Monday, January 16, 2006
The Rating System
It is the aim of Ottawa Shawarma to give impartial, accurate yet fun information about Ottawa’s shawarmaries. We will try to be as fair as possible but due to our love of the cuisine, our stated bias will be to showcase the places we visit. We will provide a positive voice about the richness of this city in its food and culture.
Please remember that we are not gourmet chefs (nor of Lebanese decent if that matters). We’re just people who love good food. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We just take eating very seriously. Who doesn’t!
We want to make our information easy to use, and yet be detailed enough to be useful. As such we’ve decided to measure each shawarmarie on three dimensions on a scale of 1-5.
Shawarma: This is the rating on the basic unit. If they do this well, they’re well on their way to becoming a good shawarmarie. It is like rating fast-food joints on their burgers. We look to various things like: the tenderness and flavour of the meat, the freshness of the toppings, the blend of the sauces, and of course how well it is wrapped.
Mesa: This kind of means side-dish. Here we will rate food items beyond the basic shawarma. A good shawmarie should have good food beyond the basic shawarma. We will rate the variety of food items offered and the quality of those items. We love shawarma, but we also love falafel and meat pies and shish taouk… Oh we love it all.
Experience: This is the rating for everything beyond the food. This looks at everything from the location, the physical attributes of the place and the service. In other words the atmosphere, which is maybe the most important element of a shawarmarie!
Our rating system is designed to provide a basis of comparison and not a scientific measure of anything. When we provide a high score, it is because we were truly impressed by what we found. When we give a low score it is to point out that the location might not be as good as others around. When that happens, we were still probably happier to get a less than average shawarma than to go to yet another fast-food franchise, however.
Please remember that we are not gourmet chefs (nor of Lebanese decent if that matters). We’re just people who love good food. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We just take eating very seriously. Who doesn’t!
We want to make our information easy to use, and yet be detailed enough to be useful. As such we’ve decided to measure each shawarmarie on three dimensions on a scale of 1-5.
Shawarma: This is the rating on the basic unit. If they do this well, they’re well on their way to becoming a good shawarmarie. It is like rating fast-food joints on their burgers. We look to various things like: the tenderness and flavour of the meat, the freshness of the toppings, the blend of the sauces, and of course how well it is wrapped.
Mesa: This kind of means side-dish. Here we will rate food items beyond the basic shawarma. A good shawmarie should have good food beyond the basic shawarma. We will rate the variety of food items offered and the quality of those items. We love shawarma, but we also love falafel and meat pies and shish taouk… Oh we love it all.
Experience: This is the rating for everything beyond the food. This looks at everything from the location, the physical attributes of the place and the service. In other words the atmosphere, which is maybe the most important element of a shawarmarie!
Our rating system is designed to provide a basis of comparison and not a scientific measure of anything. When we provide a high score, it is because we were truly impressed by what we found. When we give a low score it is to point out that the location might not be as good as others around. When that happens, we were still probably happier to get a less than average shawarma than to go to yet another fast-food franchise, however.
# posted by Ottawa shawarma @ 2:48 PM 
