'Los Angeles Times' Axes Starred Restaurant Reviews

The Los Angeles Times has decided to nix the star ratings that used to accompany restaurant reviews. The paper explains its decision:

First, star ratings are increasingly difficult to align with the reality of dining in Southern California -- where your dinner choices might include a food truck, a neighborhood ethnic restaurant, a one-time-only pop-up run by a famous chef, and a palace of fine dining. Clearly, you can’t fairly assess all these using the same rating system. Furthermore, the stars have never been popular with critics because they reduce a thoughtful and nuanced critique to a simple score. In its place, we’ll offer a short summary of the review.

This decision feels especially timely after a recent debate concerning a New York Times restaurant review in which critic Pete Wells gave popular burger joint Shake Shack one star. While some applauded Wells' decision to review a staple of the New York food scene, others felt that the burger joint was too casual to warrant a proper review. HuffPost Food blogger Andrew Friedman and editor of Toqueland, believes that the Shake Shake review is the perfect example of why a star system just doesn't work anymore. "Stars are simple. This era of dining is not. Whether it's a numerical score, letter grade, or some other innovation, it's time for a change that reflects the times. Things are only going to get more complicated from here," he argues.

Though stars have always been a controversial issue, getting rid of them doesn't always work. Eater points out that the New York Post dumped the star system in 2005 and then four years later, reinstated them because apparently readers and restaurant owners missed them.

For the food section of the Los Angeles Times, more changes might be afoot. Much-beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold recently left LA Weekly in favor of the LA Times, and his first piece muses on the past and present of the Los Angeles food scene.

LA Times critic S. Irene's Virbila's first restaurant review sans stars is of Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air. Virbila finds it to be a "serious restaurant with some seriously good food" though she says that "not everything is spot-on."

Does the review suffer without stars, or are stars unnecessary? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Comments

[LAFood]

01:45 AM on 03/11/2012

Regardless of the start rating, restaurants still have their Health Grade issued by the LA County Health Department. I use that as my guide for the restaurants I eat at. There is an iphone app that I use religiously. Its called LA Food Grades and has all of the restaurants in LA with their health grading and score.

[darkeegan]

07:57 AM on 03/12/2012

clean restaurants can still produce terrible food. I don't think a taco bell would taste any better even if it were sterilized from top to bottom nightly.

[fishinwithtom]

09:36 PM on 03/10/2012

Part of the reason for this, I'm sure, is that incident last year when their reviewer got outed by the reviewee in a big local brouhaha. You could see the coming changes at that time. But, as noted below, that is hardly the LA Times biggest problem. They unveiled their new Saturday section today. Yawn.

[BOBinPS]

09:24 PM on 03/10/2012

Stars are helpful. But I think the best indicator is how far in advance you have to reserve a table.

[darkeegan]

08:02 AM on 03/12/2012

The problem is that a lot of restaurants continue to exist on momentum alone. Having a crowd can guarantee that you have a crowd in the future. Even if standards start to slip the crowd will stay because there are other people there.

Right now I am living in Shanghai, and I see the extreme example of this every day. Chinese people routinely decide where to eat based on how many people are waiting, and this has led me to several terrible group-dining experiences.

Reviews are helpful, especially the online reviews. It allows you to hear from the people who actually care enough about the food to leave a review.

[BOBinPS]

09:14 PM on 03/12/2012

I think it depends upon the price. High end restaurants don't survive upon habit alone. If you are paying $250+ for a meal, you usually have expectations. I personally don't put much stock in places like Yelp. The contributors may care enough to write a review, but usually only if it is negative. Though I admit that I do look at sites like Yelp.

[onehenry]

08:31 PM on 03/10/2012

I went to a four star restaurant after reading about it and got food poisoning.

[Judith Newmark]

04:01 PM on 03/10/2012

I think foodies categorize restaurant types and know that stars refer to similar types: a 2 star truck is not the same as a 2 star restaurant! I would miss stars; knowing that critics think a place is really great based on the star system is invaluable, especially Irene Virbila's stars, as I always agree with her after I try the places she values!

