I really have a bone to pick with GraceAnn Walden, who writes the Inside Scoop for the San Francisco Chronicle. In this week’s column she writes about how Zagat’s ratings may be compromised by online voting. Her evidence for it? The results. She just cannot understand how a restaurant such as Zuni’s Cafe or Masa’s, who are given top ranking for food, are not in the top 10 for popularity and how Zachary’s Pizza is. I don’t read her column often enough to know if she’s just a food snob, a pizza hater or one of those few people in the world who do not like Zachary’s (yes, they exist, there are even a couple of those among my friends), but she only had to talk to a few of Zachary’s fans to understand the “mystery”.
Yes, Masa’s and Zuni’s have great food (well, I haven’t been to Zuni’s, but I’ve cooked from its cookbook and the food was great) but so does Zachary’s. And while you may go to Masa’s once in a blue moon, you can visit Zachary’s much more often. Indeed, while I don’t often think of Zachary’s as my favorite restaurant – I can honestly say that I can’t think of a restaurant that I would miss more if it was to close than Zachary’s.
I know I’m not alone on this. People keep voting Zachary’s as their favorite pizza joint year after year. Their pizza is unlike any other, the stuffed pizza is more like a cheese pie than any other pizza I’ve ever eaten, and for devotees, like us, there is nothing better. Indeed, I’m amazed that Zachary’s hasn’t made it higher in the popularity list – I can only imagine this is because many of those surveyed are people from other parts of the Bay Area who haven’t had the pleasure of trying it.
A larger issue with the article is the whole attitude that Zagat’s guide somehow isn’t good enough because it rests on people’s impressions of a restaurant rather than critic’s opinions. The arguments made are, in themselves, valid. There is the possibility for ballot stuffing, you can create different accounts and rate a restaurant you haven’t gone to or as a restauranteur you can ask your customers to go and vote for you. But neither is very convincing. While it’s possibly to change the vote, why would anyone bother? The potential for backlash is unlikely to be worth it for a restauranteur, specially the ones that are so succesful as to get to the top of the list. Indeed, the largest evidence that this is not happening is that the top-10 restaurants that she mentions are indeed very popular restaurants, which receive great write ups not just on Zagat but at other restaurant review websites and at discussion fora in general. At least that’s the case for Bay Area restaurants. Obviously Ms. Walden doesn’t think the opinion of anyone but herself matters, and she didn’t bother to check what people are saying about these places.
Her attitude is more clearly conveyed in parragraphs such as the following:
“When a two- star restaurant that is “good” beats out places rated by professional critics as “excellent” or “extraordinary,” you can hear restaurateurs scream from coast to coast.”
But who decides what a two-star restaurant is? Michael Bauer? Why must he and other critics be the sole arbiters of what’s good? In my own ratings I gave Zachary’s an Excellent and Masa’s (under prior management) a Very Good. Why? Because you have to rate a restaurant against itself (what it wants to accomplish) and others of the kind. There is no better pizza in the bay area than Zachary’s. There are better restaurants than Masa’s (the French Laundry being the clear case).
Her contempt for the dining public is most apparent when she says “If the Zagat results are truly vox populi, then perhaps in the future, the top restaurants on Zagat’s popularity list will be McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s.” It’s not that she’s necessarily wrong, if you look at the ratings in dine.com, a non-foodie oriented restaurant review website, you’ll find that in some communities the top-spots in the ratings are achieved by fast-food joints. Indeed, in San Leandro Nation’s, the burger chain which I’ve rated as Very Good, has achieved top honors. But Ms. Walden fails to understand that this merely reflects the quality of other restaurants in the area and, as I mentioned, the fact that restaurants must be judged vis a vis their peers and themselves. As burgers go, Nation’s are great, in San Leandro there is no better place for burgers. And it’s cheap, which makes it much easier to forgive its faults. Horatio’s, the steakhouse which got the second highest honors, is also quite good – but given its prices you can fairly expect better. This issue of value has probably never occurred to Ms. Walden as she doesn’t pay for her own meals – and apparently doesn’t talk to anyone who does – but it’s certainly in the mind of all of us who need to decide where to spend our dining dollars.
All this said, I neither like nor use Zagat’s. For one, it’s a paid website and I don’t feel any need to pay for information I can find for free elsewhere, and for two, I’m much less interested in ratings than in actual reviews and Zagat’s reviews are always too brief to be of much value. There are many better review websites out there. You can find links to many of these here.
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