Looking for a restaurant to eat at in Manhattan is not easy.
First of all, there are just a ton of restaurants. Even breaking it down to a certain cuisine or price range can get tricky. There's a seemingly endless list of options that changes with openings and closings all the time.
Secondly, there are a ton of restaurant resources. The "gold standard" is the zagat review book, but there's also New York Magazine, Menupages.com, CitySearch, the Village Voice, Time Out New York, and the NY Times, just to name a few other offerings.
Then there's the problem of not seeing the restaurant, menu or trusting the reviews. A place that is considered "good for groups" on one site, is a "singles hangout" on another and "very romantic" on another. One site's "good decor" is another site's "don't expect much from the interior." Who's to know?
Each site also has a great price rating system, often signified by a number of dollar signs. How much per person is $$$? Does that include three courses or one? Not only do two restaurants which I would consider to be in different price ranges have the same dollar sign, a given restaurant on two different sites may have two different dollar sign values!
A citysearch specific problem is that when you look for restaurants that are "nearby" it limits the search within five miles. Unfortunately, just about everything in New York City is within five miles, including northern New Jersey and the outer boroughs.
This isn't even dealing with whether or not the food is any good. As it turns out the best method is the "ask your friend" method.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Things should get easier when the Michelin guide comes out in the fall - this is probably the most objective restaurant review system and also will allow you to compare New York restaurants against the ones in Europe to see if they are up to snuff. Zagat should not be relied upon as being the gold standard - it's more of a survey book/guide than anything due to its ratings methodology. The closest to a gold standard today is the New York Times * rating system.
If you would like to see menus, go to www.menupages.com (which you mentioned before the unseen menu diatribe). To see the restaurant outside I guess you can use Amazon's A9 Search Engine to see a restaurant front photo.
Citysearch sucks. Period. I stopped using it because I could never find anything and their search results began to blur the line between sponsored search returns and non-sponsored listings.
Word of mouth works only if you and your friends have similar taste.
It's like with buying wine. The more you pay the more likely it is that you'll get good stuff. The challenge is to find cheap and good.
Isn't the Michelin guides for higher end restaurants? Will it help out the "little guy" like me?
In this case, it's unfortunate that there isn't a more comprehensive resource.
Post a Comment