Buenos Aires – Europe (and slowly spreading to other areas) has its Michelin Tire Company which produces the famed Michelin Guides to restaurants. It seems fitting, somehow, that the name of Argentina’s largest production tire company is FATE, especially when I started thinking about a restaurant guide here on SaltShaker. I get regular e-mails from readers asking for restaurant recommendations and/or commenting on my writeups, and I even sort of feel like one of those solo Michelin writers, far from home (well, really, this is home now), scribbling notes to be turned into a FATEful number of forks, stars, or what have you.
If you haven’t noted it, I added a page over there in the righthand column of Restaurant Reviews. It’s a simple listing of all the writeups that I’ve tapped out on my keyboard, along with a link to the original post. I’ve also, at least for Buenos Aires, included recommendations, or not, for places I’ve eaten at but not written up (yet). My plan is to have it become a useful tool for those searching for places to dine, and here’s where you come in. I’m not particularly concerned for places outside of BsAs, as for the most part those will be scattered reviews when I travel, and easy to glance at. I am noticing that the listing for here is a bit unwieldy. So – what makes sense to you, who actually read and use the information in my blog, for organization of this listing? Right now it’s merely alphabetical. I could do it by recommendation category, cuisine, neighborhood, or probably something I haven’t thought of… Let me know what you think – either here as a comment, or via e-mail (which seems to be the preferred method of communicating with me – I really do read all the comments though, so either works).
As a fairly devoted reader – more on that in the next day or two – and now a visitor to BsAs, I’ve found your reviews very helpful, and not just in the restaurant category. Sometimes, as yesterday, one conjures up a “distant” memory. We (Czar and I) dropped in on Cumana at lunchtime…now, what was it that Saltshaker had said about this place? We couldn’t remember directly, but I decided that in light of several columns you’ve written you must have tried both the Empanadas and the Locro. I decided on the Corn and Pumpkin empanada (I later read that this was a new mixture for you – you, and I, loved it. Locro was also a natural choice from all your writings – I’d never had one before. I had nothing to compare it to, therefore, but thought it was really good and then read how you thought it was one of the best in town. Right on, bro. It’s a case of taking your recommendation after the fact.
But to your question, I don’t think there is one “best way” to list your restaurants. But thanks to the internet you can run lists and if I look up Recoleta/Barrio Norte I can find Cumana or Rigoletto etc. And also if I look up Locro or Empanada etc.
I’m guessing that that would entail a lot of extra work, but hey, you asked.
Bottom line: however you do it, it’s useful. Some places I don’t expect I’ll get too near (as a non-resident, for now), but others might.
I posed this as a comment in hopes others will expand upon it or add exertise I don’t have.
Thanks Jerry, I’m glad you liked Cumaná!
Yes, I did ask, and it’s definitely why I include the search feature on the blog. I’d love to make the list itself more of a table format that can be re-ordered by any of those various categories, but it seems that blogging software doesn’t really support that – I may just have to “bite the bullet” and make separate sub-pages that are identical lists but ordered in the various ways I mentioned – maybe just having them be invisible unless someone clicks on a link for “by neighborhood” or “by rating” or “by cuisine”. Might be better to do it now while the list is manageable than wait until it gets really long…