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SALT LAKE CITY -- If you are going out to eat this weekend, you may get a chance to become a Zagat critic. The official restaurant reviewers want regular Utahns to rate Salt Lake City's restaurants.
The company's website includes a section that allows you to rate a restaurant's food, decor, service and estimated cost. You must have visited the restaurant within the last year.
But it's not as easy as you think to be a proper critic. Deseret News restaurant critic Stacey Kratz says you need to make sure you know pretty much everything about a dish you are reviewing.
"It's important to be accurate in terms of what's in it, how is it prepared, how does that compare to the best that that particular dish can be prepared," she says.
I'm always telling people that they get angry in restaurants because of an experience they had, but a lot of Utahns are not good at constructively complaining to that restaurant.
–Stacey Kratz
Kratz also warns to give restaurants a chance to make up for a bad experience before writing a scathing review.
"I'm always telling people that they get angry in restaurants because of an experience they had, but a lot of Utahns are not good at constructively complaining to that restaurant," she says.
Kratz says if you like a restaurant, be sure to be specific and accurate about what it was that appealed to you. You may have had fun with family or it's a place you've gone all your life, but was the food really good?
She says she tries to base her reviews on how good the restaurant is compared to the best of its kind.
Zagat is offering incentives. Those who vote before June 6 will receive either a 90-day subscription to zagat.com, a copy of Zagat's "2011 America's Top Restaurants Guide" or an entry into the "Night on the Town" sweepstakes, valued at $500.
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
