Tag: tripadvisor

Finding that great restaurant: A discerning approach to great dining experiences

The Cliff's spectacular ambience as the sun goes down along the Platinum Coast of Barbados
The Cliff’s spectacular ambience as the sun goes down along the Platinum Coast of Barbados

Dining (not just eating) is one of the great pleasures of traveling.  When we think back to that time several years ago when we almost bought a time-share, it was the dining issue that finally brought us to our senses.

While sitting in the lobby of said time-share property, we noted with growing alarm a phenomenon that is anathema to our personal traveling esthetic.  First, there was neither bar nor restaurant on site.  Second – and perhaps more shudder -inducing – was that people were one after the other schlepping groceries into the elevators.  That was our eureka moment!  We wanted no part of a traveling lifestyle that involved the expectation that one would regularly grocery shop, cook and eat in a suite.  For us, finding those perfect places to eat is part of the fun of planning a trip; and enjoying the good and bad experiences as a result is all part of the pleasure of learning about new places.  Oh, and the actual experience of a wonderful meal and its ambience is part of it, too.  So, just how do we make dining plans?

First, not all dining while traveling needs be planned in advance.  In fact, we’ve had some wonderful experiences that serendipitously came our way while wandering around unknown cities.  We happened on Bentley’s in London this way and have since returned.

Recently we ate our way up the platinum coast of Barbados while spending five days at the wonderful property The House en route to a Seabourn cruise that left from Bridgetown.  We used several approaches to find our experiences – most of which were phenomenal.

We usually begin our search for restaurants online – a search for the location uncovered a couple of restaurant names that we then took over t Fodors online for their review.  We then looked at TripAdvisor, used our discerning approach to interpreting the reviews and wrote those names done in our little purple moleskine that we take on ever trip.

Art enjoys a glass of wine at Scarlett's. We even bought T-shirts!
Art enjoys a glass of wine at Scarlett’s. We even bought T-shirts!

Once we got to Barbados we asked the concierge to make us reservations and asked her for further suggestions.  She added a new restaurant to our list, made the reservations and we embarked on our terrific dining experience.  Here’s what happened.

One not-to-be-missed place we had decided we wanted to dine before even leaving home soil was The Cliff.  Here’s what we wrote in our TripAdvisor review when we returned home:

“The Cliff” is as much an experience as it is simply dining. Its breathtaking setting as the sun sets, the impeccable service, the beautifully served and wonderfully innovative food coupled with its terrific wine list, all serve to make the $245 per person minimum worth it! We think it turned out to be our most expensive dinner ever. But…[1] It was worth it!

Hmm...the service pledge at The Tides.
Hmm…the service pledge at The Tides.

The other must-eat place (or so we thought) that was on our list was The Tides.  We used the same approach to finding it as we did for The Cliff, its name residing in our little purple book.  The concierge made us a reservation for 5:30 pm – this seems a tad early, but it was that or much too late.  We arrived at the place perhaps ten minutes before our reservation only to be told that our table was not ready, and were ushered into the bar.  An interesting bar filled with unusual local artwork, it seemed the place to order a small bottle of champagne, which we did.  Time went by; other people entered the restaurant and were seated. We drank and waited.  Then Art went out to the desk and asked if our table was ready.  Oh, yes it was.  Were they planning to ever seat us, or were we to continue drinking and racking up a bar bill?  Not to worry.  We were ushered into the restaurant and put at an unacceptable table.  We were the only people in that section, and yet we were not permitted to sit at the table of our choice on the water’s edge.  We were told that those tables were all booked for 8 pm and were not available to us.  We promised to be finished by that time, and were told, no.  We were unhappy.  No, they told us, the other reservation might come early.  We looked at each other – we had come early and that didn’t seem to matter to them.  And, in fact if we had been seated at the time when our reservation was to be ready, we would certainly have been finished by 8.  No.  We could not sit there.  The manager was brought to the table.  An imposingly large man, he also said no.  By this time we were not feeling too positively disposed to this restaurant.  Perhaps if we had not had to sit and wait, being left drinking at the bar, Patty might not have been inclined to swear at him.  To her later embarrassment (not one of her finer moments) she did; and we left.  While waiting out front for our taxi driver to arrive, we remembered that we had not paid the bar bill.  Art returned and paid it, taking the opportunity to snap a photo of the sign he had seen earlier in the men’s washroom.

