If I had a nickel for everytime some asked me what my favourite restaurant/chef is, I would have a chef's toque full of change. But who am I to judge...in fact who is any one individual to judge the a restaurant, it's chef and staff. In our quest for the "Top Chefs" we will be examining the follow systems of awards. With each city we look at, we consider at least 15 different sources and quantify them. We examine National and International awards including James Beard Awards, Zagat Scores, World's 50 Best, Wine Spectator , Gault-Millau, CAA-AAA, Mobil Awards and Michelen. The ranking also includes consideration of local and regional recognition such as TripAdvisor.com, Where to Eat in Canada, Toronto Life, NY Mag, NY Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, Food and Wine, and other regional sources. Finally, there is also a scoring associated with individual favourable reviews by individual food critics. These vary widely depending on the region but we always consider the opinions of individuals in our rankings.
As for the dates and location you can look forward to seeing the following cities on the following dates:
- Montreal, Nov 5
- Toronto & Niagara, Nov 8
- Vancouver, Nov 12
- Paris, Nov 19
- London , Nov 23
- New York , Nov 26
- Los Angeles and Southern California , Dec 3
- Osaka, Shanghai or Tokyo , Dec 7
- Las Vegas , Dec 10
Stay tuned!
2 comments:
Interesting approach you have taken. It is inevitably subjective to come up with such lists but your method makes as much sense as any, and more than most. I am curious as to how you weight the respective awards. For example Michelin is a lot more demanding than some others, and you need to be careful to avoid any which have disguised charges to restaurants, which makes their subjectivity questionable. I can advise you a bit on the UK guides if that is useful.
See www.andyhayler.com for reviews of many of these places.
P.S. it is "Hardens" guide in the UK
Best of luck with the site.
Andy, great to hear from you. The score of a Tier 1 award such as Michelin (2 or more stars) or Zagat (Top 3 in any category) is weighted 5 times more over a review by an individual author or critic (no offense to your skilled trade I hope!) However, the rigor of Michelin, Gault-Millau or Zagat reviews are much more robust than you or I as individuals ever could be. I could not agree with you more, when you sagely advise to be wary of the advertisers under an awards guise. We were going to include DiRoNA ratings too but they have made some significant changes to the way they award restaurants including membership fees for award winners.
Please if at any point, you want to comment directly on our student blogs, please do so. On of the great things about Blogging is it has the potential to bring so much of the world and people into our class. Your expertise is most welcome and I appreciate your involvement.
Cheers!
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