Restaurant Reviews
I enjoy restaurants so much, I tend to write about them on KTK. In June I wrote about high prices at some restaurants, and how they were pricing themselves out of range of all but the wealthy. When I open my Sunday papers, after reading the comics and the LTEs, I always turn to the restaurant reviews. Sonoma County is so rich in restaurants, and new ones open and are reviewed every week. About half of them tempt me and I either save the review or note the name on my list. We try a few, but the list is so long we will never get to most of them, and given the restaurant failure rate, they might be closed when we do. This has actually happened several times.
We have such a small kitchen, and because we no longer grow our own food, we go out to eat more often than before. Since all 8 walking-distance restaurants are very good, that’s the easy choice (plus Best of Burma every other week). Others are chosen by word-of-mouth, and we’ve been at some good ones. I do use Yelp as a resource, and it is sometimes useful to avoid really bad experiences, but it obviously can be gamed, so one must take their reviews with a bit of (gourmet sea) salt.
Another quandary with restaurants. You try one dish and you like it, so you order it again next visit. What will move you to try something else from the menu which offers 39 other tempting dishes? Perhaps this explains the popularity of pizza restaurants: your choice is pizza or not. Food quality is one thing, noise level is another. Some venues absorb sound pretty well, but noisy restaurants are becoming the norm, with volume increasing in proportion to the alcohol intake. We avoid those in which the decibel level is greater than that of a leaf blower.
Do you have a few favorites that you could mention? Are they worth a long travel time? Does noise in restaurants bother you to the extent that it would keep you away? Have rent increases ever caused a favorite restaurant of yours to close…..gone forever? Have you ever dreamt of opening a restaurant? My personal dream restaurant would serve only BBQed oysters. Probably not the best business plan.
Each of you (except in Arizona) were given an extra hour today. What did you do with it? Write another chapter of your novel? Refine your latest sonata? Create a groundbreaking recipe? Replace the shelf paper in all of your cabinets? I sat and watched my hummingbirds for an hour. Not so bad, actually.