What Restaurant Reviewers Are Really Looking For.
See that couple in the corner? No, not the large man in the cravat and his coiffured companion; the couple at the next table – the quiet, unassuming couple you wouldn’t look twice at. She ordered the seared scallops’ entrée, followed by the lamb rack with spring veggies; he ordered the twice-baked soufflé and the slow-cooked beef with celeriac puree. That’s me and my companion, and I’m reviewing your restaurant.
Masterchef may have made Melbourne food writer Matt Preston an instantly recognizable face but the truth is that most restaurant reviewers aren’t well-known faces. And that’s the way we like it. It doesn’t matter whether the review we’re writing is for the weekend edition of a local paper, a city- or state-based food guide, or part of the judging process for the Restaurant & Catering Awards, reviewers crave anonymity. If you don’t know who we are and what we’re doing in your restaurant on a Thursday night, then you’re going to treat us just like any other punter who books a table. No “above and beyond” service, no special dishes “compliments of the chef”, no way to distort the true picture of how well a restaurant is servicing its customers.
The good news is there’s absolutely nothing to fear from restaurant reviewers if you run a tight ship. We’re not in the business of ruining restaurants for fun and we don’t use fine-dining as our benchmark for every review. If doesn’t matter whether you’re a neighbourhood pizzeria or French bistro, serving $8 paninis or $30 entrees, as long as you deliver the goods in the context of that particular style of eatery. We don’t expect every Thai restaurant to be Longrain or every Chinese restaurant to be Flower Drum but we do expect them to offer value for money to their customers.
So what are reviewers looking for? Delicious, enticing food, yes, but that’s only part of the equation. An enjoyable meal is the sum of all its parts and often it’s the little things that can make or break a dining experience – an overly intrusive waiter, poor lighting, music that’s too loud to speak over easily, or cigarette smoke drifting in from a smoking area. Since they are small things, they’re also things that are easily remedied by a savvy restaurateur.
Reviewing criteria vary but it’s fair to say that all reviewers are judging the venues they visit on food, service and ambience. The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide for example states that it awards restaurants up to 10 points for food, five points for service and three points for ambience (the other two points are for what they describe as “a sprinkling of magic”). Food is clearly weighted more heavily than the other factors but wouldn’t you rather kick butt across the board? Keep in mind that it’s the negatives people tend to remember long after the flavours, however delicious, have faded.
To start with the food, the short answer is that we’d like it to be “good” but it’s more complex than simply assessing the combination of flavours and textures that make up any given dish. Along with taste satisfaction, we’re also looking at the quality and freshness of the ingredients, how the dish is presented, whether it’s been cooked correctly and as described in the menu, the serving temperature and whether its representative of the style of food the restaurant is aiming for. Your bouillabaisse might be fantastic but if the restaurant purports to specialise in Northern Italian food, what’s it doing on the menu?
From a reviewers’ point of view, good service is not necessarily about crumbing the tablecloth between courses (although if that’s the end of the market where you’re positioning your restaurant, go right ahead) but the small, commonsense things that are mostly noticeable when they’re absent. Offering tap water along with “still or sparkling”; training staff so that they can answer questions about the menu without having to “ask chef”; offering a woman who ordered wine the taste, rather than her male companion, and not leaning across one person to remove their neighbour’s dirty plates, for example.
Often our assessment of your service starts before we even arrive, when we ring to make a booking. Not returning phone calls and bad phone manners are both no-nos. Once we arrive, we will be watching everything the wait staff does, both at our table and at the tables around us. Don’t be tempted to give one table superior service just because they’re splashing out big bucks on French bubbly. If a reviewer is in the room it will be noticed and mentally filed away. On the other hand, small, additional services such as offering to hang coats up or to order a cab at the end of the evening aren’t too taxing on staff but will go a long way to earning our good will.
Ideally staff should be neatly groomed, friendly (a smile goes a long way to excusing other hiccoughs in the service), unobtrusive, knowledgeable about the menu and not too busy or aloof to make eye contact with diners trying to catch their attention.
The final thing reviewers are looking for is ambience, generally defined as the atmosphere or mood created by a particular environment. In restaurant reviewing terms this sees us assessing factors such as the décor, the quality and consistency of table settings (I will be surreptitiously fingering the linen and checking the brand on the bottom of my side plate), lighting, ambient noise levels, the style of music playing and whether you can speak over it easily, and the comfort of the seating. We’ll also be checking out the toilets, so staff should be too on a regular basis to ensure that they’re clean and tidy at all times.
As a restaurateur you may not be able to control what we reviewers write about your business but with good food, great service and an enjoyable ambience, you can hope to influence what we’re thinking at the end of our meal. Given that a good review can make the difference between struggling to fill tables and having to turn people away mid-week, it’s well worth taking stock of your business and identifying the ways you can reviewer-proof it. By doing so you’ll also be creating the sort of venue that customers will want to revisit again and again.
