If you are looking to find out about a particular restaurant, what would you want the restaurant reviewer to focus on?

I like a very brief description of the atmosphere, just so I know the general feel of the place (am I dressing up? Kids running around? etc.). Mostly for me it’s about the food though. The review should absolutely focus on the flavors of the food. Does it taste fresh? are they using locally sourced ingredients? do things taste like they’re from a can? how’s the sweetness, tartness, bitterness, saltines, heat, acidity, etc. Are there unusual pairings of ingredients that surprisingly work well together?

I want to know how the food is, the service, the ambiance, and how the overall experience was.

How was the service
Quality of the menu and types of food offered
Taste
Presentation
Price range
Ambiance
Convenience of parking (traveling in an RV makes that one important )

First and foremost, the food. If the food sucks, there is no redemption for a restaurant.
Good service is the next most important variable.
Then ambiance.
Then location.

I want information on:

the ambiance (is the restaurant noisy?)
the quality and variety of the food (preferably a menu)
the quality of the service
oddities like is there a place to park or not?

The highlights, the low points and then just a brief general description.

What’s important to you may not matter to me, and vice versa.

As an example, I have friends that think Texas Roadhouse is the best thing going (as do a lot of people, it seems). I hated the carnival-like atmosphere and it was so loud and frenetic that the only way I would eat there again is take-out. All I remember is that it was loud, the staff sang and line-danced over the music and that the prices were high.

So it you started a restaurant review with “Very fun, family-friendly restaurant with high-energy staff and atmosphere!” That would be a re-flag to me. I want you to have a pleasant memory of the food, the staff, and the pricing, in that order. If something seems particularly poor, I appreciate it if you take the time to ask if that’s SOP. Like the wait staff, or time it took to get your food – there might have been a couple of call-ins.

Before going to a restaurant (or hotel), the basic information is looked up on the establishment’s site first. With restaurants, they almost always post directions, hours, and their menu with prices. After checking all of that, I turn to Trip Advisor for ratings, photos and reviews. It’s the latter that paint the real overall picture.

I like to read about the food, the service, the ambiance, and any pros/cons.
* Food: What did you have? What did you think of it? Locally sourced? Vegetarian items?
* Service: How was it? How was the pace? Were the servers knowledgeable? Do they try to upsell?
* Ambiance: What’s the decor like? Music or entertainment? Theme? Who do they cater to?
* Pros/Cons (or anything out of the ordinary): Do they automatically add on a service charge for everyone? Do they charge for water? Do they serve alcohol? Are there dogs running around loose? (This was happening at the top-rated restaurant in Tel Aviv.)

One final factor to a great review is whether the diner would return and if they would recommend it.

First and foremost the food. I especially like to know if the food was overly fatty or greasy.

If a particular dish was delicious I like knowing that.

Frame of reference about the food if it applies. Like if it is NY style pizza and the reviewer is from NY that matters to me.

A service mention if the service is slow.

Cleanliness of the restaurant.

An idea of the ambience. Is it a little local family owned place? Fancy and very formal?

Also, I want to know if it is very loud.

Thanks everybody for answering. So far, I think I’ve been giving the right information, but some things I hadn’t thought about were the parking, or whether any of the food was overly fatty or greasy like @JLeslie said and the frame of reference, however I’m not sure if that means that I should never review a New York pizza since I’m not from New York. I think my opinion on that subject still matters, because we do have authentic New York pizza out here, and I like, no love, pizza, so I think I’m a good judge of what tastes good, whether or not I’m from a particular place. If that were a criteria, then I’d only be able to judge fish tacos and not beignets or sopapillas. Oh, and I never thought about the noise level, only because I’ve not been in a place, so far, knock on wood, that had a noise problem, but I shall think about that from this point forth.

