HI guys -just keen to see if there are any final opinions on the way we do our 'best cafe' reviews... main thing is whether we rank cafes one-to-five, or whether we simply announce our choice of Top 5 for that city? We already check our shortlist of cafes 4-5 times over three-four months; the argument for simply listing Top 5 is that all cafes have their good days and bad days - depending on barista, time of day, etc. The argument the other way, is that if we don't rank 1-5, then we're not putting our 'balls on the line'. Just interested in any final opinions either way. best -A
You can have your cake and eat it, too. Rank the cafes, don't rank them; whatever, but explain in the beginning that on any given day the order might change. You can always say that the rankings reflect your experience and that, though they might vary on a given day, you are confident that anyone going to these cafes will be experiencing the best that the city has to offer. Better still, you could give a top 5 in no particular order and just pick out one as the best based on your visits. You could also mention the cafes that you thought were good, but didn't quite make the cut. Seems to me that you are focussing on the outcome of your review as the important part. As a reader of reviews, I'm more interested in the process. Your comments on the coffee review books seem to indicate that you are, too. I think that you need to set out in your review who the reviewers were and why we should care what they think, how many times they went to the cafes, how many cafes were reviewed, how many drinks of each type were had at each place and how everything was scored. Seems that every man and his dog has a top five list of cafes in each city; you need to put a case forward as to why anyone should care what yours is. Cheers, Luca
