MaxH

For accurate information on food safety, rely on simple, abundant authoritative public-health guidance such as WHO Fact Sheet 270. Not on offhand food-forum advice, however well intended, which regularly garbles not just basic facts, but their interpretation and "context." For instance, you have easy complete control over whether to risk botulism (more so than with lightning strikes); following a few easy rules reduces risk to zero. Botulism poisoning's natural (i.e. untreated or not promptly treated) mortality rate runs around 40-50%, far higher than other foodborne diseases, which is why it's generally considered the most important type of food poisoning to prevent. Infant botulism infection is a completely different issue: infant immune systems can experience direct infection from C. bot.; but in this forum we're talking about infection of food, dangerous to all ages, not from the bacteria but the toxin they create. And if anyone becomes "paranoid" over this subject, they've missed the message -- the empowering value of knowing easy safe practices routine (by law) among commercial food preparers. Nutshell version of standard advisories: Refrigerate home-cooked (or fresh commercial) confits and consume within a few days, or freeze them. To assure safety (and also crisp up that duck, delicious served this way), heat through before serving (in an oven, for instance -- the heating also happens automatically in derived dishes like cassoulets). WHO fact sheet linked above gives reliable temperature-time combinations. The big problem isn't overcaution or people becoming "paranoid." It's idiotic published recipes omitting vital easy safety details. Clouding the simple picture with armchair advice really doesn't help.

Perspective is exactly my point, and I'll continue to offer it as long as people post either demonstrably dangerous misinformation (there's quite a history of that in online food sites including eG) or unintended meanings that they read into my words. I myself am an avid eater of confits and sous-vide dishes, longer than most in the US, and have never once characterized confits or low-oxygen cooking per se as Russian roulette -- a gratuitous misrepresentation above. The official information I cite, or try imperfectly to summarize, in these postings (all of which you can confirm for yourself) is limited, specific, non-controversial, and promotes peace of mind among cooks. Improperly prepared confits or anaerobic foods are certainly Russian roulette, according to public food-safety advisories not subject to opinion or wishful interpretation. You don't, indeed, need to worry about any of this as long as you follow safe practices; unsafe practices remain unsafe quite irrespective of opinion or rhetoric. When I was a child, botulism incidence was higher, and its mortality rate was about one in three. The mortality rate gradually improved with medical progress, and botulism's incidence fell precisely because of public information about safe cooking practices. Many home cooks actually embrace that information as valuable, not misinterpreting it as some kind of discouragement of confits or sous-vide.

It's interesting; I've looked but not participated in it. I'm wondering, though, what really is new here, and the question has some history behind it. The Q&A I saw on the new site looked like very typical food-forum questions. Answering questions, asking questions, etc as described above is a basic function of public online discussion fora such as eGullet. Fora of this type have existed continuously on the Internet since 1982 as I've mentioned before on eG (the oldest one still operates: the unmoderated public newsgroup rec.food.cooking, a type of forum that predates HTML tools). It's even argued sometimes that each new Q&A forum on a given topic splits and fragments public attention, causing more duplication of frequent topics that people could often answer for themselves by searching past discussions on an existing forum. eG itself, by its popularity and duration, has accumulated a certain body of information, and I'd rather steer curious people to such an existing data base than to a new forum where they'd re-invent the wheel.

