My East Coast/West Coast Rating System™ Explained

You'll notice my reviews have two different scores. Here's why.

When reviewing East Coast comfort food in California, one quickly runs into a problem. A slice of pizza for instance might taste really, really good… for California. But if you were to consume that exact same slice in the Big Apple… it might not hold up as as well. How do we account for this - shall we say - cultural difference?

Introducing the *patented* East Coast/West Coast Rating System™!

Every place I review will be given two numerical ratings on a scale of one to ten. A West Coast 10 means this is among the absolute best places you can eat in California. But, if you were to send that same restaurant through a portal to the East Coast, it might only rank as a 7 or an 8 compared to what’s available over there.

To give credit where credit is due, I did not invent this system myself. That credit goes to my close friend Simone, a Russian immigrant raised in a fine Brooklyn neighborhood called Bay Ridge. Simone knows what it’s like to suffer from a lack of good pizza and bagels, and coined this clever ranking system to help us navigate the West Coast food scene. And now with this blog, I have thoroughly co-opted it - without offering any kind of compensation to Simone - because that’s how we do things in this country. That’s capitalism, baby!

Another reason this system works well is because Californians can be a sensitive bunch, so I don’t want to savage them too hard. This dual coast rating system gives me the ability to rank places higher than I normally would, thus reducing the overall level of butt-hurt felt by the places I choose to give poor reviews.

And don’t forget, the system works both ways. A street taco in LA or a Bánh mì from San Jose’s Little Saigon could rank as a West Coast 7 but an East Coast 10.

The system works on people too. This author would probably be a solid 7.5 on the East Coast, but here in California, he’s downgraded to a… actually, I changed my mind. Please don’t use the rating system on people. No body shaming here!

So there you have it, the East Coast/West Coast rating system explained. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think!