Dishola – Food Reviews Dish by Dish

So I don’t know how I came across the EverydayFoodie blog, but I did and she had a post about a relatively newer site called Dishola.  I checked it out and I sort of heart this idea.

I’ve already told you about Cooking with ADD, so how about eating with OCD?  No, not germophobia or that don’t-let-this-food-touch-that-food type thing.  I mean that itchy little need for completeness and thoroughness.

The aim of Dishola is a little different than, say, yer UrbanSpoons and such.  The site is not focused on user-generated restaurant reviews; rather it’s user-generated single dish reviews.  Found the best Mongolian tofu in the city?  Looking for the best grilled cheese in your neighborhood?  Dishola aims to be the clearing house for that type o’ info.

This appeals to me on a few levels.  For one, my tendency towards the excessively interesting explanation, reluctance to make definitive judgments without every possible piece of data and/or misplaced compassion makes the idea of me doing a restaurant review nearly impossible.

I can imagine too many possibilities to allow myself to rate a restaurant based on the quality of the food, service and/or ambiance.  What if my food sucked because the chef just got dumped?  What if he just got dumped by the very waitress who brought me the food and that’s why she disappeared for part of the night?  Can I judge them?  Haven’t we all had a bad night?

Mind you, I don’t begrudge anyone else their right to write a restaurant review, but because I live in a state of constant distraction, I am always thinking that I might have missed a crucial detail that explains why something didn’t happen the way I expected.  I would have to visit a place like sixty-five times and cross-reference my findings against how much sleep the chef got the night before and how often he was hugged as a child before I would feel confident enough to make any kind of definitive statement.  

Besides, since I’m not really eating meat or poultry so much right now, that is kind of a deal-breaker anyway.

But a single dish?  Now that I think I can focus on and am willing to make an assessment of.  

And really sometimes that’s enough; for a quick bite by yourself or in your neighborhood, you might not always be looking for a great gestalt of an experience, you might just want a really good sandwich.

They also have a feature called “Food Safaris.”  This is how they describe an official Dishola Safari:

1. Pick a dish to hunt down in your favorite city or neighborhood.
2. Get together a group of 3-5 people who are as passionate as you are about said dish.
3. Take notes, pictures, and preferably video of the adventure.
4. EDIT(remember this isn't a feature film), and submit your findings to dishola.
   

I don’t know that I will do all that, but I do plan to do my own little unofficial Safari for my favorite Thai dish Pad Kee Mao.  I’ve already had about five different versions around my neighborhood, but considering there are about 139 Thai restaurants listed on UrbanSpoon, I have quite a bit of work ahead of me.

There are not a lot of listings for Seattle yet, so if you are a Seattleite and enjoy eating out, you might want to consider listing your own favorite.

P.S. EverydayFoodie also has a post about chocolate tamales.  The holiday season might be high tamale season time, but it can't hurt to try them at other times of the year, right?