We call them ‘recommendations’ and not ‘reviews’ for a reason. We only write about restaurants we would want a friend to enjoy. Your recommendations should be truthfully positive. If you don’t like a place, just don’t write about it. Period.
We write about places we know well enough to know why we like them. You should be a familiar face at the restaurant you choose to recommend.
As regulars, we have insider tips and we share them. Tell us stuff only a regular would know: the must-order dishes, the prime times to go, the best seats in the house, the parking situation.
We go for highlights, not for blow-by-blow accounts of a single meal or the entire menu. There’s no way you’re going to fit everything about a place into a short recommendation, so go for key observations that evoke the whole establishment.
We’re food lovers with personalities, not dry journalists. Write as if you’re telling a fellow food-enthusiast friend about a place, not as if you’re a restaurant reviewer for a newspaper.
We go beyond the food to capture the entire restaurant experience. Tell us about the crowd, the ambiance, the service, the decor — the whole vibe that makes the restaurant what it is.