How I rate food in Penang

You will see my food rating on Penang Travel Tips and my Penang Hawker Food Facebook Group and Penang Restaurant Food Facebook Group. It's a complex system but if you understand it, it offers a lot of insights into how I evaluate food. If you try to apply your own yardstick to my food rating, you might end up misinterpreting the rating.

The ratings are A+, A, A-, B+, B, B- and C All eateries are expected to be clean and the service is to be within reasonable bounds. That's "expected". If you can't even give me that, you get a C, no matter how good your food tastes.

A "B" means your food is average, a "B+" means it's above average, and a "B-" means it's below average. If your produce is air-flown from Japan or Italy, and it is exorbitantly expensive, but it tastes like something grown in Cameron Highlands, or not as fresh, you might get a B or even a B-. Just because it comes from far, far away doesn't mean it will get an immediate A ... unless it is exceptional and is also the same price or cheaper than something obtained locally. We cannot allow ourselves to be brainwashed into giving a high rating for something we have paid a lot of money for - if we do that, we are having an inferiority complex.

The "A" and "A-" ratings are for food that is outstanding. The "A" is for faultless on all counts. The "A-" is if I could find even a minor fault with it, and this includes "this is not a particularly exceptional dish".

The A+ is for my favourite. "My favorite" means there's only one per category, and also only if that item is available in many, many eateries. If that item is available in only a small number of eateries, and I do like the one from a particular place, it might at most be given an A.

Nowhere in my food rating do I judge a food based on its popularity. As far as me, the customer, is concerned, your popularity is zilch. In fact, popularity is detriment to good customer experience. It causes long queues and long waiting times, so it matters negatively to the customer experience.

I see a lot of people falling prey to "inferiority complex" and "herd mentality". Inferiority complex is "if a food comes from far far away and/or is very expensive, it has to be highly rated". Herd mentality is "if the stall is wildly popular, there's always a long queue and a long waiting time, it has to be highly rated". Rubbish! Please, close your eyes, cut out the outside noise and evaluate the food without succumbing to outside influences.

I do acknowledge the saying, that "one man's meat is another man's poison", so I would encourage others to come up with their own rating system. We should be aware that there's no "one size fits all" system, and each person will rate according to his own experience, and interpretation. I just hope that the next time you see my food rating, you will be able to read exactly what I mean from it.

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