Why most restaurant reviews are useless has nothing to do with people not knowing how to write. Most of them are useless because they’re not allowed to tell you the one thing you actually need to know: what really happens when the plate hits the table.

You don’t need another “charming little spot” with “inventive small plates” and “perfectly balanced cocktails”. You need someone to tell you if the place cooks like it means it, or if it’s just laundering vibes for investors and influencers.

Why most restaurant reviews are useless is simple: they keep telling you how a place looks and feels, but almost never why the food and the decisions behind it actually matter.

Who Is This Really For?

Before I write anything, I ask myself a simple question: who is this review for? If the answer is “the chef’s PR team” or “the hotel’s marketing director”, it’s already dead. Most reviews read like they were written to keep access: don’t offend the publicist, don’t scare the brand, make sure the comped meal invitation keeps coming.

I’ve been on the other side. I’ve seen the emails. “We’d love to host you for a tasting menu experience in exchange for some coverage on your platform.” Translation: come eat for free and then please say nice things that sound like they’re honest, but not too honest.

When I write, I write for one person: the reader paying the bill. Not the chef, not the owner, not the PR intern watching engagement stats instead of watching the pass. If you’re going to spend money and time in a dining room, you deserve more than influencer fluff and star ratings thrown around like confetti.

If you want the longer version of who I am and where I’ve cooked, you can read more on the About page.

Why Most Restaurant Reviews Are Useless (and What They Obsess Over)

Look at ten mainstream reviews and you’ll see the same checklist repeated like a bad mise en place:

  • Décor described like a real estate listing.
  • Lighting that’s always “warm” and “inviting”.
  • Service that’s “friendly” or “attentive”.
  • Cocktails that are “balanced” and “creative”.
  • Plates that are “beautifully presented”.

None of that is wrong. It’s just not the main thing. I don’t care how pretty your chairs are if your grill cook can’t season a steak. I don’t care if the server remembers my name if the kitchen dies every time a six-top sits down. I don’t care how many foraged flowers are on the plate if the sauce tastes like nothing.

This is why most restaurant reviews are useless: they get stuck on surface details and polite adjectives, and never get close to the decisions, pressures and habits that actually shape the food you end up eating.

Most reviews chase adjectives. I’m chasing behavior. How the room moves when a big table walks in. How the chef reacts when a ticket comes back. How the kitchen handles a mistake without melting down. That tells me more than a thousand words about “ambient light” ever will.

What Actually Matters to Me

I’ve cooked on lines that felt like war zones and eaten in rooms that looked like nothing on Instagram but tasted like everything on the plate. When I walk into a restaurant now, I’m paying attention to a few simple things:

  • The first bite. Not the welcome cocktail, not the amuse-bouche selfie. The first real bite of food that’s supposed to mean something. If that’s lazy, the rest usually is too.
  • The weakest dish. Anyone can baby the signature plate. Show me the side dish, the salad, the “safe” option. That’s where the truth hides.
  • The edges of the menu. The dish that makes no sense on paper, the one the chef clearly cares about, the thing that shouldn’t work but might. That’s where the risk lives.
  • The way the room breathes. A full house with a calm kitchen is a place that knows what it’s doing. A half-empty room with panic at the pass is a place waiting to crack.
  • How they handle mistakes. Everyone screws up. The difference is whether the team owns it, fixes it quietly, or pretends it never happened.

I’m not counting microgreens or memorizing plateware brands. I’m looking for intent and execution. Does this place know what it wants to be? And more importantly, does the food line up with that story, or is it just set dressing for a business plan?

I pay attention to the landscape — guides, awards, lists like the World’s 50 Best Restaurants — but I don’t confuse any of that with what’s actually on the plate on a Tuesday night.

If you want to understand why most restaurant reviews are useless, stand in a kitchen for a full service and watch what actually breaks, what actually holds, and what gets quietly fixed before it ever reaches the dining room. That’s the story almost nobody tells.

What I Don’t Owe You

I don’t owe any restaurant a happy ending. I don’t owe a chef a soft landing after a bad night. I don’t owe a hotel a glowing paragraph because they comped the room. What I owe is simple: honesty, context and respect for the person reading on the other side of the screen who’s about to put their own money on the line.

Respect doesn’t mean being cruel for sport. I’ve been the one sweating on the line when the fryer dies, the tickets won’t stop printing and someone just dropped a full tray of glassware. I know what it costs to run a service. That’s exactly why I take it seriously when a place charges serious money for food that doesn’t deliver.

If a restaurant is rough but alive, I’ll tell you that. If it’s polished but soulless, I’ll tell you that too. If it’s confused, scared, or clearly built to impress investors instead of guests, I’m not going to pretend otherwise because the lighting is nice.

I’ve read enough “serious” food coverage and enough lazy blurbs to know the difference between real food journalism and sponsored noise.

What You’ll Get From Me Instead

When you read a review from me, here’s what you can expect:

  • No star systems, no scorecards. Real life doesn’t happen in neat little numbers.
  • Context. How this plac