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!