Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I love this place. The first time I went there was in the fall of 1979 and, correct me if I'm wrong, I think the name of the place was Ken and Bob's Broome Street Bar. They had a friendly macho type guy with gray hair that bar tended. I saw him later on working at Fanelli's. I used to drink Bloody Mary's and beer there at Ken's. I thought they had good pub grup and the burgers were good, although I don't remember pitas back then. I returned frequently through through the years, but I haven't been there in a long while.

Great article! If you're looking for good restaurants in the area check out www.foodjoker.com. Great selection of places to eat and great site. Available also in 8 languages.

Regarding rating restaurants - I personally did not rate any restaurant I haven't dined at within the last 3 years or so. What's the point of rating my meal at Troisgros when I dined there 20 years ago? FWIW - we were never told that our ratings would be weighted by the number of places we reviewed. If that were the case - I could have rated dozens. But again - what would be the point of rating a place where I dined from the 1970's through the 1990's? RobynG

I would have to disagree with lostfourwords and say that Steve is a critic in the idealistic sense of the term, to the readers of his guide. He makes it clear that his goal is to get you the restaurants "A" game. If this is truly what he intends, then who better to provide reviews than a man renowned for getting the best out of restaurants. After reading his tips, he would expect you to get the best out of each restaurant, and he would therefore be the ideal critic, in the sense that you are now receiving the restaurant's "A" game, as well as him (like an ideal critic, he is reviewing what you are getting)

That said, I would much rather read a guide such as this, presided over by one such as Steve, over the Zagat guide.
Have you ever read those?
They're so boring!
I'm not planning however, on buying any of these guides. The blog posts are much more interesting.

"While some of the people on the list are high income earners, there are also those who do not make a lot of money but who save in order to take two or three trips a year for the purpose of dining." And in the rating system you use, their opinions wouldn't carry a lot of weight because they can't rate as many restaurants as others do. There may be merits to the system you've come up with, but it does inherently favor the opinions of wealthy people who can afford to eat regularly at expensive restaurants, and it seems to me that the resulting guide is also aimed at them, for better or for worse.

My criticism of the Opinionated About Dining guide is mostly based on the probability that most readers of Plotnicki's blog live in New York, which would bias the data toward that city. I know that he solicited responses from around the country and that many of his respondents travel a lot, but if a high percentage of the reviews came from New Yorkers it would probably cause New York restaurants to rank higher than they would otherwise. I'm not saying that New York doesn't have a lot of great restaurants, or even that more Chicago places should have been on the list, just that the survey may be flawed.

The issue of Plotnicki not dining out anonymously is tangential in a way--as others have pointed out, his opinions aren't the only ones in the guide. But again, if a lot of the respondents are fans of his blog, they're likely to agree with his philosophy on dining out and apply it themselves, at least if they have the necessary clout. Which is nice for them, but makes their dining experience less typical of what most diners can expect, whether or not they "communicate to the restaurant that [they] want their A game and not their B game." Everyone wants that, don't they? But not everyone has the connections, cash, arrogance, or whatever else it takes to ensure they'll get it. Of course, the guide is specifically aimed at "destination diners," or people with enough money to plan their travels around fine dining. Maybe Plotnicki should retitle it "The Rich New Yorker's Guide to Dining in the U.S. and Europe" just to make it clear who should read it.

I don't see how anybody's feelings about Plotnicki personally have anything to do with the validity of the guide. The guide's ratings are not based on his own opinions of the places included. If people don't like him, that's their business - but it's important to separate out the guide from the man. I'm sure some people hate Tim and Nina Zagat too, but that really doesn't have anything to do with their guide. If a restaurant in Chicago (or elsewhere) didn't make the cut - it's because it didn't. To take that personally or to somehow link that with Plotnicki's personality is just silly.