My original intent in setting up this site was to provide a place for objective, un-glossed and honest restaurant reviews, pulling no punches and providing brutal honesty. While I still think that would be a good idea -- we could use a few more critics like Anton Ego -- I quickly realized that, far from being objective, I was in the worst possible position to review many of the restaurants in town. For starters, I know a lot of the chefs, owners and staff at the places I would likely review. I even consider some of these folks friends. Clearly I can't savage one of them, no matter how much they might deserve it.

Chain restaurants are another story, and we seem to be overrun with them since the St. Johns Town Center opened up. I've been to most of them, mostly under protest, and I honestly can't understand the appeal. All I can say to them is, prepare to be savaged if someone manages to drag me back there again and insists I do a review.

Why then, when we have sites like Open Table and Yelp, just to mention the two on my iPhone, do we need a site for a restaurant reviewer with the avowed purpose of throwing softballs to his friends and butchering chains? Why indeed. I like Open Table, and I use it often. I like being able to review the restaurant where I just ate, although I find the character limit irksome. Yelp, on the other hand, seems to attract the kind of person who was "so happy" to have the opportunity to (literally) provide a "review" of every restaurant in town, most of which she admittedly had never been to, but just had to provide her observations nonetheless. (There is surely a special place in hell for this person.) Even on Open Table, though, I find reviews of places I really like (or really hate) by people who really hated (or really liked) their experience there.

I know, you're never going to agree with every review, no two people have the same tastes and everyone can have a bad night. But I'd like to be able to use restaurant reviews the way I use movie reviews. I've found a couple of particular writers who can provide thoughtful reviews, cogent descriptions, and a demonstrated knowledge of the history and art of film. It doesn't really matter if I agree with the review's assessment of its viewability. If I read such a reviewer on a regular basis, I can tell whether I am likely to enjoy the film being reviewed based on what he writes, and independently of whether he "liked" it.

That's my goal here: to provide information, intelligently presented, based in knowledge and experience. I have a few promises to make as well:

1. If I think I might be biased, I'll let you know. I actually can tell when my rants start to go south.
2. If I didn't like the food, but thought it was (authentic or prepared well for the style or somehow deserving more than just my opinion) I'll say that, too.
3. If I know someone else who can review it (better or more objectively or more readably) I'll ask them to write the review, or at least to edit my review.
4. I won't savage a chain restaurant "just because", and I won't set the bar any higher or lower than I would for a locally owned establishment.
5. If I have a bad experience at a restaurant, I'll tell the owner, chef or manager and give them the opportunity to correct it before I write the review.