I'm glad you find it useful, bmdaniel. However, one good way to've seen the same message earlier, rather than the terse summary of it that you apparently didn't like (publicly questioning its scientific basis, characterizing it as "fear-mongering," and addressing low-temp. botulinum cultivation as if that were a question of personal opinion) is to check the real science yourself as I continually urge, or at least fully read the linked threads which laid out the same details you find useful, making clear among other things that you can, actually, get botulism from refrigerated confits. I suppose that someone who doesn't do this homework might also perceive 2009's "NY Times Publishes Guide for Cultivating Botulism" eGullet thread as "fear-mongering." But the entrenched skepticisms that always greet this topic online, despite potential deadly hazards, may actually argue for erring on the side of a little "fear-mongering" for a change. It's deeply ironic, because usually when I'm involved in discussion of consumer-related science or technology that I happen to know something about, the situation is opposite: someone pulls some factoid out of context and goes around ignorantly (or with some agenda) claiming the sky is falling -- to eager ears. A current example is fashionable irrational fears over dangers from radio-frequency (RF) emissions from minor sources like wireless power meters (hot topic in San Francisco) among people too lazy to bother to learn that whatever biological effects RF signals cause, these particular sources are neither significant additions to their existing exposure, nor sensible targets if they want to reduce their exposure. (I wonder how many people ranting about that subject do so on hand-held cell phones, which for many people are the dominant source of RF power exposure by a factor circa 10,000.)

Me too, but since we can't, I summarized the available facts, above. (Which don't include second-guessing the lawyer's motivations or other details "not in evidence." I probably won't respond to further comments on such tangents.) Again: Diners received a letter from a lawyer (I've seen it) who already represented a group of former-employee plaintiffs. The facts I've given are striking, IMO, both for the atypical use of "service charge" and for this becoming an issue of contention only later.

Note that acetic acid (the acid in vinegars) is volatile, much like alcohol, and can cook out completely. ("White" vinegar is distilled vinegar.) Citric and tartaric acid (in fruit) and others are organic solids, and don't cook off in the same way. But cooking can easily drive off the subtle flavors that come with them, and accelerate reactions that may neutralize the acids. (I've handled all of these acids in pure form. The fruit acids are rather benign crystalline solids, looking like sugar, and they taste like the sourness of fruit. Acetic acid though is dangerous, and smells harsh, in concentrated form. I know how dangerous, because it was responsible for the only chemical burn I've had.)

Again, the lawyer I mentioned represented former servers. The 18% service charge was being added to dining bills in the same manner and appearance as the gratuities in the restaurants described in this thread.

Like the rabbit and nickrey above, I end up using lemon juice most often for this purpose (and, as with some other seasonal products, I freeze the juice of fresh ripe lemons and limes in season -- the lemons preferably from a local tree, which are numerous -- in little pucks of a couple tablespoons each). These juices freeze extremely well and are then instantly available. I don't see the finishing of dishes with a little acid as secret (maybe "forgotten" would describe it better) because I learned it from recipes in various popular cookbooks spanning many years. A modern example that uses lemon juice here and there to touch up (very effectively) creative pasta dishes (themselves unusual and interesting), even with cream, is the original 1984 Chez Panisse Pasta-Pizza-Calzone Cookbook (Waters, Curtan, Labro), ISBN 0394530942, reissued 1995 in paperback as ISBN 0679755365. (It's the classic cookbook from the casual café that spun off from Alice Waters's Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley -- the café is a separate business with much more casual format and different cooking methods, upstairs from the original restaurant.) Something I found counter-intuitive in such recipes, including in older cookbooks, is that they often do it with cream-sauced dishes. Seemed kind of counterintuitive because of the curdling issue, but it works perfectly to cut blandness from creamy sauces, and in moderation (without further cooking) doesn't curdle them.

