The Internet, as a tool, is immensely popular amongst food critics due to the freedom it offers. Whether you are someone
who runs a restaurant or loves to talk about food, there are plenty of avenues that require little money to get you underway. Historically, television and print media have always had a major influence on the food industry, through reviews. However, the Internet is changing that trend and has taken over the top spot in this department.
Most food critics aren’t cooks or chefs themselves. Their understanding of food comes from the taste, the textures and the knowledge of ingredients and cooking technique. That is something that anyone, through practice, can acquire over time. As a result, a number of people are heading to the Internet with their own food reviews, hoping to get noticed by bigger media houses or simply to share their experiences.
So what does it take to write a good food review? Let’s find out!
Get a Place
Before you can start writing your reviews, you need to decide on a location where others will be able to see your opinion. That location can be a website on your own hosting space or simply a blog on an existing blogging website. Many think that having a blog amongst thousands of others may not be the best place to start off. However, many US and UK WordPress Experts state that it’s not about where you are based out of, it’s what you do there that matters!
Restaurant Details
When you go into a restaurant and eat, there are things that you need to know about it. When it was established, what kind of food they serve, when they are open, and what their house-speciality is, are just some of the details that you need to know. What these details do is give you a story that acts as a launch pad for the rest of your review.
Address Both Sides
You may have had a bad dining experience at the restaurant but, surely, there must have been something that the restaurant must have done right. Sometimes, a user may pay more attention one part of their dining experience to another. You need to make sure that you cover every part, with an absolutely unbiased and neutral point of view. The moment you let your own preferences creep in, you start becoming bigger than the review and that’s where it all goes wrong.
Name Dishes
When you are going to a restaurant to eat, you need to remember what you have eaten. When you really like something and put it there by its name, you will find that people really enjoy that. When you print exactly what you ordered in the restaurant, you give some basis to your opinion. How many times have you heard of people going to the exact same place, ordering something else and having a completely different opinion than you? That kind of writing loses you reputation points.
Food isn’t Everything
When it comes to a restaurant, food is just a part of what you experience. The atmosphere, décor, service, cleanliness, dinnerware, tables, chairs, entrance, etc. are things that add more to that food experience. If you just end up writing about the food and not mentioning anything else, then you aren’t really telling your reader anything! You need to be as aware of all these aspects of the restaurant, as you are about the food.
The worst thing anyone can do about something as beautiful and exciting, as food, is to make it dull and boring. Whether things are nice or dull, you need to make sure that the reader feels the exact same way, as you did, when they read your review. The goal of your review is not to state your personal opinion, but to state a professional opinion as a food critic who visited a particular restaurant – the difference is massive.
ROGER MATHEW BERN – author : Food and Roger are inseparable! The first time that Roger fell in love with food is when he was invited to the Pear Tree Inn, to be part of a programme on British television. Tasting the food of one of the world’s best chefs and the youngest three-Michelin star winner, Marco Pierre White, Roger fell in love with food. Numerous stints at restaurants later, he realised that cooking wasn’t his line, but writing about it could be. His consultation with numerous UK WordPress experts led to the creation of a blog, which has since shut down due to the lack of time thanks to his print review jobs.
