I Know It's Not Right, But I’ll Be Cheating.

Before I indulge myself in food, and enter unknown territories that actually serve edible things, I admit that I am somewhat scared and hesitant about this whole restaurant-reviewing thing. First off, I have never ever done this. I have never in my life thought about writing what my experience is about a certain place I ate at, especially their food. Before, whenever I ate out, it’s just because of the fact that I was hungry and wanted my fill, hoping that what I would order would be delicious. If it were like an orgasmic feeling in my mouth (Warning: Even if it’s not really an appropriate adjective, I still like describing things as orgasmic so, you might encounter that in my blog a couple of times.), I would most probably crave for it and then come back another time to have the same thing. On the other hand, if I did not like the food, I would just not go back to that place ever and remember not to get the same dish again.

It would be different for me in the following weeks though. Every time I would go in a restaurant, there would be another more important purpose. It would not only be to have my fill, but also to see if the place is as great for me as it would be great for other people. This time around, I have to look in at the details, absorb the things happening around me in the restaurant, take in the taste of the food fully. Now that I think about it, it’s like working while having my meal for lunch or dinner. I picked this topic because I thought that it would just be a breeze talking about food and what not. I guess it was a wrong move on my part. Ha. We’ll see. Maybe it would not be as hard. I’m crossing my fingers.

Since I am a novice on matters of reviewing restaurants, I knew I needed help. I was pretty sure I could not be able to do this alone. So, I called a friend. Her name is Dianne Jacob. Okay, fine. She’s not really my friend, and I didn’t really call her. I had her sent to my apartment though. She’s the author of Will Write for Food. In this book, one chapter is what she calls the Secrets of Restaurant Reviewing. I figured that if I had this cheat sheet, well, there are a lot of pages so I guess I have to make it plural and call them cheat sheet(s), I would have a guide and maybe I’ll get this whole thing right.

I guess you could say that I will be doing restaurant reviews with Dianne Jacob’s Will Write for Food book as the basis. So, not only would I be writing my criticisms about a place I ate at and their food, I will also be writing my thoughts about the book/cheat sheet/guide/whatever-you-want-to-call-it in most of the blogs I will post. Let me actually start with the introduction part of Chapter 5. Being a restaurant reviewer is one of the greatest jobs one can ever have since they get to go to all these places, and eat the best food in town. However, these people also encounter what the author describes as mediocre or bad food, and might think that that place was just a waste of their time. I agree that people may see the work of a restaurant reviewer as having pros and cons because my experience as a normal consumer of food confirms it. Never have I ever gone out to eat and went home extremely satisfied every single time. There were times that I still had the bad after-taste of a dish or get annoyed at the service of a place. I just couldn’t imagine how people could make a living out of it. True, they do have the time of their life by getting paid for it. However, you still have to think about the fact that they do go through some bad restaurants and actually have to tell write their criticisms about them, no matter how negative their experience may be.

By the way, I might use DJ in short for Dianne Jacob. We’re not really close, but I’ll be mentioning her a lot in this blog so I chose to give her a pet name to spice things up a bit. (Ms. Dianne Jacob, if you’re reading this blog, which I doubt you are, I hope you wouldn’t mind!)

So, you think restaurant reviewing is easy? Think again. I’ll be using a cheat sheet.