Restaurant reviews

I love eat­ing: there’s noth­ing bet­ter than good food with good com­pany at a good res­taur­ant. But it’s always hard to decide where to go: do we pick an old favour­ite, or do we take a risk and go to a place we haven’t been to before?

Here is a list of res­taur­ant reviews by Daniel, Tommy and myself — to help take the guess­work out of your next res­taur­ant visit. The links in the table take you to our more detailed reviews.

Reviews by Daniel

Review date Res­taur­ant Loc­a­tion Over­all rating
08 Aug 2008 Din Tai Fung Sydney CBD 7/​10

Reviews by Enoch

Review date Res­taur­ant Loc­a­tion Over­all rating
17 Sep 2009 Bécasse Sydney CBD 8/​10
02 Sep 2009 Ju Ju Kings Cross 5/​10
21 Sep 2008 Great Cen­tury Restaurant Bank­stown 4/​10

Reviews by Tommy

Review date Res­taur­ant Loc­a­tion Over­all rating
16 Oct 2008 Sushi Tei Sydney CBD 7/​10
10 Aug 2008 Star City Garden Buffet Pyr­mont 6/​10
09 Aug 2008 Din Tai Fung Sydney CBD 7/​10

Review cri­teria

Although it’s hard to sum­mar­ise a res­taur­ant as a set of num­bers, we give scores at the end of our reviews. The fol­low­ing table is the bench­mark against which the res­taur­ants are graded; the descrip­tions for each of these scores reflect a desire to pre­vent mark infla­tion (so that 5 is “aver­age”) and a desire to achieve con­sist­ency amongst the three of us. Scores are given in incre­ments of 0.5.

Score Food Ser­vice Ambi­ence Value Over­all
0 Call the health authorities Impossible to get, extremely rude, incomprehensible Dirty, dank, third world conditions Nigerian scam­mers Will never return, recom­mend imme­di­ate closure
1
2 Will eat if noth­ing else to eat Needs sig­ni­fic­ant improvement Unap­peal­ing Unjus­ti­fi­ably expensive Return doubt­ful
3
4
5 Food court food Meets the basics com­pet­ently (table, order­ing, bill, etc) Plain, not noteworthy Reas­on­able price to pay Will return if con­veni­ent or need to fill stomach
6
7 Mem­or­able Goes out of their way to ensure enjoyment Taste­ful decor, com­ple­ment­ing the food Quite good value A favour­ite
8
9 Price insens­it­iv­ity kicks in Pampers you Fit for royalty An abso­lute bargain Approach­ing perfection
10