Sushi Tetsu: No Place I'd Rather Be

Many things have to come together to make a meal truly memorable. Environment, attitude, company, perception, taste, timing, skill, even prior experience. Only a few of these are in the full control of a chef and the staff and even if the parts that can be, are, sometimes the smallest things that ruin a meal. Be it a diner talking that bit too crassly and inevitably loudly, a baby crying in a restaurant just not meant for babies, or where the service simply leaves you cold. Consultants go to great lengths, and charge far too much, to make restaurants as unoffensive to as wide an audience as possible. Slickly dressed servers, non-imaginative interior design, techno-ordering systems - too many places now fit into neat buckets that pre-describe the clientele before anyone has even walked inside. Funny then that every great restauranteur already knows the actual answer - genuine friendliness, passion and an unashamed lack of compromise is what makes great atmosphere. Sushi Tetsu knows this too.

Akami - Perfection

Jose Pizzaro: Spanish Simplicity

Spain has a long and inspiring culinary history, every province resonates with such a clear cultural identity, forged from a mixture of nature, politics history and the available ingredients. Cantabria with its amazing boquerones, Castilla y León and it's superlative Iberico pork and Valencia with its paella. There's a vibrancy and passion for food that matches both France and Italy, yet is given far less credit by the external food community. While Spain boasts some of the highest ranked restaurants in the world: El Cellar de Can Roca being named the best in 2013, Mugartiz (4th), Arzak (8th) and of course the previously imperious El Bulli; a Spaniard has never even ranked in the top 3 at the fabled Bocuse D'or and the country has only half as many three starred Michelin restaurants as those sausage-eating, sauerkraut-loving Germans.

Croquettas

Yauatcha: How Not to Treat A Customer

Food blogs are funny things. Ultimately it is just one person's snapshot view of a restaurant. What would bring you to read my views on a restaurant you may well never visit? I guess like all critics, as a s/he is read more and more, the reader compares it with their own experiences and they learn to trust the critic's opinion, or not. They may also come for the writing, or they may even come to satisfy their raging food-porn obsession if the blogger has spent a suitably grotesque amount of money on the latest SLR wonder box of tricks. Did you SEE the bokeh on those?!

Food critics for the New York Times have rules about the number of times they have to eat at a restaurant before they can review it. As to with the Michelin process. Too many times have I seen negative reviews because the kitchen sent a few bad plates out of the thousands that week. It may even have been the only bad plates to get through the pass all year. Nonetheless, bloggers often write up a scathing review and move on to the next terrified bastard holding everyone to Michelin levels. For things that are cheaper like burgers/street food, I will generally try to go several times before writing it up. I understand that everyone pays the same amount for each plate but if only 1% of the orders are duds then it is unfair to say the quality is poor if you’ve only been once and gotten unlucky.