The FoodBuster Code

The Food Buster isn’t a reckless consumer, but rather someone who a follows a certain code and system. Here are the main principles:

1. Always give the advantage to the eatery.

Whenever I go to a restaurant or bakery, I simply can’t taste everything. I’m an average consumer, paying for all my meals out of my own pocket, and I don’t have the chance to simply taste a little bit of everything.

That said, people typically go to a restaurant to eat the food for which the restaurant is known or which the restaurant does especially well. That’s why I will always judge a restaurant primarily on its specialties or the recommendations of its staff. The intuition is that if the “very best” dishes—or at least those that an eatery takes special pride in—aren’t all that great, then the other dishes should be even worse.

2. Price matters.

I’m a consumer, and I pay for all my meals, and that’s the situation for most people. So when a food critic gets a fully comped meal and gives a restaurant a rating that ignores the price of the food, it doesn’t really simulate the condition of the actual consumer. Instead, the consumer typically takes price calculations into account when coming to a decision about what to eat.

I do the same, and I’m not going to try to hide that fact. Instead, I’m going to embrace it, because it’s precisely that mentality that allows me to actually speak to the consumer. I will thus always factor a value score, both implicitly and explicitly, into all my reviews

3. There is a difference between technique and personal satisfaction. Both matter.

Technique is one thing and satisfaction is another. There is a tendency, at least in finer dining, to transform food into art, or to utilize innovative techniques to make new flavor combinations and textures possible. I’m a personal fan of that type of culinary skillfulness, but if the flavor isn’t there, then all that art is worthless.

First and foremost, food must be good for it to matter. It doesn’t matter whether I’m eating a simple burger or a complex seven course meal. If it’s good, then I’ll like it, and I’ll eat it. I don’t believe in a tier of foods, where some foods are better just because they’re more expensive, fancier, or incorporate more tricks. It’s about how much I personally like the food.

At the same time, it is important to appreciate technique. Food should be prepared well as much as it must taste good. If the taste is there, factors like presentation, complexity, and interesting use of ingredients should be factored in as bonuses.

4. Foods are comparable, and quality can be quantified.

In order to judge food, you must make the implicit assumption that some food is just better than others—that’s pretty commonsensical. I’m going to go a little bit beyond that and say that all foods are comparable or commensurable, by the very fact that we, as humans, always have preferences for some over another.

Now that’s not to say that it’s a perfect science. Sometimes, you might just not be in the mood for a specific type of food. It is, however, possible to say that, on average, you would prefer some foodstuff over another.

And that’s exactly why it is possible to quantify quality. My number system is meant simply to reflect the excellence of a dish through my desire to eat it. So it’s not only possible to assign a dish a number, but higher-numbered dishes should, in general, be preferred to lower quality dishes.

5. Perfection is possible. Stated differently, unattainable scores are pointless.

There is no point in having a scale if the numbers on that scale can’t be attained. In fact, unattainable numbers can simply be cut out of a scale with no effect on the relative ordering of how good the dishes actually are.

In more intuitive terms, there are some foods that are better left untouched—foods that are so good that I would not change a single thing. That is the definition of perfection I will adopt, and I personally believe that it exists, as you will see time and time again.

6. You are what you eat. So eat well!