How did the poor waiter explain that to the chef? glad i was not there to hear the derision heaped upon your table!

It was not my table or my review.

They should have sent back her review because it has a typo. I will die on this hill, it should be aes·thet·i·cal·ly

^^^ a much more careful reader whereas I erupt

Oops, she did spell it correctly, so I went back and changed it.

I think both are ok. Just not with me. 😆

omg

even more importantly, a neighborhood restaurant in Philly is ideally just a joint but with yummy food. they are not responsible for aesthetics.

i did own a cafe featuring prepared foods in deli cases kinda like Balduccis. you could choose what you’d eat or take away. my then fussy French chef called a guest a viking for combining cold and warm foods on one plate. he did not stay long after that experience.

Balduccis catered my first wedding! The Greenwich Village one.

Brought me back! I read about the closing in the NYT, and have followed the "spin offs." I think the only one left is in Greenwich CT. It is a nice high end market but nothing like the glamour of Balduccis GV in the day.

Culinarians could find red chicory there, five different kinds of eggplant, direct imports of prosciutto di Parma, custom-grown broccoli rabe from Italy and, later, from California, pitahaya (a sweet pink fruit shaped like a mango) and trevigiano (a variety of radicchio) — to say nothing of arugula. James Beard lived around the corner and shopped there for extra-virgin olive oil and Italian bread. Lou Reed bought linguine; Anna Wintour, pecorino; Uma Thurman, pesto. The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, another regular for a time, once spotted Greta Garbo there.

My then BF and I saw celebrities there all the time!

I feel like in a city where you can spend $300 a person on any old night at certain restaurants, and up from there, actually--yes, if I ate at a restaurant like that, I would expect artistic and flawless plating.

The restaurant in question has entrees in the $18-25 range. Sure, you don't want it hanging off the plate, but I think one has to temper one's criteria accordingly.

Balducci's has 8 stores, 2 in each of these states: Connecticut, New York, Maryland and Virginia. I'm sure that they are no longer the type of store that catered mtn's wedding. They're owned by Albertson's.

I think the only one left is in Greenwich CT. It is a nice high end market but nothing like the glamour of Balduccis GV in the day.

I only know of that one. In its heyday, as described in the excerpt from the NYT above, Balducci's Greenwich Village was the pinnacle of Manhattan's foodie scene. I learned so much from that store, and the food was so beautiful! I was also a big fan of Dean and Deluca Soho back then, another fabulous temple of food!

I think the stories are similar. They offer a very special product, attain great success. Then they or their heirs sell to business people, who try to make it more profitable, and kill off everything that made it so special.

This sounds like one of my sister's college roommates. She had no idea how normal people lived. Grew up with a nanny, butler, personal chef and chauffeur. Came to our house one weekend and said to my mother "I don't know how you raised 6 children in such a tiny house." Our home was over 3000 sf. She was often baffled by things my sister and I knew how to do. (Pump gas, sew on a button . . ) She was a nice girl and still keeps in touch with my sister (>40 years) but from a different world.

Food aesthetics are odd. In college, my son worked as a waiter in a not high end restaurant. . He said no matter how he put the plate of food down, the customer would turn it to their preferred direction.

LOL, Ded, I can see that! I think it is a sort of posession signal...

I actually like my meat in the 6 to 9 position.

Pal, are you right-handed? That would be the best o’clock position for wielding a knife.

Leave it our friend Pal to have noticed such things and have his own protocol! 🙂

I don't like my food touching so I usually use multiple plates.

I was reading reviews of a restaurant I was interested in. One reviewer gave it 1 star. Their review (I'm paraphrasing, it was a while ago) -- "the restaurant was a long drive from my house". That was it. Nothing about the food or the service or the ambiance. WTF?

I don't like my food touching so I usually use multiple plates.

Do you eat in restaurants? How do you handle that?

This must be a thing. A friend of ours daughter is the same way. Everything must be on its own plate.

I once sent a meal back because it looked so very unappetizing. A lasagne with meat sauce. The meat sauce looked like dog food...it was awful. I did not ask for a replacement meal because it caused me to lose my appetite completely. This was before reviews were even possible (80's). First time at that well known Italian place...last time too.

Pal, are you right-handed? That would be the best o’clock position for wielding a knife.

I like the meat at 6-9 also, and I am left handed.

