Savoring Philadelphia

by Craig LaBan

Restaurant Reviews for the Philadelphia Region: The Inquirer's award-winning food critic Craig LaBan reviews 76 of his favorite Philadelphia-area restaurants. Savoring Philadelphia is the complete... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1588220117
• ISBN13: 9781588220110
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Philadelphia Inquirer
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Titanicly Better than Zagat's

Laban is an excellent restaurant critic. His ratings, sometimes controversial (prices are weighted heavily in his ratings, unlike the NYT, and his 2 bell or "very good" category is perhaps too widely encompassing), are nevertheless grounded by informative and discerning reviews. With Zagat's, you get next to nothing: 2 sentences, maybe, comprised of little snippets of different reviews (and who are these anonymous reviewers, anyway? What are their credentials?). I've never had a problem with LaBan's prose. Maybe he recycles adjectives; doesn't every food critic? This book is not bedtime reading; it is a guide. And as a guide, it is far from exhaustive. It's more like a "Craig's pics," featuring only noteworthy restaurants and omitting the bad reviews. I think I'll leave alone the review below, but to say that it strikes me as very unfounded and very wrong. I take my eating embarassingly seriously, I've been to maybe 40 LaBan-reviewed restaurants, and I find the better part of his notes to be right-on. What readers should keep in mind is that his "very good" rating can mislead--sometimes it means that good food is too expensive, sometimes that decent food is really cheap. Also, be advised that several restaurants were awarded 4 bells because their prices are spectacular given the food; don't go to Pasion or Django expecting the refinement of cooking and quality of ingredients that you will find at Le Bec Fin or The Fountain (Vetri and Susana Foo fall somewhere in between). In any case, you should decide where to eat based on the review itself, not the rating. My 2 cents: this is a terrific compendium of good reviews of good restaurants--indispensable to the Philadelphia foodie. Of course, you can always read these same reviews for free at philly.com.