So, there we were.  Several glasses of champagne later, and still no dinner.  Our own fault – we could have stayed, but we would have been severely ticked if we had eaten there and spent the entire time looking at the empty tables where we could have sat at the water’s edge.  Serendipity to the rescue – sort of.

Our taxi driver was distressed that we had not been able to eat.  So, he took us to Scarlett’s and asked the hostess if there was space.  Well, she said, if they can be finished by 8:30 we certainly can accommodate them.  Now why had that line been so hard to say at The Tides?  It was now well after 7 pm, but we knew that we wouldn’t linger.  We were not disappointed.  What a wonderful find that was!  The next morning we recounted our sad Tides story to a young American couple who we had chatted with the evening before.  “Don’t worry,” said the young woman, “you didn’t miss anything.”  Hmm…

Beautiful water-side, cooly contemporary Cin-Cin.
Beautiful water-side, cooly contemporary Cin-Cin.

We also ate at the new Cin-Cin on the recommendation of the concierge, as well as Daphne’s because it was actually at The House; these were equally wonderful experiences.

So, our recommended approaches to finding terrific restaurants are as follows:

  • Restaurant Apps:  Our favorite one for North America is Open Table and its British counterpart Top Table.  These apps have stood us in good stead many times.  One evening when we arrived at a Washington DC restaurant just across from the White House with a 7 pm reservation, we found it extremely crowded, wildly noisy and boasting a line-up of people with 6:45 reservations who had yet to be seated.  We looked at each other and turned back into the revolving doors, finding ourselves on the sidewalk outside and no dinner.  The IPhone to the rescue!  We searched on Open Table for restaurants near us with reservation slots within a half an hour.  We were very shortly on our way to a new reservation at 10-minute walk away and had a wonderful evening.  These are not the only apps that are worthwhile.  Check out  9 Restaurant Apps Worth Downloading and Maximize Your Weekend with the 35 Most Popular Restaurant Apps.
  • Online Restaurant Reviews: As online reviewers ourselves, we know that these can be helpful (!).  That being said, you do need to be a bit discerning when interpreting these personal perspectives – there is nothing very objective about it.  However, you can make them useful to you by looking at a couple of things.  If the review is very negative in the face of more positive reviews, note how many reviews the reviewer has done.  Many times it’s a first or second-time reviewer who only posts to vent.  Then read what people say.  If they gave the restaurant in question five stars and then go on to say that it was noisy and kid-friendly, if you are looking for a quiet evening out as a couple, you probably need to steer clear despite its high rating.  Then, you can actually read the profiles of reviewers on sites like TripAdvisor (ours is here).  If they share your approach to travel, then you are more likely to find their reviews useful.  Then go ahead and click that it was helpful if you find it to be so.  This helps with the rating of the reviewer.  (Interestingly, research conducted at UC Berkley found that ratings from online reviews actually do have an impact on a restaurant’s business – this means that those reviews are important to the owners.[2])
  • Recommendations from Hotel Concierges:  Many people steer clear of recommendations from concierges because of a distaste for the probability that there is some kind of a kick-back or other relationship between the hotel/concierge and the restaurant.  So what?  That doesn’t mean that the recommendation isn’t going to be a great one.  Remember that if guests take them up on their recommendations and are not happy, this does not reflect well on the property.  This is a result that hotels try to avoid at all costs.  So, tell the concierge what kind of diners you are and go for it.  It is polite to tip for this service, although many people never do.  Pity.  They can be very helpful.

