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Restaurant ratings identify
restaurant A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and Delivery (commerce), food delivery services. Restaurants ...
s according to their quality, using notations such as stars or other symbols, or numbers.
Stars A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of ...
are a familiar and popular symbol, with scales of one to three or five stars commonly used. Ratings appear in guide books as well as in the media, typically in
newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...
s, lifestyle
magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...
s and
webzine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the computer ...
s. Websites featuring consumer-written reviews and ratings are increasingly popular, but are far less reliable.'Fake' reviews on TripAdvisor a real problem for hoteliers
/ref> In addition, there are ratings given by
public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the de ...
agencies rating the level of
sanitation Sanitation refers to public health conditions related to clean drinking water and treatment and disposal of human excreta and sewage. Preventing human contact with feces is part of sanitation, as is hand washing with soap. Sanitation systems ...
practiced by an establishment.


Restaurant guides

One of the best known guides is the Michelin series which award one to three stars to restaurants they perceive to be of high culinary merit. One star indicates a "very good restaurant"; two stars indicate a place "worth a detour"; three stars means "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Several bigger newspapers employ restaurant
critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...
s and publish online dining guides for the cities they serve, such as the
Irish Independent The ''Irish Independent'' is an Irish daily newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray backgrou ...
for Irish restaurants.


List of notable restaurant guides


Europe (original working area)


The Americas


Asia

Internet restaurant review sites have empowered regular people to generate non-expert reviews. This has sparked criticism from restaurant establishments about the non-editorial, non-professional critiques. Those reviews can be falsified or faked.


Rating criteria

The different guides have their own criteria. Not every guide looks behind the scenes or decorum. Others look particularly sharply to value for money. This is why a restaurant can be missing in one guide, while mentioned in another. Because the guides work independently, it is possible to have simultaneous multiple recognitions.


Ratings impact

A top restaurant rating can mean success or failure for a restaurant, particularly when bestowed by an influential sources such as Michelin. Still, a good rating is not enough for economic success and many Michelin starred and/or highly rated restaurants have met the same fate as the Dutch restaurant De Swaen. In 2004, Michelin came under fire after bipolar chef Bernard Loiseau committed
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...
after he was rumoured to be in danger of losing one of his three Michelin stars. However, the Michelin guide had stated he would not be downgraded. Most news reports attributed his suicide to the downgrade carried out by the rival
Gault Millau Gault et Millau () is a French restaurant guide. It was founded by two restaurant critics, Henri Gault and Christian Millau in 1965. Points system Gault Millau rates restaurants on a scale of 1 to 20, with 20 being the highest. Restaurants given ...
guide.


Sanitation

Many countries have a system of checks and inspections in place for sanitation. Only a few countries, amongst others the United States and Canada, create and publish restaurant ratings based on this.


United States

In the United States, several states have imposed uniform statewide restaurant grading systems, under which safety and hygiene inspection reports are used to compute numerical scores or letter grades, and those must be prominently posted by restaurants. The first state to enact such a statewide system was South Carolina in 1995. Tennessee and North Carolina later enacted legislation imposing similar statewide systems. In many other states, the mandatory posting of restaurant grades is neither required nor prohibited statewide, which means it is purely a matter for local governments like cities and counties.


Los Angeles

In November 1997, a
KCBS-TV KCBS-TV (channel 2), branded CBS Los Angeles, is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast of the United States, West Coast flagship station of the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the n ...
sweeps Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rati ...
news story called ''Behind The Kitchen Door'' focused attention on problems in
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
's top restaurants. The station used hidden cameras to catch restaurant employees practicing unsafe food handling practices such as picking up food from the floor and re-serving it, vermin crawling near food to be served, and mixing uncooked meat and vegetables. The KCBS report also reviewed inspection reports, which have always been public records, but were available only on request (and at the time required an in-person visit to the health department), and found that many problems had already been expressly identified in the inspection reports but had not been adequately publicized. As a result of this report, in December 1997 the Board of Supervisors of
Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 2023. Its population is greater than that of 40 individua ...
introduced a letter grading system already in use for some years in two other nearby counties,
San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of California, north to its border with Mexico. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634; it is the second-most populous ...
and Riverside County. Instead of merely listing violations in a report, the restaurant inspection system was changed to a point system, with each restaurant starting each inspection with a perfect score of 100 points. Environmental health specialists were required to use a standard form called the Food Official Inspection Report to identify violations as they inspected establishments; the form required them to subtract a certain number of points for each violation found. Based on the number of points remaining, letter grades were then assigned and required to be prominently posted at all establishments selling food, and all establishments were also required to provide a copy of the underlying inspection report to any customer on request. Grades are available at the County Public Health Department's web site. Two
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
economics researchers found that higher lettered restaurants scored a rise in revenue, while lower lettered restaurants have seen their revenues decline. The quality of restaurants in the entire county became more acceptable, with the average score going up from about 75% to nearly 90% in the year after restaurant grading was implemented. The researchers concluded that the results were not explained solely by consumers switching to higher quality restaurants, and that some of the effect had to do with restaurants making changes due to grade cards. Another study estimated a 13.1% reduction in hospitalization for food borne illnesses in the year following implementation of the program, suggesting that implementing a restaurant grading program could improve public safety. Although Los Angeles County was not the first local jurisdiction to require restaurants to post grades, its success in implementing such a program inspired many other local governments during the 2000s to enact similar programs based on the Los Angeles model, such as Toronto, Las Vegas, Dallas, and New York City.


See also

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Culinary Arts Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking, and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called chefs or ...
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Food critic A food critic, food writer, or restaurant critic is a writer who analyzes food or restaurants and then publishes the results of their findings to the public. Terminology "Food writer" is often used as a broad term that encompasses someone who w ...
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Food grading Food grading involves the inspection, assessment and sorting of various foods regarding quality, freshness, legal conformity and market value.Saravacos, George D.; Maroulis, Zacharias B. (2011''Food Process Engineering Operations'' CRC Press ...
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Food safety Food safety (or food hygiene) is used as a scientific method/discipline describing handling, food processing, preparation, and food storage, storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. The occurrence of two or more cases of a simi ...


References

{{Reflist, 30em Hospitality industry Rating systems Restaurants Food safety