"I wanted to like it" poor restaurant reviews
 

Really. Why must you preface your review with this? I know that I usually go to places, hoping they have crappy food and are overpriced, and make me ill, too. Yes, sometimes we eat at places that we don't expect much and are pleasantly surprised, but even those I want to like. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH. I can understand "I had high hopes for the place because of Chef X and was disappointed" but "I wanted to like it?"

Ok, rant over.

I hope you wanted to like this post.

i will admit... I sent a letter to a restaurant manager last week with those exact words.

washington dc has 4 or so major(well known) reviewers. they are all lousy. i don't know how they judge the restaurants, but excluding the top 2 or 3 restaurants, they miss a lot of the times. there is not a lot of agreement among the bunch, either. the washington post has had the most disappointing bunch of reviewers for many years.

there are two people who run reviews that are quite good, and quite accurate. they are just too limited, but still worth following rather than the post or the washingtonian. (Tyler Cowen & don rockwell).

i also think chowhound and yelp are terrible for dc.

+1. Another issue I have is when someone complains about the price (e.g. too pricey). With all the information available about restaurants and their related prices, why would someone complain "after the fact"? If someone is dissatisfied with the food, that is a legitimate complaint and can usually be addressed with the server or restaurant manager.

"there are two people who run reviews that are quite good, and quite accurate. they are just too limited, but still worth following rather than the post or the washingtonian. (Tyler Cowen & don rockwell)."

Thanks for the Don Rockwell tip. I have followed Tyler Cowen for years, but never ran into rockwell.

Must agree that Post and Washingtonian reviews are hit-and-miss. (Hit on Masala Art, miss on 701.) However I could say the same for Cowen. Many of his reviews are years old. Besides, who could not love Chez Francois?

I tend to ignore those complaints in reviews, too. They generally come followed by "portions too small".

Personally, I don't agree with this. Yes, you will usually know the prices before you go somewhere, but what you don't know is whether the food is worth the price. I might pay $10 or $35 for a 10 oz strip steak, depending on the type of restaurant, quality of the meat, cooking, seasoning, etc. If I go to a restaurant with $35 steaks, but find that they're only $20 value, I would definitely include in the review that it was "too pricey". Likewise, getting a $30-quality steak for $12 would merit a "great value" comment.

Short of outright mis-cooking (e.g. oversalting, over/undercooking, burning, etc), there's not much you can do about this with the server or manager. Complaining that "this steak really wasn't worth what you charged" isn't going to get you very far (at least in my experience).

Again, I would consider this to be a perfectly valid comment. I want a review to tell me if all you get is a few rabbit droppings of mash, or whether the side order of vegetables is two anemic carrots and a rogue piece of cabbage.

Maybe I'm weird.

Scratch that...I'm definitely weird. But maybe my weirdness extends to my taste in reviews...

I would agree that one might not know the portion size before going to a restaurant, but often people expect to get mountains of food, no matter what price is paid. Having been in the restaurant business in a former life, you would be surprised to know that people DO complain about the price. Often I adjusted their checks as a courtesy and for goodwill, but many people do equate restauarant quality with portion size, without considering the quality of the products being used and the expertise of the executive chef in creating the menu and food preparation.

You're paying for a total experience; the piece of meat (or whatever) is just one component. If the total experience is poorly designed - bad or slow service, bad atmosphere, etc. -- then expectations aren't met and, voila, guests start to focus on the price of the thing.

The idea behind restaurant experience design is to force price into the background. I've had $50 steaks as part of such a nice evening, it never occurred to me to focus on price. And if you go to Tad's in NYC you can have a $10 steak that will make you think about offering $5 for it.

Only a rube complains about menu prices in a restaurant that has everything going right.

I strongly disagree. The quality and creativity of the dishes should match the price. I love comfort food, but a basic mac and cheese has no place on a $200 tasting menu no matter how delicious it is.

Oh, definitely, I 100% agree with this. I guess what I was trying to say was that while I was willing to pay $50 for a $50 experience, if I paid $50 for a $20 experience (bearing in mind the synergy of food, service, atmosphere), then I'd want a comment about the price in the review.

But that said, good food is essential. If I'm paying $70-100/head, and the service/atmosphere is outstanding, but the food is poor, I'm still going to want to see a price comment in the review.

I'm not one to look for big portions for the sake of gorging myself, or anything like that. But I do get annoyed with the small dots from squeeze guns that are so popular at the moment, since they barely give you enough to get a taste of that element of the dish. Restaurant quality definitely isn't necessarily correlated with serving size, but I'd like to think that we've moved beyond the "absurd food in tiny portions" of the 1980s nouvelle cuisine.

I'm surprised to hear about the check adjustment and people complaining, but then customer service is a nightmare no matter where you do it. I was in tech customer support for a year...I'm sure I qualify for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder medications.

Try the FAT DUCK.
Overpriced tiny portions with a lot of show and rather sloppy service.