Restaurant Review

Almost immediately after I moved to this fine town, I found myself asking nearly everyone I ran into where a good restaurant was. Mexican, italian, american... you name it, I wanted to find the best. Sometimes word-of-mouth can be the best referral, you know? I had tried restaurant after restaurant looking for a place that I would visit more than once. My family got tired of being "guinea pigs". We just wanted a place we could go to that we knew would be good.

During the course of my "experimentation period", I volunteered to write a weekly "Letter to the Editor" article for the News-Press outlining cleanliness, value of food, taste of food, and more. I had several goals:

1) To encourage other people to patronize restaurants they might not otherwise think of.

2) To encourage restaurant owners and managers to put their best foot forward. Not knowing who this "random" food critic might be just might encourage them to be on top of their game ALL the time. Not just when the health inspector shows up.

Alas, the newspaper felt that this subject would be too controversial, and they rejected the idea of an anonymous reviewer. Recently, the NP decided to publish results from the county health inspectors office, which outlines both minor and major violations that restaurants have been written up for. I guess the goal was to either sway patrons one way or the other. But, however clean the kitchen might be, the reports still failed to tell me if the food would be good, if the restrooms would be clean, or if it would be kid-friendly. Personally, I'm looking for a great date restaurant where I can spend special time with my love.

Being a solution solver, I decided to start a new blog: http://stjoerestaurants.blogspot.com/

I can't write about every experience that I have, but I'd like to think that I can add some insight as to what to expect at various restaurants. There will be no "regular" updating per se, but as often as I can I'm going to publish my findings. I'm going to continue the guinea pig approach and try new places, but I'm sure you'll see lots of familiar names of restaurants.

Bookmark it. Visit it. Write back. Post a comment with a suggestion of where you'd like me to go. I'll go anywhere and visit anything. Fast food is not exempt from my review, either. Let me know your thoughts. Talk back!