Restaurant Reviews

Everything here is old. All rants, complaints, etc. since late 2001 are in the log.

The original goal of Tinotopia restaurant reviews was to provide a scientific and particularly reproducible standard by which to judge restaurants.

However, it's turned out that most of the establishments -- chain restaurants in Northern Virginia, for the most part -- visited were so awful as to be not worth attempting to assign numerical values to the various characteristics of the place. Instead, I present an assortment of suburban dining horror stories.

There would be more stories here, but these experiences are usually the kind of thing one would rather forget.

• Fuddruckers
• TGI Friday's
• Fuddruckers, Again
• TGI Friday's, again

You might also want to check out my account of my experiences at Burger King.

Oh, and if you work in the restaurant industry and are thinking of firing off an indignant e-mail to me about how I'm a moron and how I don't realize what a difficult job it is to please fucktard customers like me: Believe that your customers are idiots, and you won't be disappointed.

You'll treat people badly, and the only ones who come back will truly be idiots. If all your guests seem to be pains in the ass, you either have a problem yourself or you're working in the wrong place.

All of the complaining I do here has to do with incompetent restaurant management, usually at large chains. I'm willing to forgive servers getting swamped, waits for tables, etc., because these things happen from time to time. I'm not a nut who expects perfect service all the time. When there's a 40-minute wait for a table (and a mostly empty restaurant) every week because nobody showed up for work, though, it's generally a sign that the management doesn't have the first clue. When I'm told that a restaurant is out of, say, cheesecake or baked potatoes or snow peas, I understand. When I'm told a restaurant is out of lettuce or tomatoes or cheddar cheese, I'm going to be less patient.