PLEASE, before commenting skeptically here, read the associated threads (linked above) in entirety. Also, everything I or Lisa Shock mentioned comes from the current professional edition of the Merck Manual (standard physicians' reference book), CRC Handbook of Food Toxicology, or online US FDA and CDC advisories. you can confirm it yourself to the letter, and get more depth, if you're willing to do just a little work. Even though the details we've cited are widely published (and are even part of modern professional training for cooks), ignorance (or armchair expertise, rules of thumb, rationalizations, etc. etc. etc.) is so widespread that the NY Times unwittingly published a dangerous garlic confit recipe (first of the two linked threads), adding cautions later; many published recipes ignore the issue; and as already cited in the linked threads here, you'll find patently unsafe practices (which would bring down health department enforcement if discovered in US restaurants) on online cooking sites, including this one, including portions of the second linked thread. To repeat a few details: No source I've seen suggests forsaking confits or other anaerobically stored foods. As I keep repeating, standard published safe practice, also recommended by manufacturers of fresh (non-pressure-sterilized) confits, is to freeze them, or use them within a "few days," and/or raise the temperature throughout the preserved food to boiling (actually 80 C is the minimum) for a few minutes before serving. I've greatly enjoyed fresh confits served that way. C. botulinum spores, like others of the troublesome Claustridia, are ubiquitous. (They're especially common in soil, possibly explaining prominence of botulism sickenings from garlic and mushrooms, but can be found on any food.) C. bot. type E and non-proteolytic types B and F grow and produce toxin at temperatures down to 3.3°C (38°F) [FDA]. 38°F is the traditional nominal temperature of US home refrigerators (they vary up and down from that target). Some online recipes even describe storing confits under fat at room temperature for weeks or months, which could grow any of the C. bot. strains. Making and carelessly storing garlic confits, compared to meat confits, might be likened roughly to the difference between Russian Roulette with several vs. very many chambers in the gun; that difference is only quantitative, the game's the same. A metaphor for the usual skeptical comments about the botulism issue from uninformed home cooks is that some people playing Russian Roulette no doubt declare they've never been injured, and extrapolate from that experience that the game is safe.

Regarding botulism risks, appliance temperatures don't matter much. That's in the linked threads and is an attractive source of misconceptions. Water content tenaciously* limits localized temps. in or near cooking food to a maximum around 212 F or 100C. To reliably kill C. bot. spores requires the spores themselves experience a few minutes at 250F (that 250 is from memory; please rely on public guidelines at FDA, NIH, or WHO sites, very easy to find by Googling). In commercial preserved foods this is routine (and compulsory) via pressure cooking to raise the boiling point of water. Foods stored under fat after cooking account for some high-profile botulism cases, leading for example to the US restrictions against storing garlic under oil in restaurants. *Very tenaciously, due not just to the water itself needing to vaporize at 212 F, but also to water's large Lvap (latent heat of vaporization), which draws a lot of energy from surroundings as water transitions to vapor form, yielding a potent natural temperature regulation.

Sounds convenient, but be careful about botulism, an infrequent but deadly food-poisoning risk. Current popularization of confits often ignores this point, and many people also get confused because botulism develops in three phases. Spores, impossible to kill with common cooking methods if the food contains any moisture at all; anaerobic growth of Clostridium botulinum bacteria (which is inhibited by high acid or certain preservatives, but not the usual ingredients in modern confits), and toxin that the bacteria make; dangerous, leaves no reliable spoilage cues, but can be destroyed by brief cooking at boiling temp. The problem with confits is that cooking meat or vegetables under fat, then keeping the food at refrigerator or (even worse) room temperature, is a good way to cultivate the bacteria, and people sometimes then eat confits with little or no further cooking. These Threads from last year go into details. Be sure to read the entire threads because some information, including answers to misconceptions, occurs well into the threads. These are summaries of authoritative information you can look up in medical references or public-health Web sites. Tip: Do not risk your or others' lives based on armchair information or reassurances that many people offer about this subject.

In this case, I'm pretty certain local labor laws weren't the issue at all. The employees were properly compensated all along, I gather (just differently from typical restaurant terms here, where "tips" are a big part of pay). What stood out was (1) for 10 or 15 years this was evidently satisfactory to both sides, but diners assumed they were paying these charges directly to people serving them, as usual, and the restaurant and the servers let them think so. (2) Later, a private lawyer approached these diners, about developing that assumption into an after-the-fact claim against the employer, for some of those "service charge" proceeds. (As you likely know, US civil law customs differ markedly from the Canadian, including a larger volume of tort claims undertaken at comparatively low risk to plaintiffs, assisted by lawyers sometimes compensated contingently on success. That's a general comment, I don't know the plaintiffs' arrangement in this case.) An unusual situation all around.

