Why Recommending Restaurants To Friends Is A Futile And Frustrating Gesture

As someone who has made a career out of writing about restaurants, you might think I welcome people’s trusting me to recommend a restaurant here and abroad. Unlike doctors, lawyers and stock brokers who spurn such requests by saying, “Call my office,” I always respond but first ask some specific questions: What kind of restaurant? Neighborhood? New? Trendy? Classic? Budget?

Unless they are going to Thailand or France, invariably the answer is: Upscale Italian. I almost never get a request to recommend a three-star French restaurant. Bistros, trattorias, tabernas are preferred. Second most popular preference—by a wide margin—is a steakhouse.

You would think by now I’d narrow down my responses to half a dozen places, which is what concierges in good hotels always do because they will only recommend places that repeated guests will come back and say were just what they’d hoped for. (I’ve tested this out in Paris and Rome and always get the same recommendations from concierges for places the well-heeled Americans seem to love, like L’Amis Louis in Paris and La Carbonara in Rome.)

But I find I try to tailor my recommendations to the person asking, sometimes suggesting they go the ten years of archives of my newsletter, which gives extensive reviews and photos of the restaurants covered around the world. I’ve also sent them links to articles here in Forbes. I often recommend dishes not to miss and—only if it’s for a reallygood friend—the owner’s name. Otherwise some pushy people will ask me to call the restaurant on their behalf and put in a good word. One person asked me to put in a word for a cousin who was going out for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner. And, no, I have no power to get you a reservation on a Saturday night at the most popular restaurant in Beverly Hills. For that, ask—and pay—a concierge to try.

This last request is fraught with frustration, because so often people, including friends, tell me a few days later they were not much impressed or even disappointed in the restaurant I suggest. Of course I ask why, and most often, their response is over service, not food. They believed they got a bad table or an incompetent waiter. They think they got gouged for a bottle of water. The portion of gelato was on the small side. Then when I ask them how was the food, the reports are usually quite positive. When I ask them if they ordered those specific dishes I raved about, few do, with remarks like “We had a big lunch and weren’t all that hungry for dinner, so we only ordered salad and split a pasta”; or, although I told them this was very specifically an Alsatian restaurant specializing in dishes like choucroute, they simply ignored my advice and ordered steak frites. It was maddening when I was once asked by a friend about the historic Italian restaurant Barbetta in New York, “Is it really any good?” I said, “Yes, it definitely is, especially if you order the Piemontese dishes the chef is proudest of.” The next day they reported in they were unimpressed, adding, “I just felt like a green salad and my husband just wanted spaghetti with red sauce.” Had a steak knife been handy I might have plunged it into their livers.

Many of the problems in recommending restaurants are due to the tastes of the people going to them. This one is a vegetarian; this one eats no shellfish; this one hates sushi; this one was insistent on ordering a dish not even on the menu. Then, too, many people who go with friends for a table for four all order the same thing and then form an immediate opinion on a menu with forty dishes on it.

Of course, many people who ask me for a half-dozen recommendations return from a city and tell me they didn’t eat at a single one, saying, “Oh, we found this Indian restaurant in London we liked so much we ate there three times.” Worse than that are those who come back raving about a restaurant one of their friends raved about, telling me it was the best meal of the trip or that they never had a filet mignon that tender or that the owner bought them a round of limoncello at the end of the meal.

What I want to say is that if all my recommendations did not live up to your likes and dislikes or that you value your friend’s recommendation over mine, then please don’t waste my time in the future. I want to say, “Listen, you went to a place and ordered two dishes or dishes out of character or asked for substitutions or didn’t like the waiter’s attitude and then tell me it’s not a very good restaurant.” I should say, in as nice a way as possible (stifling my rage), “Perhaps you and I don’t share the same tastes, and it would be best to ask someone else.” Or get hold of a completely specious list of the best this-or-that.

Perhaps I should adopt the response of a doctor friend of mine who answers people asking advice” “Do you know what free advice is worth? Nothing.” Or I could charge them for the advice in the knowledge that, like people who take panaceas, they will love a place they paid to hear an expert’s professional advice about.

So, friends and readers, if you really want my advice on where best to eat, read my columns or other reviewers whom you trust. But don’t bother letting me know how it went unless you ate the way reviewers do, with gusto, with an appetite and with a knowledge of the way food should taste.