Now, what to call this new food-info hybrid? Zagoole?

While you're pondering, read Y&H alum Tim Carman's definitive take on Zagat's rating system and its cut-and-paste prose here.

The Village Voice directs our attention to this cutesy Zagat Buzz video demonstrating the various types of annoying restaurant patrons and their ordering habits. Which order type are you?

There's the apologetic type: "is it remotely possible at all to have no ice?...I'm so sorry."

The indecisive type: "I think I want the potato skins...."

The macho type: "two shots of Jamo—bring it!"

The high maintenance type: "I want one piece of wheat and one piece of rye..."

The long-pauser type: "Yes...my turn...I would like, from the non, um, alcohol beverages section a...Coke. A Cola."

The low-talker type: "[inaudible]"

And, the "off the menu" type: "instead of the whole salad thing can I get..."

Me: I'm probably more of the asks-too-many-questions-for-an-average-customer type. But thankfully, there's no footage of that type here.

Not even the lobster truck could compete with Five Guys

Last week was one for the record books, thanks to the baffling whims of the interwebs. A four-paragraph item about Five Guys topping the hamburger category in the 2010 Zagat fast food survey went viral, generating tens of thousands of hits and causing our poor little servers at City Paper to beg for mercy.

Because of that item, traffic to the Young & Hungry blog broke all previous records. Take that Red Hook Lobster Pound truck!

The top five from last week:

1. Five Guys Makes the Best Fast-Food Burger in the Country
2. Red Hook Lobster Pound Truck Gets Rolling Today
3. R.J. Cooper to Open an Alleyway, All-Tasting Menu Restaurant in Mount Vernon Square
4. D.C. Beer Week Starts Friday: What's In Store?
5. Lobster Truck Has 'Em Hooked Already

Photo by Kim Chi Ha

While reporting out this week's column on the 2011 Zagat guide, I talked to Michael Landrum, who's something of a student of the biennial survey. He surprised me early in our conversation when he said:

Ray’s the Steaks never deserved to be a 27-rated restaurant, as much as I’d like to say this, but it received a Zagat’s 27 rating for six years running, which to me was embarrassing on a personal level, to see my Zagat rating being at the same level as something like Restaurant Eve or Corduroy or people who do much stronger culinary work from what we do at Ray’s the Steaks. This year, we dropped to 26, which I think is a more appropriate level and still very very complimentary to us...

I was somewhat surprised by Landrum's comment, given the nature of the democratic Zagat survey, in which any restaurant, regardless of its complexity, can technically score 30 points. I told Landrum that if a more casual restaurant, like Ray's, performs its job to perfection, no matter its limited culinary ambitions, the place should be rewarded 30 points. That's how Zagat should work.

Landrum clarified his stance:

"I think like in diving, there’s a degree-of-difficulty factor.”

But there's not, I interrupt Landrum.

“But there should be," he counters. "Ray’s the Steaks is an outlying example, because we do excel at what we do to a very, very high standard that does warrant a 27, but where I said 'embarrassment,' I mean that sort of in comparison with some of my peers, where the degree of difficulty in what they do is much higher than what we do, and that’s not necessarily reflected in the Zagat’s score."

"In diving," Landrum continues, "they rate whatever points the judges give you, the 9 or 8, and they multiple that by the degree of difficulty factor and what that dive is rated at."

But they don't do that with Zagat, I interrupt again.

"If there was a degree-of-difficulty factor in the Zagat rating for the food quality, a place like Corduroy would be rated a little higher and a place like Ray’s the Steaks would be rated a little lower."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

I want to talk about restaurant reviews for a minute — your reviews.  Diners have power, and you've had it for as long as anyone has cared about Zagat ratings. But with the proliferation of sites as far-ranging (and far-reaching) as Yelp and Urbanspoon, not to mention personal blogs, your ability to make noise has increased significantly. I'm not always convinced that your sense of fairness has kept pace.

I say this after reading what happened recently at the Mussel Bar, chef Robert Wiedmaier's new gastropub and "rock 'n' roll bar" in Bethesda. A diner who goes by the handle, "Anna" (or sometimes "Anu") has been strafing the landscape with essentially the same comment. She has posted it on Zagat, Urbanspoon, CultureMob, Metrocurean, Yelp (where it's been filtered), and even our little blog. Here's the gist of it:

The food is ok..overpriced yes but ok. The reason for low rating is the service we received from none other than restaurant manager and owner. We went and my husband didn’t have his ID with him. We are a couple in our late late thirties and look it. Since I had ID, I ordered the drink and my husband sipped from it. The owner and the manager started to yell at us as if we were teenage kids trying to get drunk in the middle of our meal. Threatening to throw us out if my husband drank another sip. I understood his policy but come on …yelling at us…really?

I was beyond mortified and embarrassed. More for him than for us. I plan on telling everyone about how little he thinks of his patrons. I am also a writer so you can bet this is what’s on my mind and where my writing energies will go.

Wiedmaier has his own take on the incident, and he was only too happy to share it yesterday when we launched into a conversation about public reviews. He told me that when the ID-less husband first took a sip of the drink, a manager approached the table and informed the couple that the gentleman wasn't allowed to consume alcohol.

