The Dreaded Three-Visit Rule
In a comment on my The Ten Most Overrated Restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area (2008) post, Lori of The Gourmet Chronicles said, “[Y]ou can't have enough information to pass full judgment on a place unless you've eaten a full meal there at least three times. Sounds like you only went to some of these places once & you do the restaurants and your readers as well as yourself a disservice (Credibility loss), if you opine too soon especially on the most highly rated (by mainstream critics) & popular places on your list.”
I respectfully and completely disagree that three visits are required for a blogger to render an opinion. (And, I apologize for taking so long to write this promised entry.)
I briefly listed some reasons in my response to Lori’s comment. If a place sucks, it’s one and done for me, especially if I’m paying $50+ per head for the experience. Also, special occasion restaurants must be on point, every single night, every single meal. If they aren’t, someone’s occasion wasn’t special. Writing about a single bad experience is absolutely valid for this type of restaurant.
But I think that there’s something bigger at play, that there’s a fundamental difference between restaurant critics for print publications, whether in mainstream or alternative media, and bloggers.
There’s nothing magic about the number three but I agree that critics writing for print media should base their reviews on more than one visit. I think this for two reasons.
First, print is not a living medium. The written page endures and even when print articles are posted online, they tend to go into searchable archives where they sit, unaltered or rarely altered, for a long time. This is why the law makes a distinction between libel and slander and considers libel to be the more serious offense. Accordingly, the standards for print publication should be more stringent.
Second, print outlets tend to have deeper pockets and can reasonably be expected to bear the costs of multiple meals during the review process. It is also reasonable to expect a mainstream publication such as the Chronicle to fund more visits than an alternative publication such as the Weekly or the Guardian. I believe you’ll find that this is the case.
On the opposite extreme are the social networking/review sites such as Yelp, Chowhound and others. In theory, the wisdom of crowds effect should provide a good, overall view of the business despite virtually no standards and even if individual reviews are biased or uninformed (witness the shocking number of reviews on Yelp for restaurants that have yet to open their doors). I personally don’t put much stock in the wisdom of crowds when it comes to the food I eat but, as I said, it’s a theory.
Blogs are somewhere in the middle.
There are more restaurant bloggers than print outlets so bloggers offer greater diversity of tastes. The medium is transitory in the sense that a review can be updated if the blogger makes additional visits. Restaurant bloggers generally do their thing as an avocation rather than a vocation so it’s not reasonable to expect them to visit someplace they don’t like more than once solely to conform to some arbitrary notion of how many samples it takes to form a valid opinion. A reader can compensate for what a single blogger lacks in number of visits by viewing snapshots of an establishment provided by several blogs.
Further, I doubt that many bloggers have pockets deep enough to eat at, say, La Folie three times so that they can write about the experience. Saying that they shouldn’t post about fewer visits smacks of the same kind of elitism that, in days long gone, accompanied the assertion that athletes shouldn’t be professionals because money ruined the purity of sport. The translation is that only those wealthy enough to participate while adhering to such capricious rules need apply.
And I don’t care how critical acclaim or popularity an establishment has garnered. Blogs exist to provide another point of view. Just because a blog disagrees with critics or conventional wisdom doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
OTOH, there are fewer bloggers than there are Yelpers or Chowhounds. One hopes that what blogs lack in numbers, they make up for in quality. By dint of the fact that they take the time and effort to write a blog, a blogger will generally be more informed and passionate about their subject than your average Yelper or Chowhound. I certainly put more stock in what I read on Becks & Posh, The Restaurant Whore, Food For The Thoughtless and Grub Girl than what I read on your average social networking/review site.
In the end, blogs are like Fox News. We report. You decide. You’ll make more informed decisions if you visit several blogs before making up you mind.
I agree with your "one and done" rule when it comes to a bad restaurant. If it's clear that it was a bad night (these do happen, although rarely) then I will give it a second chance just in case. However, it's been my experience that if it's bad your first visit, it isn't worth coming back. Period.
If I had the financial means (or had a newspaper pay for my meals like Mr. Bauer) to visit a place three times, or were a professional food critic, that would be a different scenario.
Reply to this
"If I had the financial means (or had a newspaper pay for my meals like Mr. Bauer) to visit a place three times, or were a professional food critic, that would be a different scenario."
I'm coming to believe that, despite all of the crap he takes, Michael Bauer might just have the best job in the world.
Reply to this
I absolutely agree, particularly with the point that a special occasion restaurant must always be on point. I think it can be distilled to this: the blogger who reviews restaurants because it is a passion represents what the average person might expect when they choose to dine at an establishment, whereas the newspaper or magazine reviewer is there to provide a diner with a complete picture of what eating there might be like when everything is at peak.
Reply to this