Reviewers’ Guidelines
Beyond The Code we believe there should be guidelines for maintaining consistent standards and fair practices in food blogging.
We believe it is important for the reputation of food blogs that we hold ourselves to higher standards of conduct when reviewing the culinary media, food industry and its products.
1. We will be thorough.
- We will consult the Association of Food Journalist guidelines to maintain a standard for reviews.
2. We will be fair when reviewing a restaurant
- We will try to visit a restaurant more than once (more than twice, if possible) before passing a final judgment. We realize that this is an ideal. Some people are writing about restaurants that they go to in their travels, and most of us don’t have the money to go to places more than once (and find it especially hard to cough up the extra dough if a place stinks the first time we go). If you only go to a restaurant once, just say so.
- We will sample the full range of items on menu.
- We will be fair to new restaurants. If we chose to post about a new restaurant within the first few days or weeks of opening we will say so and offer readers “initial impressions.”
- If we receive an item for free or if we are recognized during our reviewing process, we will mention so in our review.
- While anonymity is important when dining out and conducting a review, we will not hide behind a pseudonym. If complete anonymity is required for personal or professional safety, we will not post anything that we wouldn’t feel comfortable putting our name on and owning up to. Readers should also be able to respond to the reviews.
Food Blog Code of Ethics 
I’d like to see this expanded to include products & services that are also represented on food blogs. (Equipment, food items, CSAs, stores, etc.)
“We will visit a restaurant more than once (more than twice, if possible) before passing a final judgment.”
THANK YOU for saying this! I hate when I see someone review after one visit. I always go twice or three times before coming to conclusions.
I present a Sunday morning radio show on ABC radio in Australia called Hair of the Blog and we feature a blogger or blogging issues each week. We’d love to talk to you about your Code of Conduct. Are you interested? Please email to both mel.c.james@gmail.com and james.melinda@abc.net.au or you can give me a call on +61 402 332 534. Thanks, Melinda
I’ve thought about this part of the Code a bit longer, and I think that it’s OK to talk about a restaurant after only one visit, and even to have just a few items on the menu. But disclose that you only went once and just had a burger and fries.
I also think something needs to be added that free items should not be actively solicited nor should the failure to provide free items result in a bad review. On the other hand, positive reviews should not be bought by free items.
The AFJ guidelines are just that — guidelines — and there is a lot of debate about many of their provisions. I know newspapers have dramatically cut restaurant reviewers’ budgets, so it is becoming very difficult to follow the guidelines regarding number of visits and scope of menu sampled. And the so-called sanctity of maintaining anonymity is another issue altogether.
In the end, this is a great work in progress, but with respect to reviewers’ guidelines, we need to work on this a bit.
Firstly, congratulations on taking on this huge task – a much-needed point of reference.
While I think final, conclusive judgment after a single visit is unfair, it is important to keep in mind that unlike professional reviewers, most food bloggers pay out of their own pockets for meals, and if they had a mediocre experience the first time, they are unlikely to go back, just like any other diner. It may also be a reflection of the restaurant’s consistency, which is paramount.
After having visited (or before, even), the blogger can, and should, keep an eye on other comments from trusted sources, be they professional reviewers or reliable friends, then analyse and evaluate – and blog this analysis to help readers make an informed decision.
I believe what is important is full disclosure – if you’ve been once, twice or are a regular, just say so and readers will evaluate accordingly. To expect each and every review to be a result of multiple visits is perhaps a little too demanding for bloggers.
Great work guys, keep it going!
How about “Will visit the restaurant more than once, whenever possible”? I’d love to be able to visit a restaurant more than once before I review it, but that’s not always possible and I think it’s unreasonable to expect for a blogger.
When I travel I generally eat at restaurants only once, does that mean I don’t have the right to review those places? I ate at the French Laundry once, paid my own way thank you very much, and then reviewed it. I see nothing wrong with that. It would be different if someone else was picking up the bill, then I’d be happy to visit multiple times.
How many times does a theater reviewer go to see the same play? If a performance or a meal is off, it’s off.
Hi Amy, From our recent post clarifying the code. Looks like we remembered to update this on the actual code page, but not here. We’ll fix. Thanks!
Do I really need to visit a restaurant more than once to be part of The Code?
Though we understand that going to a restaurant more than once isn’t always possible, we do believe that the idea of going multiple times should be considered. Could the experience you had be the result of a fluke bad night? Were you so hungry by the time you arrived that you would have been grateful for anything you put in your mouth? Or, conversely, that you were so hungry, no length of time waiting for your food to come out would have been tolerable? These are questions that all reviewers can ask themselves.