Obviously there are other ways to get ideas for where to dine when on holiday.  Sometimes you follow the advice of a friend who has been there before.  We do find, however, that not all our friends share our tastes and dining esthetic.  We know which ones whose advice we politely accept and promptly ignore, and which ones to follow.  In the end, you need to know what you’re looking for on any given day.  Some days you just want a pint and a nosh at a pub; other times you want that full-out experience.  Whatever you decide on, for better or for worse, just enjoy the experience – or at least laugh about it later.

Enjoying Daphne's.
Enjoying Daphne’s.

A discerning guide to interpreting online reviews of restaurants & other things…

The tables at Gaylord's in Kauai are arranged around the inner courtyard of the plantation house under the porch awning. As the sun sets, the soft light of the torches begins to glow.

Call it social media, web 2.0, the inmates taking over asylum or whatever other terms (laudatory or derogatory: take your pick), but call it here to stay.   And less than a decade has passed since everything has changed for us discerning travelers when it comes to making travel decisions.  When we first started globe-trotting, we relied on two important sources of information: travel brochures and a trusty travel agent.  These days, although both of these are important (brochures that have morphed into glossy magazines because it feels so darn nice just to turn the pages in an evening with a glass of wine, and our travel agent, Angela because we rely on her for getting us into and out of complicated trips), there is such an array of other information that it boggles the mind.  So, why don’t we just ignore all those new sources of information?  Well, that would be just dumb.

But the question still remains: how do you wade through all of the information?  Our main concern is how to interpret the user-generated reviews; in other words, how do you discern the truth from reviews posted by fellow travelers?  Not easily as it turns out.  Here is our story.

Patty actually teaches social media to graduate students in communication studies at a local university.  So, in our case, we do need to keep up with what’s happening.  Over the past year or so, we’ve become regular reviewers on TripAdvisor, one of the largest (perhaps the largest at this stage) traveler-based review site for hotels, restaurants and travel experiences.  That usually means that we also use reviews posted by others to get a sense of location, hotels and restaurants.  The trouble is, after we’ve been to some of them and we go back to post our own reviews, we often see discrepancies that are not so much a function of differing points of view, rather they seem to be based on some reviewers not actually reviewing the right property at all!  Here is our case in point.

The entertainment at Gaylord's.

In February we headed out to Hawaii in search of some warmth and relaxation in Kauai and the big island.  While we were in Lihue on Kauai, we chatted up the concierge at the hotel to find dining options and decided to take a taxi to Gaylord’s.  Located on the ground floor of a wonderful period plantation house on the outskirts of Lihue, this restaurant is a real step back in time.  With top-notch service, wonderful food and evening entertainment in the open-air restaurant, the evening was memorable.  And so on our return home we decided to post a review of the spot on TripAdvisor.  As we usually do, we browsed other reviews before writing ours so as to add something that might have been overlooked by others.  Much to our surprise, we noted several reviews that said things like this:  “The show is stunning with beautiful music and stunning fire twirling. Food was buffet cafeteria style and not A+ quality…”  Huh?  Where were they?  They certainly didn’t dine at Gaylord’s.  However, they were on the property.

Be sure to visit the rest of the plantation house after dinner -- here is the great room.

At the Kilohana Plantation which is where Gaylord’s is located, there are luaus twice a week on the back lot.  In fact, the evening we were there was a luau going on, but other than the cars parked out front, the crowd at the buffet-style luau didn’t interfere in any way with our own experience.  However, this person who wrote the review (and this one was not the only one) certainly didn’t eat at Gaylord’s.  This suggested to us that there might be many other mistakes like this one.  Obviously, our review attempted to clear this up.  But it begs the question of how to interpret what you read.

Here are some of the things we’ve learned about interpreting travel advice on the web.