All of the above and whether there’s anything unique about the restaurant. Does where it’s situated have any special attractions. Is it overlooking the ocean, close to a concert hall? Do they have a speciality dish you’ve tried and liked (or not). Does anything other than the usual elements stand out and make this restaurant worth visiting or better to stay away from? Is it noisy? What sort of crowd does it attract? I went to a German restaurant (which I forgot to write a review for!) a few weeks ago. The food was okay and the location was great but it attracts teh after-work crowd with lots of noisy young people and you could hardly hear yourself think. It was quite off-putting despite having many other positives.

I tried to add to my previous post but editing is ‘forbidden’ to try to add a tip to improve the reader’s experience. So, ‘ask for a table on the left side of the restaurant to capture the beautiful view’, or ‘ask for a table away from the door because there’s quite a bad draught’. I always appreciate ‘insider’ tips that help me to improve my experience.

The most important part of the meal is the person I am with. Therefore, my requirements are a little different from those above..

First, I want to know how crowded it is and whether I must wait before being seated.
I don’t care if the restaurant has a beautiful view or has delicious food or is giving the food away. If I have to wait more than 10 minutes before being seated, they are not getting my business. It take it as a sign they are over-crowded. That implies crowding, potentially slow service and the feeling of being rushed.

Second, I want to know if there are TV monitors everywhere. I am a male Homo sapiens and still retain some of the behavioral traits passed down from my evolutionary ancestors. That means I must look if I detect some motion in my peripheral vision or see something shiny, or flickering. Try as I might, if there is a TV within view it distracts me from the person I’m with. And I consider that rude. If a restaurant has monitors visible from every seat, I will not go there.

Third is seat crowding and table size. A restaurant with small, round tables and chairs right up against other customers will not get my business. I prefer my conversations private and some space between other customers.

I prefer a booth at an uncrowded family restaurant rather than a trendy, fancy place with a 15 minute wait or a sports bar with large screens and lottery gaming every 3 minutes.

Of course if the person I am with prefers a certain venue I will gladly defer without comment. The most important part of the meal is the person I am with.

Again, thanks to all of you. I’m gaining some great insight into some things that I never would have thought about.

You can still review the pizza even if you’re not from NY. My only point about that is if you are very familiar with a particular chine and it applies, go ahead and mention it, it just emphasizes being familiar with the authenticity.

Funny enough, it’s no guarantee. The local Mexican place we used to go to in TN had the real deal. My husband and I used to crack up at the little signs the owner put up saying things like, “all you people from states like TX, AZ, and CA I don’t care if you think you know what should be on a taco I won’t add cheese to yours”. Something like that. Basically, he drew the line at some of the Americanized preparations for Mexican food. Still, I would go ahead and say someone from CA is more familiar with what Mexican food should really taste like than someone from WV, but you never know. I have had really good Japanese food in Dothan, AL, and my favorite Italian place on this side of the Atlantic is in Delray Beach, FL.

Now you can get good food almost everywhere. It wasn’t like that when I was a kid. In the last 40 years more people have moved south and everywhere, and it shows up in the food available.

I slept on my answer last night and would like to add to it a little. I tried to put some numbers on the restaurant dining experience for me.
70% is the company. You can have the best food, the nicest setting, the best service but if the company is bad the experience is bad.
10% is the setting.
10% is the service
10% is the food.

The food can be total crap and unpalatable, but if the person I’m with is nice and likes it and the service is good and the place isn’t crowded, I’d rate that restaurant experience at 90%.

And if there’s sex later in the evening, the score goes up to 99.8%!

@LuckyGuy I guess that would be a really good dessert. Laughs.

I don’t think a restaurant reviewer can really recommend the person you went to dinner with though @LuckyGuy. Your experience might be fabulous because you were with that person but the food, setting, price and service were crap but the next person visiting the restaurant won’t have your dining partner.

I want to add that I very much agree with @LuckyGuy when meeting with friends I care most about the company I am with and also I don’t want the environment to be very distracting. Although, I do live a nice view, but not necessary.

