Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Our food critic sticking to stars
In a world where everyone’s a critic and a galaxy’s worth of stars are doled out by users (and abusers) of Yelp, TripAdvisor and other social media platforms, why would professionals who get paid to offer opinions want to ditch star ratings? It’s a question
I’ve been asking after some prominent publications, including the Miami Herald and San Francisco Chronicle, recently announced that their restaurant reviews would no longer be accompanied by stars.
The Sun Sentinel’s stars are staying. Although I sometimes agonize over the final rating I award a restaurant on our four-star scale (with three stars and above meaning it’s recommended), I know readers and restaurateurs find ratings useful. Now more than ever, newspapers need to be useful to remain relevant and viable.
“The more stars I get, the more I like them,” says Tim Petrillo of Fort Lauderdalebased The Restaurant People, whose establishments have been on the receiving end of glowing and tepid reviews. “But seriously, it’s the measuring stick we’ve all gotten used to. If you didn’t have stars, it’s almost like, ‘Everyone gets a participation trophy!’ ”
I understand the points raised by the Black Hole Gang (as I’ve taken to calling the anti-ratings crowd, because they are swallowing stars into oblivion). Their argument goes like this: A ratings system erases the nuances of a review and reduces restaurants — which are complex, evolving organisms — to a silly fixed number. And stars can overshadow the substance of a critique and blind those who pay too much attention to them, be it restaurateurs and chefs who obsess over them,
writers who fret over formulating them and readers who might lazily use them without reading the full review.
But I say ditching stars is a cop-out. Critics get paid to render judgments, and a ratings system is the equivalent of a final verdict. At the very least, critics should use a “recommended/not recommended” shorthand to accompany reviews. Could you imagine Siskel and Ebert without the thumbs up/thumbs down?
“I think stars are a good concept — they quantify what you’re talking about,” veteran South Florida restaurateur Burt Rapoport says.
The Sun Sentinel’s rating system starts at one star (poor) and runs to four stars (excellent/exceptional), awarded after I make unannounced review visits paid by my employer. Two stars is fair, 2 ½ means average/OK, 3 is good/ solid, 3 ½ very good. When I award a restaurant 3 stars or higher, it means I’d return and spend my own money. There are shades of gray, which is why reading full reviews are essential. Perhaps trickiest are 2 ½ star reviews: some places have redeeming qualities and I’d return, but there are also deficiencies. (Case in point: my recent review of Bar Rita in Fort Lauderdale)
In coming up with a final rating, I consider a restaurant’s food, service, wine and bar program, atmosphere/vibe/attitude
and value. Food is paramount: I’d rather eat flavorful and creative cuisine served on a paper plate in a storage closet than a poorly prepared and overpriced meal on china in a dining room with white linen and crystal chandeliers. Boiling all the factors into a rating is more art than algorithm. Is it fair to rate a humble sandwich shop on the same scale as a hip and haute eatery from a star chef? I say it is, because my world is welcoming enough to embrace both as three-star worthy, even if the comparison is apples to oranges.
Ratings are based on my unannounced visits, but journalism and fairness go into the final product. Before writing reviews, I speak with owners, chefs or managers to learn about backgrounds, motivation,
sourcing and techniques, and to find out about extenuating circumstances or other factors that led to problems. I’m upfront during followup interviews, because nobody likes to be sandbagged, and include their perspectives in reviews when warranted. I offer suggestions for improvement, because I want all restaurants to succeed. This is how a professional review differs from the gripers and snipers on Yelp and other social media platforms, where the motives and knowledge of the raters are opaque.
Jeremy Bearman, the chef-owner of Oceano Kitchen in Lantana, one of only seven South Florida restaurants I’ve awarded a top rating of four stars (excellent/exceptional) in three years, says he could do without rating stars on
professional reviews.
“From my perspective I look at the experience that someone had — that’s the most important thing to me,” Bearman says. “I try to pick up on a couple of things that stick out the most.”
Bearman, who came to South Florida in 2016 as opening chef at One Door East in Fort Lauderdale, received a positive review in the New York Times when he was executive chef at a Manhattan restaurant, Rouge Tomate, that also earned a Michelin star. As a business owner, Bearman says he must pay attention to what’s being posted on social media, even if those who post may not be fair or knowledgeable: “If there are negative or recurring things — it helps you as a restaurateur to see if there’s an issue.”
In her essay explaining why she’s ditching stars, San Francisco Chronicle dining critic Soleil Ho writes, “I don’t hold myself to be an objective authority on restaurants who can accurately quantify the experience for you … When I review restaurants, I’m talking about their context, how they exist in the world. I want to describe the images and feelings restaurateurs and chefs produce in me with the choices they make with their menus, architecture, marketing and music, to share the experiences I’ve had in restaurants with you in fresh and interesting ways.”
On the “Let’s Eat, South Florida” Facebook group administered by the Sun Sentinel, most members who chimed in on Ho’s essay say they like rating stars with reviews. Wrote Doug Mosley: “I see the author’s point but I think it runs counter to what we — the readers — want from a publication’s dining critic. I found it strange when the author said they don’t have the expertise to mete such judgment. To me, a newspaper dining critic does have that expertise, or at least that should be a reasonable expectation. Isn’t that why we buy newspapers, to read the work of professionals?”
Wrote Lisa Miller: “I agree that stars are not nuanced, but a review is and stars are an indication. I’d keep them.”
Reviews without ratings are not new. Many magazines that review restaurants, such as the New Yorker, do not award stars. And the late, great Jonathan Gold did not award stars in his thoughtful, erudite reviews for the Los Angeles Times.
But stars remain a tradition at many publications, including the New York Times, where only chief dining critic Pete Wells gets to award them. Some newspapers give ratings local flavor, such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which awards beans (as in red beans and rice) instead of stars and the Philadelphia Inquirer, which bestows Liberty Bells. I’m not quite sure what we’d use in South Florida for local flair: perhaps Key limes, stone crab claws or Botox syringes, but that could get confusing.
On Twitter this week, Miami Herald food editor Carlos Frias defended the scrapping of the newspaper’s longstanding fourstar rating system: “I want our reviewer to gush about a place or knock it and not have to worry how his rating would square with a past review. It can feel arbitrary, like football power rankings. (Sorry, former sports writer here.) And, to me, it distracts from the journalism.”
Sorry, but I think it bolsters it.