  • Know what kind of site you’re on.  There are many different kinds of travel sites.  Among them are review sites from travel guide companies (www.frommers.com; www.fodors.com) where the reviews are written by professional reviewers ; there are travel review sites where the reviews are written by travelers (www.tripadvisor.com, www.virtualtourist.com);  there are travel  sales companies (www.maritimetravel.com),  there are traveler blogs that are monetized (read: supported by specific commercial interests), and there are personal travel blogs like this one that are stories from travelers like you who simply want to share experiences).  Each of these kinds of sites has a different agenda and each has something different to offer you.  Remember, though, that each of them has a frame through which they see the travel industry as a whole, and specific experiences in particular.  And each one wants something different from you.  Armed with this information, you’re ready to move on into the sites you choose.
  • Get a feel for the kinds of reviews posted on the site.  Before you hone in on the specific places you’re looking for, read as many reviews as you have time for.  Look at how many there are for any given place and how often each is reviewed.  There would be no point in you reading a review from us of a cruise we took on the Seven Seas Navigator three years ago because she has been completely refitted since then.
  • Examine who is doing the reviewing.  This is particularly important in user-generated reviews.  If you see a review that you think is useful to you, read the reviewer’s profile to find out if the reviewer might be looking for something different than you are.  If you read our profile on TripAdvisor, for example, you can see that we are not interested in family-oriented places and seek the best of everything.  If you’re searching for budget accommodation, our reviews will not be helpful to you.  On the other hand, if you are an astute, discerning traveler, you just might find what you’re looking for.  It’s also important to be aware that there have been some scandals involving property owners or someone working for them posting glowing reviews.  Early this year the British Advertising Standards Authority censured TripAdvisor for suggesting that all reviews on the site are unbiased.  (Read the story here.)This is a hazard of social media.
  • Beware of the one-sentence review.  Anyone can slap up a sentence or two without really thinking about what made the experience good or bad.  If someone says that a place was wonderful or terrible without details – telling you rather than showing you – move on to another review.  These are not helpful.  At least if someone relates their actual experience to you, you can judge for yourself.  Some travelers consider places over-priced when what you really might be looking for is value for your money and be willing to pay more to get more.  A review that simply says the food was over-priced without any details is useless.

So, now we need to get ourselves to a review site to search for wonderful restaurants that we haven’t already experienced in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Ten days and counting!

Five tips for finding your perfect, private, personalized, dream tour

We all have our obsessions.  Obviously, travel is one of ours, and along with that goes our obsession with personalizing our holidays.  Gone are the days of pre-arranged group shore excursions from cruise ships, and gone are the days of European bus tours with 42 other well-intentioned travelers for us (but we did have a wonderful time all those years ago on a whirlwind tour of Europe with a ten-year-old  – maybe we’ll tell you about it sometime!).

In our quest for personalization, we’re becoming experts on finding tour operators who specialize in bespoke experiences, and finding those tour companies online – a tricky and anxiety-inducing prospect as you lighten your wallet by a considerable sum before even setting foot in the country to which you are traveling.  For what it’s worth, then, we offer you our five tips for finding that perfect (for you), private, personalized dream tour.  First, the story of how we discovered these tips.

It all started a few months before when we began our search for a bespoke tour of the countryside outside Paris.  That search led us to À Paris Travel and a wonderful woman named Sue Lillie.  With considerable trepidation, we had started an online search for tour companies specializing in European travel, and soon found that there were too many to wade through with any degree of certainty about their quality.  So we narrowed our search to specialists in visiting France and stumbled on this wonderful company.  But we didn’t know that it would be wonderful at that time.

We decided that we’d focus on one of our obsessions – champagne – and more specifically in Patty’s case Veuve Clicquot champagne.  This led us to create a tour of the champagne district that would include a visit to the Veuve caves and a champagne tasting or two.  Before we were willing to pay the complete upfront amount, however, rather than conducting all of the transactions through email and the web site, we decided that a chat with the proprietor might put our minds at ease.  And so it did.  After a very pleasant conversation with US-based Lille (late of Montreal as it turned out), we felt quite comfortable paying in advance for the tour (which is required for most of these companies).  Then all we had to do was hope that a car and driver showed up on the appointed day at the appointed time.

