Guidelines for Writing a Restaurant Review

Thanks to the review websites which provide critique for just about anything one can think of. restaurants make the lucrative and biggest sector of review websites. These websites not only allow you to share your personal eatery experiences with online users but also act as a source of monetary gain. Moreover, diners trust the opinions of peers and like minded customers more than the advertising campaigns. 

What You Need to Write a Good and Effective Restaurant Review?

Please note that it is highly unethical to write restaurant reviews based on forged or assumed information. The pre requisites for writing a restaurant reviews are as under:

• You must dine in at the chosen restaurant at least twice to be able to create a genuine opinion about it.
• Each time you eat at the restaurant, make sure you try different items from the menu to get a good idea about the food quality and chef’s expertise.
• Keep your sense of observation on the ball. Carefully notice the decor, furniture, theme, seating arrangement, and lighting, status of customers, appearance of servers, cleanliness and the message conveyed by the overall ambience of the restaurant. Details like these are important to the readers.
• Casually talk to the waiters about the specialties of the restaurant. If handled tactfully, you can even extract the good and bad features of the restaurant from the conversation.
• Read the menu carefully to get an idea about the kind of food items the restaurant is offering such as Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Continental etc.
• Compare the quality, presentation and taste of the food with its price so that you are in a position to genuinely pass on a red or green signal to the customers.

Format for a Restaurant Review

Now that you have all the notes with you, you are in a perfect position to write a thorough restaurant review for your blog, website or assignment.

Provide Basic Information

Start your review by telling the name of the restaurant, its location, branches (if any), contact numbers, outdoor/indoor dining, parking facility, home delivery and the type of cuisine it offers.

Type of Menu

Remember that your readers are majorly concerned about knowing the menu offered by the chosen restaurant. Here you don’t necessarily have to paste all the items you see in the menu-pick out names of few special dishes, appetizers and drinks and write about them. You need to add personal touch to this section by telling the readers what you ordered from the menu and did it taste as advertised.

Quality of Food

Obviously no one wants to stuff low quality food in the stomach. You need to honestly write about the quality of food you have experienced at the chosen restaurant. Elucidate this point by adding a personal example.

Pricing

Nowadays people are looking for value for their hard earned money. A restaurant seems desirable only if customers find hygienic and quality food at a reasonable price. You are not required to mention the exact price of any food item; talk about the overall pricing in relation to quality and ambience.

Service

Share valuable information with the readers regarding the time it took the food to reach your table and how were you treated by the staff.

Cleanliness

If the restaurant appears to be clean and everything is well organized, customers would be delighted to dine in at the chosen restaurant. On the contrary, dirty and scratchy dishes, cracked flooring and dingy furniture are big turn off. Let the readers know how clean or unclean you found the place.

Writing Mechanics

If your restaurant review is dull and boring, there is no reason why it would be read. Do not copy paste someone else’s personal dining experience; also refrain from rewriting what others have already written. Use your own voice and make your review highly unique and personal. Remember, if the review is genuine, not only will you receive more hits but your opinion would also be reckoned.

Popular Restaurant Review Sites

There are a number of websites as well as mobile applications which are aimed at simplifying the process of decision making for the diners. Popular sites include:

• Yelp    
• Urbanspoon
• Restaurant Row
• Zagat
• Restuarantica
• Menu Pages
• Menuism
• Gayot
• Dine.com

Restaurant Review Mobile Applications

Efficient mobile applications which quickly bring you to the review of your favorite restaurant include:

• Foursquare
• GoWalla
• BrightKite
• MyTown