Comments on: Call off the Parker dogs!

By: Charlie Olken

Charlie Olken — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:28:41 +0000

I don’t know how Zagat operates, but I have the sense that they need more than a few comments in order to mention restaurants. I have two favorites here in Alameda and I always write them in, but they never make the printed version so clearly one vote does not count.

Trip Advisor often has as few as five comments for its ratings. And if they have more, they are often years old.

There are tens of thousands of labels out there, and it would hundreds of thousands of amateur reviewers all banded together to accumulate enough reviews to make sense. It may happen some day, but it is not going to be so soon or so extensive that it will make much of a dent in the professional critic ranks.

Besides, talk about ratings-driven. Zagat reviews are almost useless as clues to what actually goes on inside the restaurant. Trip Advisor reviews are worse, and one has to wade through dozens of reviews to be sure that one is not getting a jaded view for one reason or another.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:56:39 +0000

I’ve heard that restaurateurs get all their friends and family to recommend in Zagat, so the results are manipulated.

By: Charlie Olken

Charlie Olken — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:07:11 +0000

Morton–

I appreciate your added comments. You do believe in standards after all. And your comments here are insightful and helpful.

Tom Merle–

Nice try but Zagat, which I read religiously, exists because restaurants are different from wine, easier to rate because people have more familiarity with food than wine and because there is no other competition.

Trip Advisor is OK for hotels but a joke for restaurants. It is pure popularity contest with far too few samples to be valid. And try reading the City Search ratings–worse yet.

Zagat is the best of the rating polls, but I would rather rely on Michael Bauer than on Zagat. He knows the difference between authentic Italian and ersatz. He knows the difference between creative fusion and ersatz fusion. How else do you attribute the popularity of Roy’s? No experienced professional reviewers give it much credit beyond OK/average. The ordinary punters love it. That would be OK except that when people’s tastes graduate to higher levels of knowledge and expectation, expert opinion still has a role.

All kinds of new ways of getting wine information are developing in the 21st C. and some will prove valuable. I would be surprised if they kill of the expert media. Now, if you are predictiing a fifty year change, then I am further not worried. I won’t be here to see it. Will you?

Interestingly, Zagat is about to launch a movie rating service. Give me the Chronicle review any day.

By: JD in Napa

JD in Napa — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:17:10 +0000

Hey, Arthur, is “the head dead yet?”

By: tom merle

tom merle — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:37:16 +0000

There is really only one solution, proffered by some other wise souls, which I’ve injected numerous times in these never ending discussions on standards and evaluation. That “solution”–group tasting results. CellarTracker is the new Robert Parker, as I like to say. The “best” critiques come from the compilation of opinions from those who put out their bucks to enjoy vino with their meals or in tasting groups–what the Wine Market Council calls the “core” wine drinkers, the 10% who purchase 80% of fine wine. Whether its Snooth, or in other fields, Zagat, Yelp.com, or TripAdvisor.com, sophisticated consumer assessments offer a superior methodolgy for determining “best”, even with some ballot stuffing. And they dispense with the need for handwringing about “standards”.