Our Five Scoring Criteria

Why we show our working

Open Google Maps, Tripadvisor or Yelp in any big city and you will find that most restaurants worth considering sit somewhere above four out of five. That compression is the problem. When a forgettable pizza place and a genuinely brilliant one both show 4.5, the number has stopped doing its job. Friends and family leave five stars to be kind, unhappy diners often stay silent, and a few owners still buy praise despite new laws against it.

So we built a scale we are willing to use from bottom to top, and we publish how every score is assembled. If our verdict and your instincts disagree, you can see exactly which criterion caused it.

1. Cooking — 35%

The heaviest weight, because it is the reason you leave the house. We look at seasoning, temperature, texture and whether the dish actually delivers what the menu promises. A "crispy" pork belly that arrives soft loses marks here. The core question is blunt: would we order this plate again with our own money? Consistency counts too, which is why we taste across the menu and across visits rather than judging one star dish.

2. Ingredients — 20%

Good produce handled simply often beats mediocre produce handled cleverly. We judge the bread, the butter, the frying oil, the ripeness of the tomatoes in July and the honesty of the sourcing claims. Words like "artisanal" and "heritage" earn nothing on their own. A named farm earns credit only when you can taste why it was worth naming.

3. Value — 20%

Value is not cheapness. It is what you got for what you paid, including drinks mark-ups, bread charges, mandatory service and portion size. A £14 lunch plate can score a 9 for value while a £140 tasting menu scores a 5. We always note the bill per head so you can judge the number for yourself.

4. Service — 15%

Timing, knowledge, warmth, and how mistakes are handled. Anyone can be charming when everything goes right; we pay attention to what happens when a dish arrives wrong or the kitchen runs late. We never invent problems, but when something is genuinely off we send it back and watch the response.

5. Room — 10%

Noise, light, comfort, cleanliness and the state of the toilets. The low weight is deliberate. A great room is a pleasure, but we have eaten the best meal of a month at a counter facing a wall, and we refuse to let interior design carry a mediocre kitchen.

How visits work

We pay in full and book under ordinary names. Sit-down restaurants get at least two visits on different days, ideally one busy and one quiet. Street stalls are tried at peak and off-peak hours. Bakeries are visited once in the morning and once late in the afternoon, when the truth about their lamination comes out. Notes are taken at the table and the score is written the next day, after the wine has worn off.

Category adjustments

A food stall should not lose points for having no chairs, so weights shift by category. Bistros move five points from ingredients to value. Street food lifts cooking to 40% and drops the setting to 5%. Bakeries raise ingredients to 25%. Dessert bars give the room 15%, because the evening is part of what you pay for. Every adjustment is shown on the category tile.

Rating scales compared

Different guides measure different things. Here is how the main systems line up with ours.

When scores change

Restaurants change, and so do our scores. A chef leaving, a menu overhaul or a sharp price rise triggers a revisit. Every review carries the date of the last visit, and old scores are kept in the review history rather than quietly overwritten.