12.12.2011

Rant and Review: Tasty Grill

While waiting for my flat tire to get repaired, I decided to eat at a local joint called "Tasty Grill," recommended to me by non other than my mechanic. I figure mechanics eat good food (as opposed to other professions?), so I took his advice. After eating at this only-slightly-above average restaurant, which was rated as a mind-boggling 4.5 stars on Yelp, it got me to thinking about these ratings.

As a true indication of the quality of a restaurant (AKA, one that synchs up with our own ratings, detailed in a previous post), I like to use Philadelphia's Yelp ratings. I think that's due to several factors: the size of the city (small), the quality of the chefs (amazing), the passion for the food (excessive), and the appropriate ratio of restaurants to people (not overwhelming, but lots of choices). That last aspect is probably one of the biggest factors affecting Yelp ratings in any city, as you can see that there is a relative deflation of Yelp ratings in places like Manhattan (higher restaurant:person ratio), whereas there is a marked inflation of scores in places like Long Island or Boston (lower restaurant:person ratio). Of course, better chefs will also flock to the city as opposed to the 'burbs. When you have competition between many chefs with celebrated resumes, the quality of the food will inevitably increase.

In any case, the moral of the story is that a high Yelp rating means nothing without context. And, Manhattan rules.

Now, on to the restaurant. Tasty Grill is a Greek diner with a clean look and friendly service. It's got outdoor seating, fresh food, and a small, but not limited, menu. This place was set up for at least a good score, and yet, there were just too many drawbacks for me to give this place a 4.0.

Let me preface this by saying that I've recently gone to Greece and experienced authentic Greek cuisine, so any Greek restaurant will be placed under the microscope. I wound up getting the beef gyro platter, which comes with a Greek salad, strips of beef gyro meat, and a side (I got sweet potato fries). The only thing that made the salad "Greek" was a large hunk of quality feta cheese and some olives. I'll give it the due praise of not being over-dressed. The entree came out FAST. Like, 30-seconds-into-my-salad fast. I found out why as soon as a took a bite of the thinly sliced, yet overdone gyro meat. I think they pre-sliced their orders and then proceeded to heat them up. Ugh, this was a disaster. I might as well have placed an order for shoe leather. I won't even begin to comment on a supposedly Greek diner having choices of "beef gyro" versus "pork gyro." The sweet potato fries were crispy, but who the hell cares? Sweet potato fries don't know what they want to be, and you can't even eat them with ketchup because it's just disgusting. I'm done with them.

Strips of Leather and Lack-of-identity Fries

Rating: 3.8/5 feta cheese blocks

12.03.2011

Insight Into Our Scoring System

People ask me all the time, "General, why are you so handsome? Also, please give me your recommendations for places to eat." Naturally, I point them in the direction of this website (or our twitter handle, @Battlefood). Sometimes, however, that's not enough. These same people come back with confused expressions on their faces wondering exactly what our rating scale means, and then they get physically aggressive for some reason.

So, I thought that now would be as good a time as any to clarify exactly how we score the restaurants we rate. In general, our scores tend to be higher (you'll notice that the large majority of the places we go to are 3.5 or higher) because we cherry pick our restaurants based off of extensive research on yelp.com. You might think this is unfair to the poorly-rated joints on yelp, and to that I'd say, "Well, yeah." No one wants to eat crappy food.

This is not to say that we haven't had our fair share of duds, and that just goes to show you that for the most part, we are always right, and other people are always wrong. So keep reading Battlefood.

As far as how we score restaurants, a lot of it has to do with gut feeling, and usually Napoleon and I are within 0.2 points of each other just based on the visceral reaction to the food placed in front of us. We do tend to overlook mediocre service if the food can overcome small flaws, but if a waiter or waitress goes beyond the call of duty and puts bodily fluids in our food, then the restaurant will be docked some points. We also don't hand out extra points for above average service, unless of course it is exceptional. Same goes with ambiance. The food is really what we're about, and many of the places we go to don't have the advantage of having amazing ambiance or service (such as food trucks), so it doesn't make sense for us to include that as part of our rating.

As far as the actual points, we have some benchmarks that we rely upon. For instance, in order to achieve a rating of 4+, a restaurant must be good enough that we feel we would go back to the location or recommend it to a friend. A 4.5+ is an exceptional restaurant that has several dishes that are amazing. And of course, a 5.0 is a perfect restaurant, one in which you can be confident that any item you order on the menu will be amazing, and at least one or two dishes on the menu are transcendent.

Obviously, ratings can and do change. For example, recently we downgraded Las Bugambilias (in Philly) to probably a 4.5+ restaurant from a 5.0 simply because one of their transcendent dishes, the churros, was taken off the menu. I do not know what prompted this, but I do know that after I found out I cried for three days straight.

As a final note, since we are trying to rate food on an absolute scale, we are comparing apples and oranges. That is to say, a dive bar like Prohibition Taproom can and will be compared to fancy schmancy institution like Le Bec Fin.

And with that, I'm going to go pass out. Happy eating!