My restaurant rules: Crikey’s dining meta list
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It’s a great time for the foodies with The Gourmet Top 100, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guides and The Australian entering the competition with its National Top 50. In the last fortnight there has been just so much for restaurant lovers to argue about. And I wonder what it all means, all these chefs toques and rankings? Do they really help us ordinary people decide where we go out for lunch and dinner? I presume they do because the papers and magazines keep publishing them with the support of eager advertisers and the guides in book form keep selling. They are no mugs those people at Penguin. How wonderful to have a book where people pay out for a new edition every year! Makes the Good Food Guides rather like annual magazines really. I’ve been taking a look at the rankings and am intrigued to know what Crikey readers think about them. I have compiled a summary table of what the various guides have decided and hope you will give you views about whether restaurant ratings are helpful or meaningless. What are your thoughts? Bon appetit.
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8 Comments
The single South Australian listing by the Australian- while very well deserved as D’arry’s is a great restaurant with terrific food - shows the Eastern seaboard bias and almost contemptuous regard for regional food outside Sydney and Melbourne. A joke in other words. And the listings aren’t even correct. Appellation restaurant is in the Barossa not Adelaide and is a fantastic restaurant serving the best of the region under Mark MacNamara, chef extraordinaire.
Anyhow these type of lists only go to prove that there is nothing better than getting out into your own region, taking a risk if you like and discovering that there are gems everywhere who will never be mentioned in some Sydneycentric food writers list - because they never go and find them!
Regards
Disgusted farmer and devoted locavore of Willunga
PS: Fino is a gem of the first order!
I don’t think any of the dead tree versions of “rankings for restaurants” have really got much of a future.
A year’s a bloody long time in the life of a restaurant and I’d far rather trust the instant feedback of the online world than a “sponsored” piece of spin.
The online blogoshere will kill these publications, just like the net is killing their print media owners.
In reference to Paddy’s comment, Mietta’s provides an online directory that also combines snippets from different reviews over a number of years. Handy and pretty much hype free, it’s a reasonable alternative to both print guides and flash entertainment sites such as Citysearch.
not much choice here in Perth, is there?
For years the battle for best and fairest was between Loose Box, Jackson’s and Star Anise, so the arrival of Amuse was a breath of fresh air, and has prompted the others to lift their game. Star Anise’s mediterrasian fusion is starting to look so last century.
I had the pleasure of dining at Amuse last month (no acute on this keyboard), and it was one of my top ten eating experiences worldwide. I never thought food would make me laugh out loud with joy, but it happened there during a truly adventurous journey through their dego menu. Service is first class, and the wines chosen to accompany the dego were the finest match of food and wine that I can recall. The food was such a complex highwire act that occasionally they put a foot wrong and you thought they might lose their balance (parsnip milk?), but that only added to the thrill.
thoroughly deserved listing.
none of the wineries in Margaret River deserve a listing. they are the best in the region, and of interest to the traveller, but cannot stand up in their own right next to the city establishments. That said, Lamonts should be on the GT list.
Our Man In Canberra: I think you’ll find most of the Mietta’s site’s own content offers no comment other than what might be picked up from a web site, and even some of that is completely dated and factually incorrect. What they do is aggregate the material generated by the publications that actually commit the time and money to reviewing restaurants properly. In other words, without real critics to feed it, and good old fashioned media, the Mietta’s model is simply dead. It is no alternative; it is a parasitic way of making a business out of other people’s effort and expense. If Paddy’s prediction proves accurate, those that feed off the corpse are going hungry too.
Hi Lethlean, some relevant points and a timely reminder I should have included qualifications in my initial comment. Granted, information at Mietta’s can be dated and inaccurate but that holds for much of the content on the interwebs (something I presumed many web users such as Paddy and myself were aware of). In the past, I’ve found the site useful for general information - I also nominated it as an alternative because (as far as I know) none of the mainstream restaurant guides offer comprehensive, web-based editions.
Originally, I was going to mention it was an aggregator site but decided not to because it becomes clear once you land there. I guessed (and I’m happy to be corrected) the site was collecting information that was freely available online. I have no dog in the fight as to the validity of this model of operation and agree that currently, it (and others like it) are dead in the water without traditional media.
However, it should also be noted that these sites have as long a history online as the traditional media outlets, and for more than a decade their operations haven’t changed all that much. What has changed recently is traditional media’s determination to extract better returns for its content (as is its right). At this point no-one can say how successful the fight back will be, but it promises to make for some very interesting times, both for media folk and your average consumer/reader.
I don’t usually look at ‘best restaurant’ guides - I tend to go by word of mouth (especially from foodie friends) and sometimes newspaper reviews.
I tend to avoid newspaper reviews simply because sooner or later they end up in the pockets of some restaurants and not others. I use to rely on the reviews on the Age (bring back Rita Erlich!) but everytime because found the experience the antithesis of the critic’s review. Bistro Guillaume and Bottega in particular. The one exception which never seems to disappoint is Circa The Prince.
Secondly there are some fantastic food blogs (particularly in Melbourne) which deliver an opinion based on the food, venue and service. Not caring on the expectation of the chef and brigade in the kitchen. Once a critic is known that’s pretty much the end of their worth as a food critic. The hospitality industry is too small for it to be any other way.
I remember Miettas and Stephanies as fine dine experiences.