He and She Said:
Over dinner at Mandina’s the weekend before last, we were verbally assaulted by received constructive criticism from two of our faithful readers over the shortcomings in our Big Restaurant List. In particular, they were incensed by what they felt was an egregiously low 2.5 star rating for the delightful Cake Café. They even threatened to out us to Cake’s ownership and render us persona non grata in the future. Needless to say, it was time to take action.
In fairness, an update of the list was long overdue, and it’s a legit argument that any rating system that compares Restaurant August and Cake Café using the same scale really says little of value about either of them. Most importantly, we couldn’t afford to piss off two readers. What needs to be understood is that with our market penetration, turning away two readers is the rough equivalent of Blackened Out having everyone Uptown, in the Garden District, the Warehouse District, and the French Quarter simultaneously throw their Macs. PCs, and smartphones out the window. Unacceptable.
So, if you click over to the 2010 Big Restaurant List page, you will find our new list, updated and re-categorized for 2010. We played with a few different ideas, and finally decided to sort restaurants into four broad categories:
- Fine Dining: Restaurants focused primarily or entirely on dinner and attempting ambitious/or high-end work in their genre
- Casual Dining: Lunch and/or dinner restaurants focused on more casual preparation including po-boy shops and neighborhood restaurants. This category is by far the largest, but we couldn’t figure out any further meaningful subdivision
- Breakfast: Restaurants specializing in or exclusively providing breakfast (duh)
- Small Plates: Kind of a catch all to encompass classic tapas restaurants like Vega and the whole breed of newbies like Bouligny and Oak that are popping up all over.
We ranked each place blindly and individually, providing a He Said and She Said rating for each, unless there was a reason one or both of us could not give a rating. Restaurants are ranked against other in their respective category, so Cake Café is measured against other breakfast places, as is appropriate. The scale:
5 Stars: Exceptionally superior and rare: the best examples in the category
4 Stars: Routinely outstanding and worth a special trip
3 Stars: Very solid and unlikely to disappoint
2 Stars: Hit or miss: spotty in service/and or quality relative to others in the category
1 Star: Uhhh, you might want to try Applebee’s
We tried to be pretty conservative in our rankings, being careful not to throw one or five star ratings at places we hadn’t been to many times. It is never fair to bury a place after a single visit. In general, we dine pretty broadly, trying to be sure to consistently be in different places, so we think this list represents a pretty good cross-section of dining in the city. We’re trying hard to get to some of the newbies around town, and we will update them as we go.
As would be expected, we gave five stars to very few restaurants. FYI, here they are:
He Said:
- Commander’s Palace: Fine Dining
- Lilette: Fine Dining
- Rio Mar: Fine Dining
- Stella!: Fine Dining
- Parkway Bakery: Casual Dining
- Lola: Casual Dining
- Refuel: Breakfast
She Said:
- Commander’s Palace: Fine Dining
- Lilette: Fine Dining
- Stella!: Fine Dining
- Parkway Bakery: Casual Dining
- Cake Cafe: Breakfast
