The need for a restaurant rating scale for CMH Gourmand has been on my mind for a while. I found a scale on an English food blog that sparked my muse but it needed more refinement. Using a star scale just seems too limited. Here is a my primordial prototype – let me know what you have to add to this work in progress – everything is open to debate – except food getting the most total points. (Special thanks to my Beta test group including: Bear, Liz, Andy, Heather, and Craig).
10 point rating scale for Food – because food is the most important part of the experience.
Food
10 – My last meal before dying
9.5 – I want to eat here almost every day
9.0 – I want to eat here once per week
8.5 – Near Perfection, one of my top 5 favorites
8.0 – Great Food
7.5 – Very Good – with a couple of my all time favorites on the menu
7.0 – I’ll be back – some entrees I liked and some were average
6.0 – Good (or a good fast food place -Three Guys Burgers and Fries, Inn and Out Burger)
5.0 – Average – everything is fine – nothing worth writing about
4.0 – Good enough to eat
3.0 – I will eat here in an emergency
2.0 – Bad – I ate it to live
1.0 – I would rather starve
Service
5 – Wow – I feel like royalty!
4 – The server must do this as their chosen profession.
3 – I was served my food and my check on time.
2 – I received my check when I asked for it.
1 – I left the restaurant for the safety of myself and others
Environment / Atmosphere / Ambiance
5 – Everything is perfect
4 – Feels nicer than home…because it is clean
3 – Everything is OK – nothing special
2 – Better than camping
1 – Welcome to the Jungle
And one final category. I have not found a word for this yet. There are places that we crave where the food is just OK, the place is a dump, or small, or crowded, or the service is hit or miss….but yet we love it. A local example was Nancy’s – decent food, diner decor, and decent service – but yet the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. I can not find a single word to describe this restaurant rating missing link.
The French phrase – je ne sais quoi = “an intangible quality that adds or makes something attractive or alluring”, is as close as I can get to the concept. Thanks to local Columbus Underground reader Andy D for helping with that concept. Another term might be mojo.
Everything gets tallied up – and there you go.
This is a community work in progress so feel free to add your two cents.
After some healthy debate – I will clean up this scale, re-post as a link on the blog and use for it restaurant reviews…..(which I have not done in quite some time).
CMH Gourmand - Eating in Columbus & Ohio 