I only read reviews if it's a place we've never been and considering.

I am also left handed.

Since I make almost all reservations through a reservation site, the list of ratings from 1-5 are right there.

I sometimes read the 1 star reviews out of curiosity, and they are almost invariably either a 1 star rating that has almost nothing to do with any normal criteria upon which would rate a restaurant, or someone who expresses complete amazement that 11,000 people who must have never eaten a decent meal or had decent service in their lives seem to like the most terrible food and the worst service, they themselves have ever eaten, or had.

One of the best I read about a well-loved restaurant in my area "Worst dining experience ever" went on for several paragraphs, but the gist of it was that when they were leaving the restaurant they discovered that one of their umbrellas had been stolen from an unmanned rack in the vestibule, and they demanded that the entire meal for 6 people be completely comped, and the restaurant refused.

I always read one star reviews because they are usually unintentionally funny. I’ve yet to ever read any that actually show a legitimate concern or pattern that would dissuade me from the restaurant or a product.

In restaurant reviews, most often their special occasion (adult birthday or anniversary) wasn’t acknowledged, or the chef &/or manager didn’t come out to talk to them. Adults are incensed that a complete stranger didn’t wish them a Happy Birthday. I don’t understand that at all.

I usually skip the 5-star because they are so over the top in their gushing, maybe the chef came out to wish them a Happy Birthday, I don’t find them very useful.

I do like the 3-star people because they seem to be reasonable. This was good, this could have been better, or this was a miss, this is something that the restaurant couldn't control (like weather or stolen umbrellas).

I pretty much only read the 1 and 2 star reviews. I know what the 4/5 star reviews will say. I'm interested in what people didn't like. I mostly do this for resorts and products on the big A. And yes there are a lot of ridiculous bad reviews as in my example above.

DH finds and books restaurants and in all our years together, I think he's only had 1 miss. He enjoyed his meal thoroughly. I couldn't eat most of mine but I'm an extremely picky eater. The place is very popular (it was crazy busy). It's just not for me, but I would not leave a bad review because of my pickiness.

One of the nicer restaurants in our town always asks when you make reservations if you are celebrating anything. Great they do that, but that message never gets relayed on to the server. I did mention it to management and they agreed it was something they dropped the ball on frequently.

In restaurant reviews, most often their special occasion (adult birthday or anniversary) wasn’t acknowledged, or the chef &/or manager didn’t come out to talk to them.

Honestly seems odd to me, why do people care? Are they hoping for something free?

I am one of those people that does not want my birthday celebrated by strangers around strangers. I never understood the attraction of having waiters sing happy b'day to me. Please just don't. My SIL loves that type of stuff. Ugh.

Maybe if you are at Chucky Cheese and are under 7?

Once on a work trip with many people, the organizers made an announcement at dinner that someone was celebrating an anniversary! We both looked at each other with faces somewhere between this 😬 and this 😮, and worried someone in the group found out it was our anniversary. Neither of us want any public fuss about any occasion or milestone. Luckily, they then named another couple, who clearly enjoyed the attention.

"my [dinner companion] sent her entree back because it was not aesthetically pleasing."

This sounds more like a review of the dinner companion than the restaurant.

After being diagnosed as gluten intolerant, my criteria for eating out at restaurants has shifted so dramatically. Now my primary concern is safety from gluten poisoning (which can occur simply with cross-contamination) and I sadly find myself so happy not getting sick that my tolerance for mediocre flavor has increased.

My screening criteria for dining is 4.5 stars. Within that subset, I agree that the most instructive thing is to look at 3s.

People who gave 1s and 2s to a 4.5 star establishment were just very unlucky or very unreasonable. The 3 reviewers will give you a better sense of any weaknesses.

One of my fave resturants got several bad reviews for "small portions." It is small plates. 🙄Frankly, a restaurant that gets good reviews for large portions is a red flag to me.

I had mentioned when I made reservations for a restaurant in San Francisco the DH and I were celebrating our anniversary. During dinner I accidentally broke a glass full of water. The waiter said that he thought it was our anniversary, not our wedding. I thought it was a great way to get over what had otherwise been an embarrassing moment.

My screening criteria for dining is 4.5 stars.

Mine differs depending where I am. In/around a major city, I will consider 4 stars.

Outside major cities, in my experience it has to be 4.5+ or it's just not good.