As chejim pointed out, the approach to service billing varies by country. If you've spent time in Europe, you know about explicit "service charges" included (10, 12, 15%), often announced on the menu, and the custom of usually tipping a little beyond, more so for good service. The US custom is completely unfamiliar to many people, and it makes sense to allow for that in a business catering to visitors. But this discussion seems to assume that "18% tip included" goes to servers. What do you think about another wrinkle: A large metropolitan restaurant that happens to be organized as a private club -- basically a good restaurant with a membership fee, and facilities for business meetings, seminars, etc. -- customarily adds 18% service charge to dining bills, for years. Then word goes out (in letters from a lawyer representing former servers) that the "service charge" didn't go to servers, as most people might naturally assume, but to the business. Moreover, the employees evidently accepted that as part of their employment terms, until some of them decided to sue.

Expanding beyond the two I already gave in Post #2 above are more illustrations below (again, "Sandwich" has much improved -- I still wonder how anyone thoughtful could ever attribute the invention of sandwiches to recent centuries, implying that billions of people in previous millenia when bread was made somehow didn't think to put anything on it). Regarding fixing this, of course you have a point. (I don't know if you're aware I've spent much more time lighting candles on the 'net, for nearly 30 years -- foodrelated 1987, 1992 examples -- than cursing darkness, but as I wrote once, there's occasional benefit to doing that too.) What Old Foodie and I commiserated over, early in this thread, is the sheer size of the problem visible if you peruse Wiki food subjects that you actually know something about. Given how these problems systematically arise -- my focus here -- the question of whether to try incremental corrections has seen much private discussion. A little more illustration: (I've noticed one promising trend: more and more of these cases lately show "Question flags" at the top that raise editorial issues, like reliance on unsupported assertions.) Liqueur. Article presupposes a specific, probably most common or strict meaning of the term, but leaves me wishing author(s) had read more widely. Some years ago in its discussion pages, some author was resolute about defining liqueurs as sweetened. Presumably he was unaware of (therefore untroubled by clashing with) broader usage for many years in general food and drink and reference writing, which I'd fully illustrate, obviously, if addressing it on Wikipedia. Readers familiar with the broader usage already know what I mean. (Illustrates a Wikipedia syndrome I alluded to earlier: restrictively "defining" multifaceted words per author's sense of how they should be used, rather than be most helpful to readers.) Macaron ("The French macaron differs from macaroons in that it is filled with cream or butter like a sandwich") and Macaroon. Two overlapping articles that (1) badly need reconciliation, (2) are each separately internally inconsistent; (3) "Macaron" is also considerably misleading. (Opening entence I quoted is a typical Wikipedia characterization, again "defining" the term per authors' evident assumptions. The sentence may look either perfectly reasonable or misleading, depending how much you know about "macarons.") Similarly with Beignet. These examples illustrate parochialisms, and contradict widespread authoritative writing enough to leave many readers scratching their heads. On a positive note, the macaron/macaroon entries no longer mislead by centuries about the cookies' origin -- someone eventually checked common French-cooking reference books.

