Restaurant Review Policy

Caution to Innkeepers and others.—The Editor of the Hand-books has learned from various quarters that a person or persons have of late been extorting money from innkeepers, tradespeople, artists, and others, on the Continent, under pretext of procuring recommendations and favourable notices of them and their establishments in the Hand-books for Travellers. The Editor, therefore, thinks proper to warn all whom it may concern, that recommendation in the Hand-books are not to be obtained by purchase, and that the persons alluded to are not only unauthorised by him, but are totally unknown to him. All those, therefore, who put confidence in such promises may rest assured that they will be defrauded of their money without attaining their object.

— Richard Ford, A Hand-book for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home, 1845

I do not visit the same place three times a year, taking furtive notes while I eat in disguise. Nor do I keep voluminous dossiers on restaurants, chefs, and rank them relative to each other.

I like to eat. I sometimes like to eat in restaurants; sometimes with other people, sometimes alone. A few of these experiences happen to simultaneously meet all the following criteria:

• They happen in a restaurant that could plausibly be called Asturian.
• I enjoyed the experience.
• I take a bunch of pictures.
• The chef, owners, and other patrons of the restaurant were nice enough to talk to me about it.
• I think you would like to hear about the experience, and would probably enjoy eating in the restaurant as well.

When all of those things happen to coincide, I write up my experience of the restaurant and post it here.

Inclusion or Exclusion

If I have not written about a particular restaurant here, it could be for one of many reasons. Some of those reasons include:

• I have not been to the restaurant.
• The restaurant does not fit the style of the blog.
• I didn’t particularly enjoy my meal or visit there.

That means that you are not going to find negative reviews of restaurants here. You might find a negative thing said about a place as an aside in a story I post about something else. If you try hard enough, you might be able to suss out what exact restaurant I was talking about.

I also will not accept free meals or drinks in exchange for mentioning a restaurant. I only write about meals I have paid for without compensation of any kind.