I'd rather write a good review than a bad one. Bad restaurants don't last too long anyway (although the mediocre ones seem to linger forever), and I don't hesitate to point out their flaws. But every time I write that the grilled eggplant is too oily or the fish is overcooked, someone always writes back how much they loved it.

So, what's the overruling factor? Does remarkable food cancel bad service? And what about ambiance - sometimes you want to talk softly over dinner, sometimes you want the action and clamor of Saturday night.

Some meals reflect the skill and creativity of a team of chefs using the very best local ingredients. Others are the product of an individual's special passion and might consist of the same food I have in my own refrigerator. Both can be perfect, but which one is better?

I was listening to NPR a while back and heard children's book author Daniel Pinkwater say that he judged a restaurant by the state of mind it left him in. I can't think of any better measure.