Later, Wiedmaier said, the husband took another sip of the drink. This is when he decided a visit from the owner was necessary to drive the point home. Wiedmaier said he "very nicely" explained why the husband could not drink without an ID; he said he even apologized to the couple for having to make a fuss. The owner said the husband and wife were smiling on their way out the door.

Then the wife's online reviews started to hit. She highly discouraged people from going to the Mussel Bar because of Wiedmaier's alleged treatment. She even called for an outright ban of the restaurant for "anyone who feel[s] this is uncalled for."

Wiedmaier was not, to say the least, happy about the smear campaign. "I should have just asked them to leave," he says in retrospect. "They were breaking the law, and I could have gotten in trouble."

I'm not here to judge whose version of the story is correct. I'm here to suggest that diners, when they turn into public reviewers, have to put their bad experiences into perspective. This couple obviously felt slighted. They felt slighted because they decided the punishment — Wiedmaier's alleged outburst — didn't fit the crime of taking sips in violation of, well, nothing to their minds. So what did they do?

The wife did the exact same thing to the owner that he allegedly did to them: She meted out a swift and harsh punishment for his behavior. She called for a ban and then broadcast it as far and wide as possible, to the potential detriment of the business. She doesn't appear to consider the position that she and her had husband put the Mussel Bar in, and what tension that might create with servers, managers, and the owner, who have something to lose in this situation.

I contacted Kathie Durbin, chief of licensure, regulation, and education for the Montgomery County Department of Liquor Control, and she said that it's technically not illegal to serve someone without an ID. But, she added, each restaurant and each bar develops its own policy on when to serve customers. They do so to protect themselves from underage drinkers.

And potentially large fines. Durbin says the county has a "compliance check program" in which it sends an 18-year-old adult into every bar and restaurant to see if the underage drinker can order a cocktail or beer without presenting identification. The fine to a licensee for serving such a person is large — $1,000 for a first offense. Plus, there is the potential for a hearing in which the Board of License Commissioners can levy addition punishment.

As a result, licensed bars and restaurants in Montgomery County often create their own carding policies to protect themselves from such ugly  consequences.  Wiedmaier told me that they card everyone who looks 35 or younger, which of course is a judgment call. This couple clearly ran headlong into Mussel Bar's policy, which they decided to flaunt. Maybe it annoyed Wiedmaier, maybe it didn't. Maybe he got angry, maybe he didn't.

The fact is, the Mussel Bar has a right to set its own policy. The couple, in turn, can decide to ignore it. But there are consequences, like separate visits from the manager and owner.

The couple was clearly indignant about these forward approaches to their table, and with the power of social media at their fingertips, they were going to let as many people know as possible. But here's a maxim that this couple and every other online commentator should consider: with greater power comes greater responsibility.

Mea culpa!

I should say that I did try first to contact Hill Country owner and Bethesda native, Marc Glosserman, before posting the information, but didn't hear back in time. That's no excuse and, in fact, just makes me seem like yet another blogger putting urgency before facts. Mea culpa 2!

Anyway, enough groveling, here are the facts as I know them now on Hill Country: Crews just started construction this week on the Penn Quarter space at 410 Seventh St. NW, which used to be a Lifestyles USA clothing store.

"If it's [done] before the end of 2010, that will be the best case scenario," says
Sarah Abell, who's handling publicity for Hill Country.

Yep, even though the surveys are conducted every two years, Zagat asks you to limit your judgments to those meals you ate in the past 12 months. I suspect they do so to make the survey seem "fresh," and to ensure the meals are still "fresh" in your mind, but what this means is that every biennial survey leaves a full year of eating undocumented. What the hell kind of system is this?

I decided to cast a single ballot this time around, just to see what the online voting process was like.  I selected a restaurant from Zagat's deep and impressive database; I rated it from 0-3 in three categories; I guessed at the price of a single dinner with drink and tip (I'm sure most folks keep their receipts handy); and then submitted the result.

I was taken to a lengthy survey that I had to fill out before I'd be eligible for any rewards, like a free Zagat guide. The questions ranged from the standard ("How many times do you dine out per week?") to the topical ("Should trans fats be banned from food preparation in restaurants?") to the economic ("What effect, if any, has the weak economy had on your dining habits?").

At no point was I asked if I was affiliated with the restaurant that I just voted for.

You have until Feb. 21 to participate in this ballot-stuffing contest survey.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Y&H will give you three guesses as to what the most-read post was this week. Two of them won't count.

That's right, once again, a certain low-cal product from Bud leads the pack, for the umpteenth week in a row. This is the dark side of search-engine optimization.

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Which Sources Do You Trust for Restaurant Commentary?
3. White House Farmers Market to Open Tomorrow
4. D.C. Bloggers: Help Make Next Month 'Blogtoberfest'
5. Which Sources Do Readers Trust for Restaurant Commentary? The Ts Have It.
   

Photo by alceste99 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

As Y&H bids farewell to the Zagat era in this week's cover story, I'd like to recall this hilarious SNL sketch in which the late, great Chris Farley was so funny as a matronly, oblivious wife that Adam Sandler could barely keep it together.