Yes, strictly speaking; extending my earlier stark metaphor, you can probably even find published quotations books that distort well-established classic lines. But you find vastly, overwhelmingly more such misinformation online. I wonder if you'd say that about the examples I've found. I happen to have in-depth documentation (many hundreds of books and articles) on many food and drink subjects, including very common, first-recourse reference books. On several food and drink topics, I've seen gross misinformation, eccentricity, or parochialism in Wikipedia entries, not because this was self-evident -- they often looked authoritative and well-researched -- but because I know the subject and have better sources. What I find obnoxious is when excuses of obscurity or ambiguity don't apply: where better information has long been in print in obvious places. Thus it's wrong for Wikipedia to carry misinformation on French cooking history that's easily corrected by a glance at Larousse Gastronomique, or the seemingly immortal misconception that the 4th Earl of Sandwich "invented" (not just gave his name to) sandwiches, when ancient antecedents are often cited in related writings. (The last topic, by the way, has vastly improved on Wiki since I first read it.) Parochial perspective is another problem. Wikipedia, like the Internet, is good at expressing its authors' perceptions, including perceptions from a narrow or fad angle, which then becomes Wikipedia's perspective -- but you only spot this if you already know the subject better, and don't need Wikipedia. I've considered editing several, including popular, entries but as discussed upthread, the task's magnitude -- even without the possible obstacle of misinformation's defenders -- is formidable.

This explains a lot about the part of the US population with trades in sciences, technology, medicine, etc. To say nothing of pharmacy. But people who cook are notoriously independent, I predict they'll keep buying cookbooks for merit of content, not type of measure. Some of the best, most insightful cookbooks I've read use all sorts of measures, and wouldn't interest current US publishers anyway. Fussing over whether or not a book uses weight is a little off the point. Like those expensive stainless-steel kitchens.* -------- * Marcella Hazan: "I am very skeptical of the dream kitchen -- not necessarily because of its elaborate equipment, but because of the spirit in which it has been assembled. It sometimes seems to reflect more of an interest in theater than in the taste of cooking ... Some of the best food I have ever had has come from kitchens so bare that to use the word 'equipment' to describe their facilities would be an overstatement." -- More Classic Italian Cooking, 1978. Knopf, ISBN 0394498550.

I'm with you on the merits of eggs, Sam, but could you please elaborate on the difference you alluded to above? I ask because I specifically do not see significant effects from resting or further hand-kneading the doughs beyond what I described above. In my experimentation (both recently and in past years) I've included those further steps diligently sometimes, noting the results, and what differences they caused were modest compared to other factors I find really noticeable -- variation of flours, and machine rolling vs purely hand-making the noodles. What's important about hand-cranked rollers massaging the dough before thinning it to final thickness is that their eighth-inch aperture and irresistible torque work the dough more forcefully than hand-kneading does. Since the dough blob is re-flattened each pass, it's easily re-folded into multiple layers each time, which after 5-6 passes raises the refolding factor to the 5th or 6th power, yielding effectively thousands of laminated layers, which re-merge as soft dough. This and the compression to final size -- constantly pressing and flattening the dough along the same dimension -- account for some of the supple texture (so different from the result of, for example, forcing the same dough through an aperture). Also, between the time making and handling the dough, and the hour or so I dry it for easy cutting, there's plenty of elapsed time for the flour to fully assimilate the liquids; that time increases only marginally if I add a deliberate resting step. It's easy to conjure theories about why further resting might help, but the only serious demonstration of it would be a blind tasting of otherwise identical dough batches processed in the different ways.

