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.City Paper food editor Tim Carman investigates just how the guides are put together—and how reliable they are.The Zagat guide turned 30 years old this year, and in honor of the occasion, I’d like to give founders Tim and Nina Zagat a hearty thanks for all their years of service to the restaurant industry.And, if I may, I’d like to offer some friendly advice, too: You can go away now.Ten years ago, back before everyone had access to a world of opinion via some device tucked into purse or pocket, diners relied on your slim red eponymous guide, which compiled restaurant ratings based on public opinion.It was your slap against the imperial voice of the critic.The Zagat book would be the voice of the people, guiding diners by the collective wisdom of the people, even if you would never tell us how many people actually voted for any one restaurant.But now, nearly a decade into the 21st century, the people no longer need Zagat to compile data, crunch it, and cough it up in cute little numbers of dubious quality.They can compile their own dining information of dubious quality without all the opaque, Wizard of Oz, man-behind-the-curtain nonsense that you have insisted on for three decades.The truth is, the Zagat guide belongs to a time when tourists and urban newcomers, looking for some guidance on restaurants, had nowhere else to turn.For these folks, the Zagat guide was like asking 1,000 random strangers, “What’s your favorite restaurant?” and then tabulating the results.Except it wasn’t.The Zagat survey has never been random.Its respondents are, in the language of pollsters, self-selected.Or perhaps mostly self-selected.That’s the problem: Few people outside of Zagat’s New York offices know who actually votes and how those voters are selected.Nina and Tim Zagat, a pair of former lawyers, have indicated in the past that they’d send out hundreds of thousands of surveys to law firms, medical offices, and other white-collar institutions where people, presumably, have the disposable income to eat out often enough to provide the Zagats with the free data they need to sustain their empire.But Zagat also solicits online reviews.Are those included in the final ratings? That would seem to be the case, but one restaurateur complained to me that some never appear on the site.THE ZAGATS ARE LIKE a couple living in a walled compound, sealed off from some of the major developments of the past decade.The generation that willingly accepted unverified pronouncements from established authorities has moved into retirement homes.The younger generation is far more interested in its own opinion, which it shares in virtual communities like Yelp, MySpace, and Facebook.It values transparency among peers (if not in the comments sections of blogs), and its members are strung out on the 24-hour news cycle, which has them addicted to the latest 140-character information bomb from Twitter.We do not live in a Zagat World anymore.This epiphany came to me via the 2010 edition of the Washington, DC/Baltimore Zagat guide.There, on page 10, are the 40 highest-rated restaurants in the D.C.area in terms of food.At the top, for the second year in a row, is Makoto, a 25-seat Japanese restaurant in Palisades that prepares a pristine, multicourse omakase menu based on the seasons and the chef’s whims.The place earned 29 out of 30 points for food from Zagat raters, just barely beating out the Inn at Little Washington, which is rather impressive given the latter’s bona fides.In 1994, the International Herald Tribune named the Inn one of the 10 best restaurants in the world, and it has remained a darling of critics.Celebrities and politicians hop in helicopters to dine at the Inn at Little Washington.Washingtonians consult their GPS to figure out how to find Makoto.You might be wondering how a niche restaurant like Makoto, with such a minuscule seating capacity, could generate enough votes to win the top spot two years running in the D.C.Zagat guide.There’s an easy answer: It didn’t.Makoto won the 2009 Zagat survey for food.The ratings in the 2010 book merely repeat those from last year’s survey, although the casual reader would be hard-pressed to know this important fact.THE ONLY WAY I LEARNED about the duplicate ratings was through Michael Birchenall, editor and publisher of the local trade magazine Foodservice Monthly.After reading a blog item that I wrote about Makoto’s strange stranglehold on Zagat, Birchenall combed through his old guides and discovered an interesting trend: Those restaurants that topped the Zagat ratings in the odd years were the same ones that topped them in the even years.A spokesperson for Zagat confirmed his findings.“As Michael Birchenall pointed out to you, we compile new survey results and prepare a new guide for Washington, DC/ Baltimore every other year,” e-mailed Tiffany Barbalato, director of communications for Zagat.“This is why the winning restaurants and top lists you refer to in the 2010 guide are the same as last year’s.”Barbalato, in the same e-mail, alerted me to this line in the latest guide: “This 2010 Washington, DC/Baltimore Restaurants Survey is an update reflecting significant developments since our last Survey was published.” (Those significant developments, incidentally, are mostly the addition of new, unrated restaurants with an editor-written description.) Barbalato offered up this lone, coyly worded sentence as evidence that Zagat doesn’t try to dupe its customers about the duplicate nature of the even-year guides.I had my doubts that this anemic sentence was pulling its weight, so I called a few restaurateurs and asked them if they knew about Zagat’s duplicate ratings.“I did not know that,” says Jeff Black, 46, the owner of four restaurants, including BlackSalt and Addie’s, who’s been working in the hospitality business since age 13.“That’s kind of lame.”“Oh, really?” says Barton Seaver, chef at the new Blue Ridge in Glover Park.“OK, that’s a dinosaur.We’re living in an era where Todd Kliman [of the Washingtonian] reviews a restaurant as it happens” via Twitter.Their alarm at this news is understandable.Many restaurants have shorter life spans than the average prime-time program, which means that these places grow, mature, and gray quickly.A Zagat rating based on a year-old survey—or older—is the equivalent of judging this season’s Mad Men by the episodes of the previous season.Take, for example, the rating in the 2010 Zagat guide for Black’s Bar & Kitchen.Jeff Black’s Bethesda operation scores a respectable 24 for food, but that rating is based on a survey likely tabulated when Mallory Buford was executive chef in mid-2009.Black’s is now on its third different executive chef since Buford left.“Things do change [at restaurants],” Black says, “and they change quickly.”Makoto may be one of the few exceptions to that rule.Time doesn’t stand still here—but it actually seems to expand, as if you get two minutes for every 60 ticks around the clock
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