Food & Restaurants Tier List
I will keep visiting creepy places, pay them and pretend I liked it, because my friends like them and I need my friends. Hell, I will even bring my friends to the bad places to make our collective mood better, to get some sugar, calories, warmth and for the experience just because it will be the only realistic option in a given moment. But I hope I can leave this post online, so that IF, and ONLY IF they ask how I liked a place, I can point to it, which will prove that I loved the time together, BUT my criteria are such and such.
I disagree with most restaurant bloggers & most Google reviews & the pricing model.
I also really dislike the idea of giving stars, points to venues; I don't like quantifiable review process of stuff in general, it gives some weird power dynamics. You can maybe do it with algebra test, but not with soft stuff... Yet here we are, at least I will try to do it in general instead of offending some real people.
So, to me there are 3 tiers of restaurants. First, venues that cook actual food.
So these things should have macro (protein, carbs, fat, fiber) % somewhat similar to what dieticians recommend. Not too much stuff should be fried. The ingredients are fresh. Simplicity is OK, but skill and serving something I couldn't do at home, or something rare is also cool. Good vegetarian options are highly appreciated. These places can get from 1 to 10 stars in my book.
Than there comes second tier: fast food, and the third tier: edible food-like products, that don't belong in stomachs of humans.
These places are usually capped at 6/10. If they execute extremely well, maybe they can get 7/10. But make no mistake. I love pizza, pastas, tortellini, tapas, cheese, but this is the stuff you can buy in supermarket, or farmers market. Even if you make them super fresh, they are designed to last, to be quick and I can get this stuff at home easily. So even if you give me perfect pasta, the macros are usually bad, the pasta is a fast food in general. Ok, maybe if you do some magic with ingredients, put cottage cheese in your pizza dough, use quinoa instead of rice etc you can make an instance of real, cooked food from a fast food but I rarely ever (never?) see it. So it doesn't matter if your plate, and vibes, and smell, and texture, and music is great - you are a fancy fast food cosplaying a restaurant.
And if you put shit lot of oil into sauces, and it was all glamours, but my stomach aches next day and it was extrmeally unhealthy, you are Lay's Chips & Snickers Tier, while charging like an actual restaurant, 3/10 is the LIMIT of what you can get from me if everything else is great (and it rarely is).
So let's be clear: the coolest French Fries place in the world is probably 2/10 in my list. They should actually pay me some reparations for eating their poison, not the other way around, if the world made any sense. If they make fresh baked potatoes, with skyr-based garnish on top, and great fresh guacamole - they potentially could be 7/10 though.
You don't get to be judged for taste, texture, vibes, aroma, unless you serve real food.
Footnotes: The places that just serve you raw ingredients are a category of it's own. They essentially give you a table, chairs, vibe, and have done super-market shopping and food choice for you. I guess they could be up to 8/10 if they would choose perfectly and don't charge as though they have actual cooked you a diner?
Also, if you don't have hot water in your toilets it means everybody either have dirty hands while eating and cooking (if it's winter and you also failed to provide paper towels or good enough hand dryer) or they have half-ass cleaned hands (as cold water doesn't remove that much dirt). It's beyond me how it's possible, that most fine-dining venues in my hometown fail to deliver hot water in their taps and don't go bankrupt or closed by Sanitary Services (Sanepid), instead they will get 20 people long queues at -15 degrees outside and raise their prices every 6 months. And I consider it unethical to not accept reservations on winter weekends while not providing indoor waiting space for the guests. I mean, people already invested into driving to your venue with their friends, so they will wait. And you get points of 'large queue outdoor = we are great and desired!'. Disgusting behavior.