So when we talk about going to restaurants multiple times in the code, we realize that it’s an ideal. Some people are writing about restaurants that they go to in their travels, and most of us don’t have the money to go to places more than once (and find it especially hard to cough up the extra dough if a place stinks the first time we go). The code suggests that if you only go to a restaurant once, say so. We have updated the code to try and clarify this point.
But the way you have stated it is “We will visit a restaurant more than once” that doesn’t leave any wiggle room. My point is, we are not journalists. We are not paid by a publisher. Nor are our expenses paid for by an employer. Therefore, our rules should not be exactly the same. But if you want to play by the same rules as journalists do, without the benefits of salary and expense accounts, so be it.
There we go…changes all didn’t go through the first time. “We will try to visit…”
[…] rules and regulations that bloggers should abide by when creating blog posts. It also includes a separate guideline for reviewing restaurants. This code, and a subsequent late-to-the-game code from the creators of eGullet have been hotly […]
[…] review a restaurant, product or culinary resource we will consider integrating the standard set of guidelines as offered by the Association of Food […]
First off, let me state that I think it’s a good thing to have a published list of guidelines for ethics, but it would be nice if we all just lived by ethical standards and didn’t have to have something like this. I like to think I don’t write anything unethical, harmful, deceitful, false or plagaristic anyway, so for the record, count me in.
I would say that there are a couple of fuzzy areas here, some of which was addressed by previous posters. The focus of my writing is the journey to find unusual things to see and eat, so often I am writing about my first and only time there. I don’t generally announce myself as a food and travel writer unless asked (in which case I answer honestly) because I expect to get the same treatment as someone off the street. On a trip to Madrid I visited Restaurante Botin (billed as the world’s oldest restaurant). I don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity to go back, but that shouldn’t prevent me from writing about the experience. As others have written, I am not compensated or on an expense account, so as much as I wanted to try the baby eels that Andrew Zimmern ate on his visit there, the $150 price tag put it well out of my price range. If I arranged with them to have a free meal (including the eels), I would have no problem making that clear in my article; I see that as the fair thing to do.
I need a little leeway with the following, however:
“We will sample the full range of items on menu”
Unless the place I’ve visiting is on a theme, the subject of my articles are usually a specific item rather than the restaurant. For example, I recently had rooster testicles at Mon Land Hot Pot City in San Gabriel, California. I went there specifically because they were one of the few places I found that carries that item. I did write about the other food I had there, but the focus of the article was rooster testicles, not the restaurant (although I do mention the restaurants in case my readers want to know where to get it). The same was the case for Joe Tess Place in Omaha, Nebraska, where I went specifically to have their fried carp. Because that wsa the focus of the article, I didn’t see the need to try a little of everything, especially since I was by myself.
I think it’s good to have guidelines, but they should be just that – guidelines, rather than hard, steadfast rules. I think if we just practice the art of honesty and civility, everything else should fall into place.
I think this code is generally a good idea, but I agree with Val that the sampling of the full menu where possible very much depends on the blog.
Apart from not being able to afford everything on the menu or perhaps dining alone and thus not having a big group of people to order various items (which is the smart way to do it), I don’t think all blogs are actually totally objective, full surveys of everything on the menu.
Blogs often sit somewhere between food reviews for newspapers/magazines and word-of-mouth. As such you would expect greater care and impartiality than just reccomending or criticising a restaurant to your friend, but not the same kind of thorough approach of journalists who review professionally.
Blogs are often semi-professional and while no one wants to write something they would be ashamed of, they reflect personal experience and are in some sense interactive. Thus the blogger can go to a cafe, sample one sandwich and a drink, soak up the ambience, give their considered opinion of service/decor/price etc. They may have just tried one item on the menu but they can see and smell the food being served around them and as long as they don’t imply they tried the entire menu, I see no problem there. Then readers can then chime in with their experiences in the comments section.
It depends what you want your blog to be. If you are working towards a career as a food critic or are already a professional journalist, trying the whole menu may be for you. Or you may already be someone who does that anyway. But if you are like most people, you go to a place a few tmes and try a few things, and your blog will probably reflect that.
[…] of ethics. We hoped our manifesto would inspire us and perhaps others, to think about the power and responsibilities of online publishing on a daily […]
[…] Reviewers’ Guidelines […]