You can skip the food processor too, and not miss it, seriously. More about why, in a moment. Since starting this thread, I've made egg noodle dough often with various combinations of semolina flour, good bread flour, rice flour, and spelt flour. (Of these, the most dispensible is the bread flour, whose wheat resembles that in the semolina flour I use, it's just cheaper. "Semolina," or half-milled, is a milling fineness rather than a grain type -- I assume that's widely known -- but in US is customarily made of hard high-gluten wheat.) Each flour contributes its characteristics. The more rice flour, the more plastic and less elastic the dough is, the softer when cooked, and the easier to overcook. I.e., the more like wide rice noodles, or fun -- which are very familiar hereabouts, with our huge Pacific-Asian immigrant population (dried and fresh fun are widely available in markets). I too find one egg takes roughly 3/4 cup of flour, but it varies with the flour and the eggs, and I extend the eggs sometimes with water, to take more flour -- moving partially toward non-egg noodles. Like the Italian cookbooks I've read such as Marcella Hazan's, I don't add oil or other ingredients than those to regular pasta. Noodle dough is much easier to assemble than, for example, bread dough, because you don't have to get the mixture right at first. I lightly beat the eggs (and add any water), then add half or two-thirds of the expected flour. (Semolina is ideal in this step because the granules mix so easily.) Then I add more flour, stirring with a spoon or fork, until it's pulling away from the sides of the vessel. Dump the remaining flour on a surface (plate or waxed paper) and the uneven, still-sticky dough on top. Dredge dough in the flour a few times, folding, and within a few seconds the dough is dry enough to run through the wide-open rollers. It need not be uniform -- the repeated rolling and re-folding sees amply to that. Then I proceed like Janet above -- no resting, no major hand kneading. Once I start the 5-6 rolling passes (folding the tongue of dough each time to distribute the layers), if any stickiness shows, I just dredge in flour again before rolling. Thus the flour content naturally and exactly adapts to the liquid. Which is necessary anyway, when varying flour type, egg size, and of course additions such as water.

Good one! It's easy to list idiosyncratic, even weird, personal preferences that restaurant owners might conceivably impose, but what I find striking is that it really happens, as I'll illustrate. Normal, successful business wisdom is to serve your market, not yourself (as anyone would learn if they assembled a wine list, for instance, fitting their taste but not their clientele's). Contrast this small steakhouse chain in a pleasant corner of southern California (Coachella Valley, aka "Palm Springs Area"), which has a relatively high restaurant density, being a vacation and tourist region. (From a large file of restaurant notes): LG's Prime Steakhouse ... Bustling independent local steakhouse group (3 locations) onto which eponymous owner Leon Greenberg oddly imposes his unusual personal dislikes of (1) soups and (2) bar dining. For (2) you can conspire with friendly staff unless LG himself is present, but for (1) you're out of luck ... (Food-historical note: Soups were the original evening meal of Western civilization, source of French word "souper," English "supper.")

The former Connie's Cookbooks, Palo Alto. (a.k.a. "the cookbook lady" to general used-book sellers in the region.) Five-digit inventory, specialty was US cookbooks. (Obsolete listings of the business still surface, but Connie and her husband moved some years ago to a much smaller home, and liquidated the collection in bulk. At the time, I helped publicize the sale in a few places online.) It had been in a large house, and as Connie's children grew and moved out over the years, their rooms were commandeered. (The garage, naturally, held no vehicles but instead the "odds and ends:" many copies of full sets like the Time-Life series, and common used titles assigned by cooking schools to their students, referred to Connie as a source.) Connie had some pithy comments over the years, in published interviews. For example, about how very few if any recipes published today are actually new (she had a rare perspective on that, from the number of cookbooks she'd seen). She once fielded a request, for a grand food-world event, to find six copies of the Rombauers' true original Joy of Cooking -- the fundraiser family recipe collection based on canned foods. She had handled them before. Response: First, that will cost some three hundred thousand dollars at current market prices, if I can find six. Second, it's a ratty-looking amateurish book, carelessly bound, all the extant copies are falling apart, the content is embarrassing compared to later editions of the title -- in short it may not be the gift you had in mind for your distinguished guests. (Event organizers changed their plans.) In my experience reading/using interesting food books, once you go beyond the titles that everyone currently mentions (like Julia Child's or James Beard's), there are two basic issues: Knowing about the books, and getting them. The Internet has helped a lot with the getting, but only slightly with the knowing-about. These specialist book dealers were helpful for both.

