So you want to be a critic?

So how exactly do you critique food? What skills do you need to develop? What do you say? How do the logistics work? Enter Google. A quick search reveals several career websites offering advice on how you might pursue a career as a good critic. My top take-away tips were:

• Practice writing eg get a blog - woo! 
• Become familiar with the restaurant business eg own or work ina restaurant - not very practical as I have a full time job and no spare cash to buy a restaurant, but I am studying Masterchef in detail... I could also maybe learn about restaurants from books or articles. Both the practicalities and the economics would be v interesting and useful when it comes to another possible alternative second career running a little cafe
• Try lots of different foods to exercise your palate
• Become an expert in food - learn culinary vocab, read cookbooks, learn about wine, learn about history and culture of food, travel to food and wine festivals 
• Research other food critics and chefs

Ok so my restaurant rating blogs will be interspersed with blogs on economics of restaurants, learns about food and looking at other critics. Now for the actual eating and rating a place, the Big Friendly Internet suggested rating places based on:

• Level of service
• Quality of food
• Cost
• Atmosphere
• Cleanliness
• Quality and rarity of ingredients
• Do the ingredients shine?
• Balance of flavours
• Level of originality
• Is there a successful flow to the meal?
• Presentation of food
• Taste

As this is the happy sparkly food blog, I'm going to rate restaurants on a 5 star scale based on answers to the following questions:

• Did the ingredients sparkle?
• Did the service/atmosphere sparkle?
• Did it make me happy?

Let's see how that rating method goes for my first few - time to bowl and rock n roll!

I'm Louise and I like food

2015 resolutions:
- Learn things
- Do nice things
- Be productive and make the most of my time
- Obviously lose weight, get fit, become beautiful put-together goddess with perfect skin/hair/clothes/shoes at all times

To deal with the first 3 (the last one will take care of itself I'm sure), I've decided to start this food critic blog. I really like food and eating out, and have recently been to quite a few afternoon teas so people have asked for recommendations. As I have an appalling memory, starting a blog will be an easy way to remember and rate each meal, and be a useful source of recommendations for my friends. DO NICE THINGS AND REMEMBER THEM - tick.

I love cookbooks and cookery shows, and hopefully writing a regular blog will give a framework to actually learn more about food and restaurants as well as eating in them. I would like to learn more about how restaurants work, basic cooking techniques, different ingredients, styles of cookery and wine matching. I'll intersperse restaurant reviews with these learning nuggets (or that's the plan). LEARN THINGS - tick.

Finally, given no career will last to retirement these days, and writing might be a good heading-to-retirement job somewhere down the line, getting some writing under my belt can be a useful development step. BE PRODUCTIVE - tick!

That's the plan, let's have a go....