People assume my book is a list of expensive places. It isn't. Some of the best things in it cost less than a taxi home.
I'm asked, often, how something earns a page in the book. There's no committee and no scoring system. There are three questions, and a place has to survive all of them.
The First Test
It's Worth the Detour
If I wouldn't cross the harbour for it, it doesn't go in. Convenience has never been a recommendation.
A restaurant downstairs from your office isn't a discovery. It's a coincidence.
The Second Test
Someone There Cares
A chef who changes the menu because the fish was wrong that morning. A bartender who remembers how you take it.
You can taste the difference between a place run by people and a place run by a spreadsheet. Everyone can. Most of us simply don't say so.
The Third Test
It Survives a Tuesday
Anywhere can be wonderful on a Saturday — full room, good light, everyone in a mood to be pleased.
The real test is a wet Tuesday in August with half the tables empty. Still good? Then it's good.
Book somewhere new on the worst night of the week. You'll learn more in an hour than a hundred reviews will tell you.
“I've left out places I genuinely love because they failed the Tuesday test, and I've put in a noodle shop with plastic stools.
That's the whole system. No stars, no rankings, no favours.
Nothing in the book is paid for. If that ever changes, you'll be the first to know.
— Reyna Harilela