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!

Sonic

What is the obsession with Sonic fast food restaurants? In the city of St Joseph, there are 5 Sonic restaurants! Do we really need that many? The number of drive-thru restaurants in our small region is remarkable. Rather, it is appalling.

It is no surprise that fast food and obesity are directly linked. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around our community to see that our citizens have a problem. In fact, our neighboring largely-populated cities (St Louis and Kansas City) have routinely made the "cities with the highest rating of obesity" list released by the American Obesity Assn. This rating is not an award. It is not something to be proud of.

Today I am met with a dilemma. How can I help change the notion that regular visits to Sonic are okay? It is like asking kids to give up their candy. Virtually impossible, one would say. However, there are solutions. And, like almost every other topic, it starts with education.

1. Offer cooking classes. Not at the college, but through a city/county/state-sponsored program that will offer free or at least reduced courses on how to make practical, real-life, un-gourmet snacks and meals.
2. Promote a healthy lifestyle. Uh... anyone hear the sound of change coming? It's time to suck it up and build and/or maintain sidewalks or bike lanes. Time to warmly embrace physical activities. A community center that offers racquetball, basketball, basically any indoor sport would THRIVE (year-round activity, folks).
3. Condone smoking and other poor health vices.
4. Start in school. Offer a health class. Not just sex ed here, folks. Actual discussion about the food pyramid, making healthy choices, the effects of those choices, physical education (not just running around the gym) to include the positive effects of exercising one's heart, lungs, muscles, etc; and also basic hygiene.

Obviously parents aren't stepping up to the plate to educate their children. And I believe it is extremely difficult to teach adults new tricks, but if we start now, we can change the predictions for obesity in our area.

Let's put pressure to halt or at least slow the addition of more fast food restaurants.

Let's put pressure on those who are overweight to make a lifestyle change. It is NOT okay to be overweight. It is NOT okay to eat out consistently.

Healthy is the new "in" thing.