Recommendations

For me, it’s important to understand how my friends evaluate food just as it’s important to understand how to interpret Yelp or other popular restaurant rating systems in order to gather the desired information. I lunched recently in Paris’s Latin Quarter with friends with whom I periodically dine out. They had just returned from Sicily, where I’m headed in a few weeks, and I wanted to hear about their experience.

We ate at a place I recommended, a welcoming neighborhood joint appropriately christened ‘Bonvivant’, a restaurant sufficiently popular that reservations are essential. I booked based on a delicious meal I enjoyed there last year. My daughter and I were strolling down rue des Ecoles at lunchtime when we notice an inviting corner restaurant with large windows, through which we viewed small groups engaged in animated discussion while eating (mainly) steak-frites. We noticed a few tables free and decided to give it a whirl.

All diners were French, as far as we could tell, and seemed typical of the neighborhood inhabitants: bourgeois cultural/intellectual types. I, the slightly paranoid gluten-intolerant, ordered a delicious risotto, while my daughter ordered steak-frites, a typically French ‘fast food’ dish, whose crispy hand-cut fries are usually far superior to the tough, stringy entrecôte with which they are served. But the situation differed at Bonvivant, which is why I recommended it. The meat was tender, flavorful, and responsibly sourced.

Convivial diners packed the restaurant this Sunday afternoon, and our anticipation ran high. Thus, it came as a monumental disappointment when the steak-frites three of us ordered (the fourth wisely opted for two appetizers: duck heart with mushrooms and marrow, scooped directly from two large bovine bones) did not meet my expectations. The steak may have been better—jucier and more tender—than is typical, but certainly not nearly as delicious as it was on the last visit, and the McD’s style fries were mostly limp, if tasty. I wished I’d ordered the risotto. None of us commented, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty about having inadvertently deceived my friends into assuming they could expect a memorable meal and add a ‘go to’ restaurant in a neighborhood where they occasionally find themselves. It was fine, but not really good.

After we parted ways, I thought about the practice of restaurant recommending to friends and acquaintances. I expect (with guarded optimism) the same standard of food and service from one visit to the next. This is the case with my other Paris favs, from the extremely modest Happy Nouilles (Happy Noodles) on rue Beauboug near Arts&Metiers or Crêperie Plougastel on rue Montparnasse near the Gare or the fancier Chez Julien by Pont St. Louis, all of which I’ve been frequenting and recommending for more than a decade. I may not return to Bonvivant now, and if I do, I’ll refrain from ordering steak-frites.

I felt a strong impulse to share these impressions with my friends, since I don’t want them to consider my recommendations untrustworthy. I thought about my reaction when friends and acquaintances recommend restaurants. I always first assess the likelihood of my sharing their judgement regarding the degree to which other aspects of taste coincide: are we similarly enthusiastic about other restaurants (or places/experiences)?

I have friends I adore who don’t share my taste (or, I like to think, my high culinary standards) and whose recommendations I ignore, while I eagerly note the endorsements of those with whom I share significant evaluative overlap, even if I don’t know them well. If someone tells me their favorite Greek restaurant in a small Midwestern town makes a Greek salad equal to any you’d find on a Greek island in summertime when juicy tomatoes nourished by their singular ‘terroir’ grow behind the beachside restaurants that serve them, I’m skeptical of their recommendations.

The same thing goes, of course, for declarations of scenic, quiet, spicey, beautiful, and fun. Communication is often more involved that one realizes!