The Reasons We Do What We Do on Dining Out with Rob
We occasionally see some blogger commentary regarding our site, diningoutwithrobbalon.com. Many of these comments have a prevailing theme. And of course that revolves around my decision to primarily write about restaurants that I like, while essentially ignoring the ones that I don’t like. This apparently drives some in the food blogger community to the point of near madness. How can one be a food/restaurant commentator without ever uttering a negative word? Well, it’s actually quite simple.
The restaurant business is one of the more difficult industries for owner-operated entities in which to flourish. I have seen talented people pour their finances, cooking skills and initiative down what can become a consuming black hole of frustration and despair. On top of that, bad news in this industry travels much faster than good news. Far be it from me to dump more acid rain on these places. However, I’ve witnessed lots of great little local restaurants bite the dust because they simply flew under the radar. So years ago I decided to concentrate on telling people WHERE to go and what my favorite dishes are at those places, as opposed to taking valuable time up telling people WHERE NOT to go. Are there restaurants and dishes that I don’t like? Of course there are. But as my wise old grandmother used to say, “Let Kodak develop the negatives.”
The key is that bloggers can complain about my lack of negativity to their hearts content. They have a right to write whatever they want and good for them I guess. But I write for our regular and new readers, the people (foodies and non-foodies alike) who enjoy going out to dinner on a consistent basis. If they email me and tell me they’ve tried a restaurant that I liked along with some favorite dishes, then I’m satisfied that I’ve accomplished my mission. And 99% of the time, our readers have told us that they appreciate not having to wade through dozens of online reviews but like being able to go to one consistent source and enjoy a meal that they can reasonably anticipate will be to their satisfaction. That makes it all worthwhile for me as it’s what I strive to accomplish.
Another apparent irritant with some bloggers is that our site accepts advertising. Last time I looked, so did the Statesman, The Chronicle. Austin Monthly, and any other bloggers who had the ingenuity to sell some adds on their pages. I repeat, we do not sell reviews. And we won’t even accept an ad from any entity that we cannot honestly support (tell me someone else who does that). We review many restaurants that do not advertise with us and do the same with promoting dinners and events. That should be enough.
