A while ago, one of my friends recommended a Zagat Survey pocket book to me after she found out that I like to explore the restaurants and good food in LA. In general, it gave me an idea of the restaurants through its ratings, but I found after a while of using it that it isnt entirely reliable, at least to my tastes. In the case of Japanese restaurants, Zagat rated Sushi Nozawa as the best in LA which I think is absolutely unacceptable. Urasawa, as I posted before, is the best, but Zagat dont even have ratings for it. The second best that I have had is a small place on Sawtelle in Santa Monica. These places, including a lot more, are not rated in the booklet. Another example of food that Zagat misrepresents is Thai food (I would know about this since I was born and raised in Thailand). The booklet ranked the commercialized Thai restaurants that dont even serve authentic Thai food as their top Thai restaurants while the authentic and good ones in Thai town are being ignored and left out of the list.
Although Zagat gives you a general guide of what a restaurant might be like and helped me discover many good restaurants, I found that I cant rely on it entirely to find good places to eat. Even though it is pretty inaccurate in its rankings on Asian food, their tastes on Western food are still reliable to a certain extent.
1 comment:
perhaps the problem with zagat is that it is too similar to wikipedia in spirit. its based on surveys - so the majority tends to "win." might make an interesting post - would you rather rely on zagat or michelin (which isnt in LA yet) but based on an editorial staff rather than customers at large.
but don't leave us hanging - what's your favorite thai? I tend to stick to ruen pair now that its reopened but please tell me if I should be checking new places out!
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