i’ve decided to put this review at the top as a way of explaining the way i do reviews.
mcdonald’s is my top restaurant in beli for a lot of reasons. mcdonald’s was the place to get fries and toys when i was a kid. the golden arches were the best thing you could see while driving home. in high school it was a hang out spot where my friends worked. in college it was the late night food for grinding at the library. and now that i’ve graduated it still carries these associations. ‘objectively’ it’s not something i’d recommend if you’re looking for food with interesting textures, flavors, presentation. but it’s reliable. it’s an old friend. i can’t say it hasn’t had an impact on my life. it would be reductive to make it just about the food quality, because the food quality itself is so determined by the associations one holds. the chicken nuggets immediately remind me of those late nights studying. the chocolate milk reminds me of the excitement of opening up a happy meal.
the main problem i have with reviews is they frequently get turned into this objective thing. like oh ‘objectively’ such and such is the best mexican food in seattle. that really doesn’t even make sense to say. food is subjective (as explained above)! the only way to get an approximation of an ‘objective’ ranking is by aggregating over individual, subjective experiences. and i think this means we should be rating things more subjectively. for example, my number scale for rating food is very socially informed. a 5/5 is something i’d recommend my friends to go out of their way to try. because i want them to have an experience like mine. but i can’t guarantee they’ll share it. like i think the 5 minute version of all too well is better because its more reminiscent of a time in my life. i appreciate that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. i can’t say it’s objectively better than the 10 minute version because someone else might prefer the rambly, raw, unorganized version. but i can still recommend the song as something that, for me, makes me feel strong emotions in a certain direction, and i think other people might relate. the more ‘generic’ your audience the less information you have to go off of to recommend something. i can more easily recommend never really over by katy perry to a friend who i know can’t get over an ex they had, who might resonate with it more, than someone who married their high school sweetheart. part of the strange meta effects we see in critic culture are due to this audience becoming other critics. things become praised more for elegant subversion or interesting impacts on the media as a whole because the people im writing the review for are other critics. transformers is a derivative movie with no plot or character development, but i would give it a 5/5 to a little boy who likes robots and explosions. there’s this temptation to try to please everyone and have things be general. but its more work and thus more interesting and information dense to be specific.
anyways so
5/5 - i had a good experience here and i would go out of my way to eat this/take friends here. i have associations with this place that remind me of it without needing to recognize it
4/5 - would be excited if i remembered it existed or it was nearby but i don’t really crave it outside of hearing about it
3/5 - forgettable, average, mid, unremarkable, no associations made
2/5 - would steer people away from, would suck it up with people i don’t know.
1/5 - i will not eat this again