There are a number of ways you can find out if a restaurant is good or not: just the way it looks can give you all these visual clues: is it well maintained? Is the décor slapdash or does it look like someone put some effort into it? The employees - do they look disgruntled or proud to be serving what they're serving. Even better, when you walk into a place you can look at the food.

I pre-screen restaurants because my objective is to never have a bad meal, and I get pretty close to that.

I love African food, I love Italian food, but I rarely eat Italian out because it's so easy to make at home. On the other hand, unless you have specialized equipment, Chinese food is really tough because you literally can't get the pan hot enough.

If you go around a time when you're hungry, around mealtime, then you have a desperate search to find something to eat and you have this interplay between approach and avoidance. You go in a place, you smell, if it doesn't smell so good you go to the next place, you look at all the people, they're happily eating, and then you choose that place. So having to reconnoiter, having to go on a kind of treasure hunt for food is one of my favorite things.

If I go into a restaurant and the food sucks I feel so depressed I just want to carve it in my wrist with the butter knife.

If a restaurant fumbles once I don't have to hold it against them, anyone can have a bad night.

You can't write about a horrible restaurant - if it's a Ma & Pa restaurant no one wants to see you kick Ma & Pa in the chops.