Note how well the ideas discussed theoretically here two years ago (in the main sous-vide thread) panned out. First, rather than use expensive laboratory water baths, add available PID temperature controllers to cheap heating appliances. Soon these controllers were being marketed specifically for sous-vide users. Then, integrate the components to a complete product priced for home use. Now this thread. By the way, non-circulating precision water bath heaters marketed for lab use were already available in 2007 for $350 (cited in link in first quote above}. The bare-bones, $100 - $150 home SV unit that I proposed then might be impractical, because I assumed a consumer willing to dicker with servo controllers (like folks here). Whereas a mainstream consumer product needs more engineering for simplicity and safety, and maybe a cost component for insurance. (Info on most related equipment is in the original sous-vide thread, long tho it be, that my links here point to.)

Thank you for a moving and evocative tribute, Priscilla. My own experience is that the value of those booksellers hasn't shrunk much, though I'm thinking specifically of less-well-known books, and the "knowledgeable" part above. (Much of the useful, revealing, or cool information I see on food-related subjects even in recent years is not online, nor are the sources even mentioned online -- they're older books or print media, "out of print" but available, if you seek them out.) We were fortunate also in my region to have a large and old US cookbook collection, contents available for purchase (for 50 years or so -- by direct contact, not online; general used booksellers around the US referred people to it). Gone now, the owner retired (when we last spoke, she was in good health). Undoubtedly knew Marian Gore. Where I've noticed the Internet help so much with out-of-print books -- once you know what you're looking for, that is -- is that all the small sellers and collections pool via online clearing houses (abebooks, alibris, amazon marketplace, etc.). Ending the longtime ritual of having to place a cheap line advertisement in a book-trade weekly, and wait months to see if any seller spotted the ad and had the book -- often not. Now it takes seconds.

To be fair, the flip side: while language may convey much more information than a simple number, that's not exactly guaranteed. The late popular iconoclastic New York wine writer Alexis Bespaloff, who was most active in the 1960s and 70s, raised that point sharply. Quoting someone's review of a bottle from a certain region, written in long evocative prose about how much the writer enjoyed the wine, Bespaloff remarked wryly that it would have been more helpful to consumers had the writer included some description. Was the wine red or white, for starters.

I wonder if he'd like to comment in person, given that Russ is of course a participating member here (since 2002) with many posts (albeit the last I saw were two years back). Another data point FWIW: Advance review copy of the new cookbook Gourmet Today cited a pending $750k marketing and promotion campaign: Free subscriptions with book purchase; special advertising in specified 2009 and 2010 Gourmet issues; other national and trade mag advertising; e-marketing, targeting "bloggers and food sites" and "online chats with Ruth Reichl, widgets for family and 'Mom' sites;" further publicity throughout 2010 holiday periods. Reads strangely after the magazine's October closure, but apparently it was an ambitious project.

I'm with you in wanting all possible info, Hest88. Your wording though raises another issue. I'm wondering, seriously, what's more "objective" in a number or star rating, compared to words. It's quantitative, but that's different. I know for wine, when the new numerical "ratings" began catching on in 1980s US, many consumers who were already wine-knowledgeable more or less rolled their eyes and never took to the idea (I talk to many such people in the US today).* There's something fundamentally artificial about it. Analogy: How would you measure a person with a single number? You can objectively (i.e., outside of individual opinion) gauge height, age, weight, etc. None is even close to describing the whole person. Wines and restaurants may be less complex than people, but have the same issue. (The simplicity of numerical ratings did serve the hunger for easy wine guidance, and people who used them so would claim things about objectivity, but the objectivity was easy to disprove.) I could get along with a set of simple ratings for different aspects of restaurants (or wines) -- but that defeats the very simplicity, the sense of an expert making the call for you, that some consumers want. * One comment on then-new numerical wine ratings was by Gerald Asher, wine editor at Gourmet. I saved it at the time (syndicated newspaper column "Table Talk on Wine Comes Cheap," 21 Jan 1987): "But ... how else can I explain my ease in conjuring up the amusingly presumptuous taste of Thurber's 'naive little domestic Burgundy' when I can't catch even a ghostly whiff of the [1983 wine] authoritatively and precisely described in a wine newsletter a few weeks ago as '86.' "