Well, that's what I've heard anyways. Despite having just crossed the barrier at having lived in Florida more than California, I'm still not entirely educated on the variety of peoples that occupy this state with most of my experience largely residing in Tampa and Gainesville. I am assured of their vast differences though, so I just sort of go with it and assume people aren't just messing with me. One thing is for sure, though — so many varieties of people have brought a variety of palettes and preferences in the food arena. Sometimes this results in some tremendous food. Most of the time, we get quite the opposite.
I feel I should probably explain who I am before we get to the food. You've probably already guessed that like pretty much every other person in this town, I came here for the university. In 2005, I decided to take my talents, Lebron-style, to the University of Florida College of Engineering (computer engineering to be specific.) Unlike most of my other engineering brethren that got the hell out of Gainesville upon graduating, I came to actually kind of like this town and decided to stay and continue my education. If you've met many engineers, you probably know that writing isn't exactly our forte. While I have no disdain for writing (I actually kind of enjoy it) I'm pretty sure all of those math classes have deteriorated my English. You'll probably have to bare with me through some grammar snafus at times.
With regards to my food history, I spent most of my early life in Hayward, California. It's a suburb of Oakland right across the bay from San Francisco. My parents, having grown up and spent most of their adults lives in California, had been raised with a taste for a wide variety of food, which they passed along to my sister and I. California, due to its size and highly variable climates, has nearly every kind of food come into season. When combined with some world class chefs, you basically have the perfect storm of all types of dining. The biggest culinary impact on me was the diversity of cuisines I got to experience. I grew up eating Indian-, Thai-, Japanese-, Italian-, Mexican- and Cantonese-style cuisine, usually in thoroughly authentic styles due to the cultural enclaves that were ever present throughout the bay area.
My dad got a job in the late 90s in another bay area though. We moved to the Tampa Bay Area. People will look at Tampa now and say, so what? Tampa isn't that much of a culinary wasteland. To some degree, I would agree. These days, you can pretty much find a decent place to fill nearly every food niche. In the late 90s and early 2000s, that was definitely not the case. In the mid 2000s though, things started to change. Tampa seemed to evolve and improve its food environment. If this was a Tampa food blog, I could probably just give a list of recommendations and move along.
This is not the case for Gainesville. Usually when I talk to people about food in Gainesville, they assume, not incorrectly, that Gainesville is loaded with crappy chains and half-assed restaurants that squeeze out as much profit as possible out of lowest common denominator of palettes. Don't take this the wrong way. I don't judge people for not having exquisite palettes. My palette was definitely not that great until I started cooking myself. As a result, I try not to judge people's opinion on food places that harshly. All the same, Yelp and Urbanspoon have largely lost all value to me as those are full of dubious reviews of places I've tried and hated. Their public reviewing system is open to all kinds of chicanery as well, so I usually have little in the way of trust.
In these terms, I'm not like some of the Gainesville food blogs you've seen which are little more than gushing over local businesses. I have no need or desire to blow smoke up the ass of any local restauranteur. To this end, I am a fan of Gainesville Eats Better, a pretty good food blog about Gainesville. Unlike the author there though, I am not a person who goes vegetarian very often. Will I talk about veg options? Occasionally. Is that my focus? Not really. I go for meat. To that end, if you are interested in vegan and vegetarian minded reviews of Gainesville restaurants, I suggest checking them out. They're pretty righteous.
So now that's all out of the way, I'll go over what I prefer for my dining experience. Rarely will I judge places by decor. Frankly, I don't care. I just don't. Second, I don't really care about service with a smile. Serving staffs are highly variable. One person can be great while another can be bad. It's just a challenge to review places based on the attentiveness on the staff. That being said, a particularly good or bad experience might get a mention. That will rarely shade my opinion of a restaurant though. Just being straight. I tend to be a pretty good patron. I tip well. I don't go off menu. I rarely go for substitutions. As a result, I very rarely have bad experiences.
The food is where the rubber hits the road. As I said, I'm a meat eater. Generally speaking, nearly every meal I order has meat involved in my entree. I will make exceptions for food where the attempt is not to substitute meat with some meat like substance, but the dish was designed to work, inherently, without meat (Indian food, especially.) I'm pretty adventurous as well, so I will try any kind of weird specialty I see on a menu if it strikes my mood. In general, I like to take the word of the serving staff/kitchen with regards to what their specialty items are. This will probably throw some people off, but I am a tremendous fan of spicy food. Generally speaking, my taste for spicy food began when I was very young — around 5 — as a result of my dad always ordering things spicy at Thai food, and I always wanted to try them too because they smelled so delicious. My longtime girlfriend has far more reasonable tastes with regards to spicy food, so I've come to appreciate more subtle spicing from our experiences with sharing or with my own cooking. Usually I just let this part go because people rarely assume that I actually want food as spicy as I tell them I like it. Many an entree at an Indian restaurant has been under spiced due to them thinking the white guy has no idea what he's getting into ordering it extra, extra, extra, extra hot. Being able to taste flavors through the heat has made my palette more sensitive as a result, so very spicy bland food will not fool me.
The other important thing that I should mention is that I love when restaurants deliver value. If you are an expensive restaurant but your food is worth it, I will be very pleased. If it's cheap, I expect the food to be fairly cheap in quality but still worth it. It's harder for restaurants to live up to a high price than a restaurant to live up to a low price. All the same, I will make it very clear if a bad restaurant is cheap but still not good for how cheap they are. I've been to enough food trucks to know that great food can be had/made on the cheap. If the restaurant is not providing value, either at a high or low price, I will immediately jump on that. No one wants to blow any amount of money on bad product. My baseline is simply this, you should provide more value than the various chain restaurants of Gainesville. Beating their prices and flavor simultaneously is doable, and whenever I hear restauranteurs claim it's not, they're bullshitting. It's true that most of the populous will not be able to tell the difference in the taste, but word of mouth is huge here in Gainesville and if you can provide a great meal at a good price, your business can succeed.
Speaking of which, I will not cover chain restaurants unless they are local chains. You know how they taste. I know how they taste. It's not worth wasting time. If the restaurant I'm reviewing doesn't beat them out, expect me to give them a pretty rough review. In general my equation is this: If a restaurant's (FoodQuality/Price) < Chain Restaurant, I will, invariably, not recommend them because, seriously, what's the point of supporting a bad restaurant? In my own small way, I will attempt to push people to the good places, but I have no desire to support the continuation of a place that does not deliver relative value.
Side note: When it comes to ethnic food, I err on the side of authenticity. Good, non-authentic ethnic food exists, but that tends to be the exception to the rule. The reality is that we're in Gainesville, so sometimes I'll take what I can get.
I'm not a professional critic, so a scoring system is largely pointless. Usually I'll either recommend a restaurant or not. I might throw up a Halfway one where there will be some mitigating factors that I will explain (Liquid Ginger falls under this category, which I'll get to eventually.)
As this is a foodie blog, and not just a dining blog, expect me to write some stuff regarding cooking as well as I love to cook. Gainesville, shockingly, has some excellent local farms that provide Grade-A stuff as well as the phenomenal grocery store known as Ward's. If something is in season and looks awesome, I'll likely clue you into it via pictures, recipes or videos.
So that's pretty much it. I hope you'll enjoy me sharing my food experiences around the city of Gainesville.
— Charles
I'll eat it, so you won't have to.
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