[Stevenson52]

03:36 AM on 03/11/2012

Good tip! Find a reviewer with similar taste.

[Samuel Bun]

12:02 PM on 03/10/2012

For coming up with this idea I am giving the LA Times 4 stars, and this article is good, not great so one thumb up. The screwie thing is that over the years they have taught us to score everything this way, what am I going to do now everything is turning gray.

[johnpet]

08:56 AM on 03/10/2012

All reviews = worthless. This goes for one person's "professional" review to "Yelp." Worthless. Wanna know how food establishments gets reviewed? By whether or not there's a 30 minute wait or the place is empty.

And if you're going into any establishment, there's your review. It's 6pm and 90% of the place is empty? Leave. The community has already review it for you.

[Samuel Bun]

12:04 PM on 03/10/2012

That's funny, I found your review of the subject most stimulating.

[savvysearch]

08:22 AM on 03/10/2012

I guess this forces people to actually READ the reviews.

[dblueII]

05:24 PM on 03/09/2012

To paraphrase Winston Churchill's remarks on democracy, it is the worst system there is, except for all the others. We've all seen two star reviews that read like three, or ones that read like twos, etc, etc. If the LAT wants to improve it's restaurant reviews, they should dump that hack Virbila and let Gold put in someone new. Personally, I'd like to see someone from outside the aria, with no prior relation to the LA scene, it would be nice to see someone who is not so in love with the scene that they are supposed to be objective about.

[French Toast]

03:45 PM on 03/09/2012

I would rather enjoy a more video game review type approach, wherein you judge an establishment on a number of merits with a number of individualized scores that all add up. That way a place might get nothing for decor (in the case of food trucks n/a) and a high score for food and have it equalize.

The larger problem is the reviewers with no journalistic integrity. I don't want a review to be begging for attention. Marilyn Hagerty has become a viral sensation for just giving a fair an earnest good review of an Olive Garden that took into account the idea that Grand Forks really doesn't have high end dining to compare it to. That should tell you something. People like honesty, they like fairness, and they like the idea that a reviewer is putting local sensibilities over any need to be noticed.

[PunKinPai]

03:30 PM on 03/09/2012

The LA Times is dumping a lot of things, including me as a subscriber. They changed everything from their online crosswords and sudoku, which are now just about unusable, to their online bill pay and paywall logons, which now make it nearly impossible to log on without going through Google or Facebook. Suuuure, I'm going to log on through Facebook to pay my online bills or read news online. I'll miss the Calendar section, not much else.

[mdemploi]

08:14 PM on 03/09/2012

paper and ink

[PunKinPai]

08:17 PM on 03/09/2012

Yes, but I don't pay my bills on paper any more. Wasteful and stamps are expensive.

[TaurusRose]

02:49 PM on 03/10/2012

We don't like these changes either; we quit for a long time after they dumped Robert Sheer, but much later went back to subscribing weekends. I can't believe that they think what you described is acceptable for their log in.
Now we are quitting the LAT again, but will continue doing The Financial Times, which is FAR superior!

[geckofan]

03:04 PM on 03/09/2012

public review sites are a joke. i work in a fine dining establishment and reviewers often critique items we don't even sell.

[dblueII]

05:25 PM on 03/09/2012

True, if you want the consensus of a bunch of idiots, then Yelp is for you.

[nete peedham]

06:48 PM on 03/09/2012

I agree with you; because I travel a lot, am retired, and my partner and I live full-time in a motorhome. We've come to use the public review system, though...and one MUST sift through the comments, go to a restaurant website, consider the menu, then the comments.

Mazatlan Mexico, is an example. When people rave about how good CHAIN restaurants are in the "Golden Zone"(Zona Dorado), I tend to avoid these. When they review restaurants that are not chains, I pay more attention.

[NHBill]

02:35 PM on 03/09/2012

They are dumping stars because restauranteurs hate them.
Times are so tough in the newspaper biz they can't afford to upset potential advertisers.
In the glory days newspapers would walk on by restaurants as advertisers because they are notoriously slow to no pay on their bills.
Now they have to appease every market segment.