Restaurant reviews today are largely confined to the Big 4 Nationals: Trip Advisor, Yelp, Gayot, and The Infatuation.  Trip Advisor and Yelp are primarily crowd sourced, allowing every foodie, non-foodie, persons of all ages, education, experience, and training, all types of tastes or ignorance, and all forms of discerning experience or no experience to infiltrate (i.e., contaminate) the review process, including plenty of restaurant ‘friends’ and enemies adding comments.  All you need is a free account, and you too become a restaurant critic within a moment of logging-in. 

Sure, there is a level of accuracy in mass reviews, with the top and bottom percentages ignored due to bias or, frankly, incompetence in the review process, leaving a statistically relevant median – if the sample size is large enough, no matter the respondents’ bases for comment, a statistically relevant result emerges.  But those websites do not consolidate editorial content and actual opinion; they only aggregate general scoring, which median data may help form your opinion on where to dine, or may excite or dampen your expectations, but the accuracy is skewed given the prevailing scoring categories which omit the actual important content reviews. 

The Infatuation and Gayot rely upon a mixture of paid and volunteer reviewers, editors, and critics who may have conflicting and disparate levels of taste, experience, training, and skill, and may rate with or without uniformity, finding certain restaurant experiences and attributes important, and dismissing others, depending upon the reviewer.  Indeed, there is no consistency in such a review process, and while particular scoring varies, nothing in the written review is all too critical, if critical at all. 

You will not find that approach in our critical review process: we visit, dine, absorb, and comment, using biting or praising adjectives where necessary, in our view, and being fair and honest, even when it stings.  And that is the point, our critical review, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, is our opinion, and our opinion only.  It is not a factual statement or representation about the restaurant, its owners, investors, managers, chefs, food, or drink; instead, we write about our experience(s) and publish what we think.  We write what we feel, how we feel, and our opinion about the experience.  These are not facts or statements of truth, nor are the comments pronouncements about a particular restaurant; they instead are our opinion, formed by a visit or visits, and informed by our seasoned experience discerning the traits that make a restaurant interesting, curious, desirable, or potentially avoidable. 

And one other thing that sets us apart: we are the only restaurant review website focused on the Delmarva beach towns which excludes advertising and sponsors.  Nobody pays us to review a restaurant or to post our critical reports, and nobody advertises on our website.  Of equal importance, unlike other restaurant review websites, nobody knows who we are.  If you want to earn a good review, offer special food, service, and/or experience, and we will find you – nobody buys its way into our critical graces.

Happy dining!