Restaurant Confidential? - Page 2

The reviews still offer some negative commentary on restaurants, but why they've eliminated this quickly-scanned symbol I'm not sure.

Is it because, with the explosion of Food TV, far more people started eating out at nice restaurants, now feel they're capable critics, and now every restaurant has its significant share of negative reviews? Arguably, this shouldn't be a concern: Zagat guides were founded on the idea that local residents could offer as good of guidance as any newspaper's resident food critic. Granted, the local residents who offered the ratings early on were Mr. & Mrs. Zagat and their friends — very well-traveled residents with well-refined palates. Perhaps with the boom in popularity of their guides (and, I assume, a large uptick in the number of submitted ratings) has come more explicit belief on the part of the Zagats that while all things are equal, some are not.

And what if a more depressing reason underlies the decision: that the widespread use of Zagat ratings by the restaurants as well as the public has led the company to try to protect restaurants by covering up more obvious signs of dischord in the dining public? The guide already culls quips from individual raters to make their reviews, and that part of the proverbial sausage making is kept behind the scenes. If they were shading things further to play nice with the industry they purport to be critiquing, it would undercut my trust in the value of the rating system.

I hope it's not the latter. But I'd like to hear more about why this helpful symbol is no longer available.

Article Author: Ross

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