While I am still needing to form my exact genre, I have an idea of doing a hybrid genre that is between an informal review and a best and worst list. My idea is to either pit different restaurants with similar cuisine genres against one another and see who is supreme and who falls short, or pick one type of cuisine genre, try different restaurants that serve this genre, and make a list that ranks them from best to worst. While I decide between these two genres’, I have been researching different food writing topics that I think would help both of my options. I’ve been mainly focusing on finding formal and informal reviews and articles that rank restaurants. I have also been wanting to find both positive and negative reviews.

During my research, I found things that worked and did not work and have helped me get a clearer idea of what my topic should include. It seems that the best rankings and reviews keep the audience in suspense, meaning that they save the big reveal till the very end; whether this be through putting the best restaurant as the last slide like in the “Best Seafood” article, or giving your final opinion, and the whole point of the article, at the very end as seen in “Chipotle vs. Qdoba”.

I also discovered that shorter is sometimes better. As a typical person has a small attention span, the reviews need to be short. While the “Best Seafood” article does a good job of this, they seem to fall short on overall length as the audience has to click through 31 slides. The review on Montana’s Trail House seems to achieve a nice balance of a formal review, written in a way that creates imagery in a reader’s head while also providing a lot of information in a concise amount of space. I also enjoyed this review because it used more than one sense; I was able to conjure images and smells, albeit in an unfavorable way towards Montana’s, thus creating a more interesting and powerful review.

What should it contain?

Sometimes:

• Save the best for last

• History of the restaurant

Always:

• Be aware of your audience and the length of your post

• Write with the senses in mind

• Write about what a reader would want to know: Ease of access, price, availability, location, food and service quality, and overall dining experience

• Visual Component: Actual images of the food served or the restaurant itself

Sources:

• Chipotle vs. Qdoba
• Best Seafood Restaurants in the U.S.
• Montana’s Trail House Brings Morally Hazardous Appalachian Cuisine to Brooklyn
• 2016 Top 25

Questions:

• What would you be more interested in reading? Battle between restaurants or ranking of one type of cuisine?
• Would you rather click through a slideshow or scroll through a text post?
• Do you like in depth reviews or short “this was good because…” reviews?
• Is there any other additional information you are looking for or wanting from a review/ranking?
• How can a reviewer not come off as condescending/sarcastic when writing a negative review?