Evaluating New Restaurants

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I'm curious what dishes and rules of thumb some of the resident conniseurs use to gauge the quality of restaurant. My wife and I have a rule that a good crab cake is the hallmark of restaurant quality. That is often times one of the dishes we try first at a new place. Other dishes can vary greatly in quality at lesser restaurants and you might get fooled into coming back to a subpar establishment. Steaks for instance are not always a good indicator.

[Damelon]

Your compass needle would not be of much use near where I live, Ex, for very few places in this area serve crab cake.

For a Chinese restaurant, I judge by their Mongolian beef. I have no hard and fast rule for other cuisines though.

[Zarathustra]

As Damelon said, it would seem to depend on the type of restaurant. But even accounting for these differences, I don't think it's possible to judge a restaurant by a single dish. Many of my favorite restaurants have a single dish that is done really, really well, and it's what I usually order--to the exclusion of all the other dishes. Every other thing on the menu could be crap and I'd still go there to have that one dish. I go to one BBQ place when I want mutton, I go to one German place when I want sausages, and a pizza place when I want pizza, etc. A lot of times, I'll decide on a restaurant purely on the basis of the beer selection.

[Ananda]

Obviously we judge a restaurant on their meatballs. They need to be made from a moose or a bear that was just killed barehanded that day. The chef must also say 'björk björk björk' non-stop or what's the point, really? Preferably, though, they won't play any music from Björk.

But, we also use other things like the fact that we live in a fairly small town and my husband is a graphic designer and has worked with a lot of the businesses around here, including many restaurants. We tend to go to the places he's worked with and has liked what he's seen behind the scenes.

[Linna Heartbooger]

For me, I find pancakes to be a handy benchmark. Since most places where I eat out serve either pancakes or hamburgers. Except the ones that serve Chinese.

I look for a moist, fluffy pancake that has thickness and weight to it - yet, which manages to be cooked all the way through. (no idea how they do it!)

Ananda- ahh yes, like in this informative video?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IYd_02tfLA

[Ananda]

That looks like an excellent restaurant!

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Those crispy pancakes that aren't overcooked have always been a mystery to me.

[Vader]

It depends on the restaurant. You can judge a good Italian restaurant by the quality of the risotto. And of course by looking at the wine menu. A wood oven also is a must.

[Ananda]

There was an expose here last year about pizza shops. It was truly disgusting how some of them were in the back where they did food prep. We (we being the husband) semi-know the people where we go, so it really helps feel a bit more secure on that note. Even places that looked really nice from the front can be really terrible in the back.

Like Zar said, though, we tend to go to various places for the one dishe we really like from them rather than a single place and have a variety.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

It depends on the restaurant. You can judge a good Italian restaurant by the quality of the risotto. And of course by looking at the wine menu. A wood oven also is a must.

I agree about the risotto, that is another dish that is either good or abysmal. There is no middle ground.

[aliantha]

I was pretty sure that my litmus test at Thai restaurants was pad thai, and last night I confirmed it. Here's where we went. They had a Zagat sticker on the door, which is usually a good sign.

Magickmaker said the pad thai was the best she'd ever had. The sticky rice with mango was good, too. And we tried their Thai tea, which we'd never had before. It turned out to be very tasty.

[Menolly]

I adore Thai iced tea. But oh, the carbs in the sweetened condensed milk served with it.

...I wonder if the low-fat/low-carb sweetened condensed milk recipe I have for baking would work for Thai iced tea.

[aliantha]

Yeah, one sip told me it wasn't a diet drink.

[Vraith]

Usually I decide to try a place based on whether or not [and how many] things that look unique on the menu...and then how much I like it. If it's good enough, kinda like Z, that becomes my place for that mood/desire.
[also like Z, I have been known more than once to investigate a place because of their beer list...particularly what's on tap].

Thai is a special lust of mine, though there's no place left near me anymore that's really good...I go anyway cuz even mediocre thai pleases me more than mediocre anything else.
Also for Thai, I've found that their Tom Kha ____ [whatever variation[s] they make] soups often indicates how good they are overall.

[Savor Dam]

In the realm of benchmark Thai dishes, I'll see ali's pad thai and Vraith's tom kha soup, and raise a panang curry.

For Mexican, Dam-sel leans toward judging by their carne asada burrito. I prefer to order chicken mole as my evaluation dish.

[Menolly]

In the realm of benchmark Thai dishes, I'll see ali's pad thai and Vraith's tom kha soup, and raise a panang curry.

You know how to judge a panang curry?

[Savor Dam]

Honestly...only on the basis of what I have learned from you, Your Galley-Modship.

Thanks for outing me...

[Menolly]

Actually, I wanted to ask what your criteria for judging a panang curry was. I remember it was new to you when we had it together, but I thought perhaps you had tried it several times since then and had developed your own criteria.

[Vader]

A good way to judge a restaurant is to see how flexible they are. When in a good (and I really mean good restaurant) for the first time I always like to order stuff that is not on the menu but should be 101 for the cook. Scrambled eggs with truffles for example - or a big juicy steak (Pittsburgh style preferably) with roasted potatoes and sauce hollandaise.

My benchmark for a good Thai restaurant is the spiciness of a hot'nsour shrimp soup (Tom Yum Kung/Goong).

[Harbinger]

An Italian restaurant should be judged on its simplest marinara. If they take the time and care to make it great, everything else will usually be awesome.

Beyond that, I don't limit my evaluation of a restaurant's quality based on a single dish. Lots of places do very well on some dishes and not so well on others.

If the salad is included, and comes with mixed baby greens, very fresh bright red tiny cherry tomatos, and walnuts or pine nuts, it's usually a pretty good indicator of good things to follow.

McCormick and Schmick's is one of my very favorite chain restaurants and I do not love their crab cakes. But their corn and seafood chowder should be mandatory. The first time my kid ate there he was about a year old and I gave him a spoonful. He literally screamed if I didn't keep shoveling it in his mouth. I had to order another emegency bowl "on the fly" to keep him placated. He loved it.

The Chop House has great crab cakes. Maybe the best I've ever had at a chain. They grill a great steak too, if you spring for the prime cut. But it's gonna cost you $38. The regular cut is not better than anywhere else.