Those Ubiquitous Food Bloggers

Every time one turns around these days, there seems to be a new user-review website for those who are compelled to write about everything from politics to service industries to yes, food. People ask me why I don’t have a place on www.diningoutwithrobbalon.com for bloggers who want to share their opinion with the Central Texas foodies. The answer is simple and yet at the same time somewhat complex.

I have no axe to grind neither with these sites nor with those who write on them. It’s a free country. But I must admit that some of the stuff I have read on user-review websites contain some of the most bird-brained vitriol and uninformed commentary that it has been my displeasure to have seen in print. Some of the commentary is actually fairly good: literate, useful, and mercifully brief.

But that’s the problem. There’s no way to weed out those who can’t write, spell, or articulate a useful opinion about a restaurant. Worse still is the restaurant owner who pretends to be a blogger with a phony email address and then spend several hundred words trashing his competitor.

The user-review websites draw huge audiences because there are lots of frustrated critics out there. In fact, several of the biggest of these sites are dealing with complaints from businesspeople, restaurant owners and otherwise, who have charged that salespeople from the site have offered to “make the negative reviews” go to the bottom of the page. That way the “good” reviews would come up first. There is, allegedly, a price attached to that particular service.

But then it gets even more difficult. How does one know that the negative review is really a serious reflection of an event that occurred, or just the emotional rants of a frustrated critic? The same could be said for the so-called “good” reviews.

So my friends, that is why I have chosen to keep Dining Out with Rob Balon free of any reviews but my own. I grew up in a world of restaurants and food and have been reviewing Austin restaurants for 10 years on radio, TV, and the Internet. The fact that I choose to do very few “trash and shred” reviews means only that I prefer to spend the time I have telling my readers, listeners and viewers where to go as opposed to where not to go. Bad news travels much faster than good in the restaurant industry. And there are too many good, little restaurants flying under the radar in Austin and too many of you who don’t yet know about them.

So that’s my take on the whole user-review website scene. You must choose which presentation of information is ultimately most valuable to you. Meanwhile, we’ll keep on doing what we do and DOWR. And yes, our readers are MOST welcome to share their commentary with us. We will reply… but your email and our reply will be kept confidential.