Moet & Chandon in Epernay, France.

Early one gray morning in Paris we made our way to the front door of our hotel on the Champs Elysees to find Pascale leaning against his car awaiting our arrival.  And so we were off.

After a few brief questions about our interests, Pascale was quite sure he know just where to take us.  He’d take us to one champagne house, and then make arrangements for the other.  First, we’d visit Épernay where we would take a tour and tasting at the venerable Moet & Chandon, and then we’d venture to Reims, the largest city in the Champagne district and home to the Veuve caves.  Between the two, Pascale would drop us off at a favorite lunch spot where we’d join the locals for a bite to eat.

Patty at the champagne-tasting bar at Veuve Clicquot in Reims, France.

With just the three of us on board, we had all the freedom that a group tour just doesn’t offer.  The itinerary was ours alone and if we decided to veer off course at any point during the day, we could.  It was another of those days that you mark down in your memory as ‘perfect.’  In fact, it was so perfect that we relaxed a bit about the second tour we had booked during that trip (yes, we took a chance and booked two).  When tiny Caroline picked us up in her massive Mercedes in Villefranche on the French Riviera two weeks later, we knew that we were in for the time of our lives thanks to À Paris Travel and our willingness to take a risk.

Tip # 1: Be specific about exactly where you want the tour to take you.

We were quite clear that we wanted to visit Champagne, rather than simply saying that we’d like to take a day trip out of Paris which is the thought we had initially.

Tip #2: Decide what kind of experiences you’d like (follow your obsessions for example), and then keep an open mind.

We had other ideas when Pascale picked us up that morning, but other than the visit to Veuve, we were open-minded and let him guide us.  These kinds of open-minded approaches have led us to many wonderful experiences over the years.  And these guides are truly wonderful resources.  Use them!

Tip #3: Do your online research carefully and consider it to be part of the experience.

This is so important.  You need to do a lot of research, and you should consider not thinking of it as work; rather you might see it as part of the learning experience that travel ought to be.  We actually consider research prior to a trip a part of the trip resulting in a much longer experience than the week or three that are actually away.

Champagne, vintage 1906, in the caves.

Tip #4: Do your due diligence.

For us that means that as often as possible, getting these tour operators on the telephone.  Even if it’s as simple as booking a limo drive from a cruise terminal, try to speak to someone in person once you’ve gathered all the information you can from the web.  You can learn a lot by that more personal contact.  If you have a gut feeling that this isn’t for you, you are very likely right.  Sue Lillie put us very much at ease as she told us about how her company had developed and her own passion for French travel.

You can also use online travel forums such as TripAdvisor (we’re contributors to this one), but remember that everyone is different.  Read the contributors’ pieces carefully and note the outliers – in other words, is it the only one that had a problem with the tour operator, or the only one that didn’t.  In either case, that one might not provide you with as helpful information as you might think.  Also, read reviews to see if they are specific, or if they are just subjective assessments (e.g. It was wonderful! Terrible!  etc. without concrete descriptions of exactly what made it so wonderful or terrible letting the reader then decide.).  In the end, a traveler review on a site such as TripAdvisor is based largely on the contributor’s expectations going in.  If we were to review some of the hotels that others find wonderful, we’d find them barely acceptable for a variety of reasons all based on what we’re looking for.

Tip #5: Make your decision, pay your money, and don’t look back.

Don’t second guess yourself.  After you make a decision, go with it.  File away other interesting information about other tour companies for the future, but don’t keep comparing what one might have offered.  You’ve made a decision, and it is very likely that if you did your homework, it will be the right one for you.

If you’ve hit on a truly terrific one, perhaps you’ll do what we did and book again with that tour operator.  We’d love to know how people make out with personalized tours.  If you have five minutes, come along with us as we follow our obsession with Veuve Clicquot from the caves in France to the Veuve bar aboard the Queen Mary 2.