However, if I eat out with my husband near where we live, whom I see every day and we can cook a nice meal at home, the desire for the food in the restaurant to be yummy becomes much more important.

@Earthbound_Misfit I agree that other reviewers can’t rate my dinner partner easily. I consider that my responsibility. ;-)

Food and service are obvious factors. I look to reviewers for the other factors that are important to me, for example.
How crowded is it? Is there a wait time? Are there TV monitors? Volume of the music?

I’m still sticking with my rating system values. Even if every one of the factors above was terrible, I could still have a good time and consider the experience quite positive if I’m with the right person. I might never go back to that restaurant but the evening would not be a bust. (It might even end up being 99.8%.)

My every fucking whim

My next review: If you want to eat good Italian/Mexican/Japanese food, do not go to Mr.Guiseppe/Juarez/Ito’s Pizza/Taco/Sushi Shack unless you bring along @LuckyGuy‘s date. I hear she makes the food taste divine, and she’ll take you to heaven and back ~

I agree with @LuckyGuy about the company, the ambiance and other factors besides food. I am thinking of reviews I have written on Trip Advisor and how once place was new and trendy and had good food but the seats were lined up in a row where you could easily hear and watch the people sitting at the next tables.

A few weeks ago I went to a restaurant with two friends and although the food was “meh,” there were TV screens over the nearby bar and I mentioned that in my review, how I guess that’s what brings guys to the bar but it didn’t help the atmosphere of the restaurant. Also, at that restaurant, I was with two lady friends and one was angry and argumentative, which ruined the meal for me (I’ve posted on here about her recently). Of course, the angry and argumentative friend detail did not make it to the review, but it stuck in my mind as a night ruiner.

I’m not into waiting, either but if I am with someone who really wants to go there, or there’s not much else around and so we’re kind of at the mercy of the wait, then I’ll tolerate it and make the best of it.

I’m not into crowds and noise and packed places. I hate bright lights unless it’s a diner. I hate when the table feels greasy or the sides feel sticky, even if just a little spot, and I’ll ask to have the waiter give it another wipe. I work in a city that has a ton of restaurants, but I don’t want to go to most of them because they have the “Friday night drinking crowd” which is not what I’m into, and with the drinking crowd it’s hard to hear yourself think, let alone talk.

Of course I like the food (quality and price) and the service (and will mentioned a special server by name if it was exceptional). Just mentioning here the extra stuff that’s important to me as a customer.

I want to know what the food of every person at your table tasted like.

HA! I just wrote you a mooch ticket. Now, when you dine out, you can say “This is a little embarrassing, but I plan on writing a review of this restaurant, and they want to know what every dish served tasted like. Not just my own. Seems they want more than a single sample. Would you be so kind? You can take ¾ of your dinner home.

I think I need to start writing more restaurant reviews, actually.

@ibstubro Ha ha ha. Everyone I know, already knows that I write reviews, so they expect me to taste their food. Because I’m a vegetarian, I often have to ask my companions lots of questions about what they ate, so I can write about it.

I wish other people would allow me to taste their food. I bought roasted, peeled chestnuts today, and they were CRAP.

@ibstubro I only have one friend, or rather it’s my best friend’s boyfriend, who won’t let me, his own girlfriend, or anyone else taste or touch his food (he won’t even spoon some of it out into a separate bowl). He’s a big pain in the arse. We all went to a “family-style” Chinese restaurant once, you can imagine how that went. He ordered something and demanded to eat all of “his dish” by himself and wouldn’t let anyone have any of it, even though we’d all ordered stuff specifically to complement the other dishes. This is the same guy who pitched a fit in an Ethiopian restaurant and demanded utensils. Ethiopian food is eaten without utensils. It is picked up with the Ethiopian bread called Injera

Otherwise, everybody is always more than happy to give me a small spoonful of whatever they’re eating. Our family, and my friends, are all food sharers.