Zagat versus the New York Times: The Critics Are The First To Go

This is a funny article! There will always be room for guides like Zagat's which are an average rating of  anonymous reviewers, professional critics like the New York Times, and now with the web, amateurs (in the sense that we are not paid; not in the sense that we don't know food) like ourselves here at VanEats and other food blogs AND sites with reviews from everybody like addyourown.  All different, all serving different needs and all great! Vive la difference!

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The Times coverage is unintentionally hilarious. Zagat uses cumulative anonymous ratings from diners who send in their opinions of various restaurants. The Times journalist, Florence Fabricant, goes on and on about how these ratings draw on as few as 100 people, obviously casting about for some way to explain how a 30 seat restaurant in Brooklyn could be rated above Alain Ducasse, where a bowl of soup will set you back almost forty dollars, while never noting that the alternative method of judgment -- the impressions of a single restaurant reviewer -- are a more limited sample.

This is not to say that Fabricant's criticism of Zagat statistics is flawed -- it is non-existent. She makes not the slightest attempt to critique or even explain statistical sampling. She simply takes it as self-evident that a rating system that values anything other than the gilded charm of Manhattan's most expensive establishments must be wrong.

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