Three stars: Very good — worth the drive, even if you're not in the neighborhood.
Four stars: Excellent.
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
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Five stars: World-class. You should fly here from New York for this food.
There will be no half stars.
You'll notice that drive time is taken into consideration with the ratings. The fanciness of the place, for the most part, is not. As a restaurant critic in Atlanta, I gave four stars to a life-changing pizza place, and four stars to a Szechuan joint in a strip mall with cracked pink vinyl booths and the best food I'd eaten in months. If the occasion arises, I'll do the same here.
Of course, if the space is lovely and the service is wonderful, that may factor into the equation, but only if that's part of the restaurant's mission.
The real question is this: What is this restaurant trying to achieve? How close is it to that goal? And how enjoyable is the outcome?
The most common ratings, though, will be two and three stars. People often are frustrated by this (believe me, people have many frustrations with star ratings). But the simple fact is that the huge majority of restaurants we consider will either be doing a very good job, earning them three stars, or they'll be falling a little short of that and earning two.
Getting two of five stars isn't like getting a D in school. There are many ratings systems in the world, and they aren't comparable. After all, getting a bronze medal at the Olympics doesn't make you a loser — two stars out of five, when it comes to restaurants, can be a quite positive review.
Yes, comparing restaurants can be like comparing apples and oranges. But, if we're to use that cliché, let's consider how helpful it would be to try to decide between that apple and that orange. Is one in season? Is one cared for better than the other? Which is most delicious? It's an imperfect science, and yet we hope it will help diners decide where to spend their money.
As always, if the star rating system frustrates you, we'd like to hear from you. But we also hope that you'll recognize this is simply an added value. The writing and reading of the review itself will always be what matters most to us and, we hope, to you as well.
