Kosher Food and Drink

We’ve been very excited to get some early feedback on the Kosher Epicurean Society, and a fair bit of it has centered around our restaurant review practices. I’d like to take a few moments to explain what we look at and how we evaluate it.

Zagat grades on food, decor, and service absolutely. KES evaluates on food, ambience, and service relative to the restaurant’s price point. We do not grade with numbers, and we do not try to establish some sort of absolute ranking of restaurants. That’s a conscious decision. It imposes certain limitations on how far you can take the reviews. We understand that.

What we’re hoping for our readers to take away from a restaurant review is a sense of the restaurant, judged by those criteria, as experienced by that reviewer, with concrete examples to support those reviewer judgements. Expectations will be lower at lower price points; those expectations will be higher as they go up in price. Minor mis-steps at a lower price point may not be deal-breakers, but even small errors at higher price points may be judged to be very serious if they impacted the dining experience.

In the future, KES may give some sort of seal of approval to restaurants that multiple reviewers feel particularly outperform at a certain price point. For now, we’ll continue with our set of criteria and a narrative approach. We appreciate our readership bearing with us as we further develop KES.

One thing I will say, though: any information which could bias the reviews will be disclosed up front, at the top of the review. Our goal is to have reviews free of any conflict of interest or ethical concerns, and we do that by paying for our meals ourselves and without disclosing any affiliation with KES.