Also, the # of reviews matters too. If very few and 5 stars, it's probably family writing the review (unless it just opened).

Outside major cities, in my experience it has to be 4.5+ or it's just not good.

I thought i'd leave geography out of it lest I get in trouble. I would not say just major cities (there are some foodie enclaves with excellent options). But, yes, there are places where you must consider the restaurant reviews in the context of what is available.

We took out-of-town company to an upscale restaurant, my mother patronized it for years, but had never eaten dinner there. They had a solo harpist, the lighting was perfection, the wait staff was wonderful...but.. the appetizer we selected was escargo....a single breaded one on a salad plate. Ta Da! No drizzle....no presentation. Novelle cuisine for the main meal, little loafs of bread. I didn't leave a review. How disappointing...yet judging the whole experience on one poorly plated entree seemed unfair. Yet....didn't the staff need to know?

When doing our college tours with DS#2, we discovered a surprising restaurant along the way. Very small city, more of a town, between Chicago and Peoria, boy was it good. Full tables. Fabulous bread. Beautifully plated and delicious meal. I kind of hoped DS would choose that school just so we’d have an excuse to dine there again. Alas. and then they closed, covid. Out on the boonies, you just never know what you’ll fond.

Odd I don't think I'e ever seen breaded escargot. The shells are half the fun!

What was the "poorly plated entree?"

I've emailed restaurants with comments/complaints that i didn't think belonged in a review.

As I was typing, I thought I hope not insulting anyone.

We too have found wonderful restaurants very outside a metropolitan area.

@bpath "Out in the boonies, you just never know what you'll find." No kidding! We were taking the scenic route from NE OK to central OK. Stopped at a hole in the wall restaurant, and the town couldn't have had more than 1,000 people, if that. Not only did we get a great home style meal because we were starved, the waitress was a chatterbox telling us how her sister was legally parked in a parking lot changing her baby's diaper, and a speeding car which wasn't going to park, somehow rammed right into her. The owner of the car owned half the town. DH gave her his card. :) Biggest case DH ever won and his office is a long ways from the town.

We have some really good restaurants here and many mediocre ones. I’m surprised they not only survive from year to year, but seem to have devoted followings. Whenever someone new or is visiting and posts on Next Door or FB asking where they should eat, I am appalled by the places some people recommend. I’m sure those same people give good reviews, so I am leery of trusting reviews. I used to feel pretty safe chosing from among restaurants that used Open Table for reservation-they were pretty discriminating and seemed to only be available through the better restaurants. But something changed a few years ago and now even some pretty mediocre places use them.

Oakley, what a great story!

Here is a book I kept from my mother’s hostessing collection. She loved to entertain and prepare meals, I recall our dinners were tasty (except the rare occasion she served liver), and attractive. This book is from 1951, no photos and sparse drawings.

We mostly use Resy, a lot of places don' take OT anymore.

I think that one thing that has been forgotten by people who give negative reviews is that just because you order something you end up not liking, it does not mean that there is anything the matter with the way it was prepared.

I have made a few tactical errors over the years, and not liked something--actually it's happened with more unusual cocktails than food, but I have sometimes (very rarely really) missed a ingredient that I don't like in a description, things like that. And in that case, I make it clear to the waiter when they see I haven't consumed very much of something that it's not that there is anything wrong with it.

Because sometimes it's really the person, not the food. I know someone who is pretty picky and criticizes a lot of food out as being "too bland" not having much taste, but she puts so much salt on her food it actually crunches. She also eats meat practically burnt. Those issues are not going to be a fault of the restaurant. Luckily she doesn't write reviews and such. In my experience, the pickiest people I know mostly only like terrible food or food that's not very good for you.

I think that one thing that has been forgotten by people who give negative reviews is that just because you order something you end up not liking, it does not mean that there is anything the matter with the way it was prepared.

I agree 100%. The restaurant I mentioned earlier that I did not enjoy -- there was nothing wrong with the food at all. DH loved it all. It just wasn't to my taste. Also, it was small plates which is not my favorite (I know I'm in the minority here too). Very small menu and the only things I could eat were the egg dishes but the way they were cooked was a total turn off and I couldn't eat them. Again, DH enjoyed the eggs very much. Anyway, I would never give the restaurant a bad review. I know it's all me and not them.

I didn't have to explain anything to the waiter as DH ate it all - his and mine!