Finally! I bought broccoliandchocolate.com. No more wordpress in my URL, thank you very much. Exciting!

Additionally, I wanted to point out that you can receive an email when I post a review by subscribing to this blog! Type your email address into the field below the big Foodbuzz advertisement on the right and push the “Sign me up!” button. It’s an easy way to never miss a post and it makes me happy to have a tiny list of people who care! Yeay!

Lastly, B&C is now on Twitter!!! I think it’s a great way to network and pretty much just one more way I can type for the whole internet to see… find me at @brocandchoc!

Hello dear readers (ok fine, hi mom), I just wanted to call attention to the fact that The Boyfriend has graciously updated my B&C map link and I now have over 60 restaurants shown in a wholly cartographic* format! Yeay for websites that can augment the content and capacity of my website with little or no technical knowledge on my part!

No, really though, do enjoy the map if you are so inclined. (Printscreen below — I’m not a total computer dud, I do know how to use Paint.)

*In other words, I’m showing a bunch of markers on a map. But big words are so much more fun than small ones!!

Happy Birthday B&C! Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the beginnings of broccoli and chocolate and I’m excited about it!!*

A Year in Food

Since my second love (next to food, of course) is analyzing data in exciting and pie-chartly ways, I will hereby take this opportunity to tally up some data from the past year. First of all, let’s talk raw numbers. Over the past 365 days, broccoli and chocolate has been home to:

• 61 blog posts (not including this one, of course)
• 55 restaurant reviews
• 348 pictures
• 1 recipe

For each of the 55 restaurant reviews, a rating system was applied including 5 possible points in each of four categories. Based on this system, each restaurant had the opportunity to achieve a maximum of 20 points and a minimum of 4 points. As a rating of 3 was to be called “average”, the rating for a theoretically “average” restaurant would be 12.

Let’s see how the year went:

From this chart, you will notice that no restaurants were given a perfect 20, nor were any given below a 10. Also, the average rating of 14 (13.95, to be exact) is in fact higher than the theoretical average of 12 which basically means that I’m just too generous a food critic and I like every damn thing that I eat. There could be worse things to be though, right?

Over the past year I have instated a “category” system whereby each review is labeled as to the primary type or ethnicity of food reviewed. For the most part, each restaurant is filtered into a single category. Sometimes, however, the broad range of a restaurant’s menu requires it to be placed in more than one category. For 55 restaurant reviews and 61 posts, there have been 67 category labels applied over the past year. This means that 5 posts were put in 2 categories (or that fewer posts were put in more than 2 categories, but I think I only ever used 2 categories maximum for each post). Here’s the breakdown:

Because this pie chart is a jumbled mess of colored slices, I’ll summarize: I reviewed mostly Japanese (10 posts) and Mexican food (10 posts) over the past year, followed next by American food (9 posts) and Pizza (7 posts). This is because Japanese is my total favorite ever and because I live in Hayward where Mexican food is ubiquitous. In total there are 19 categories currently in use.

Lastly, you’ll find that I also catalog the locations of each of the restaurants I review. Over the past year I’ve reviewed restaurants in 13 local cities and have logged locations on 59 of my posts (including “At Home” and “Greater Bay Area”). You can see in the chart below that I’m all about Hayward:

Almost half of my 59 post locations (28) were in Hayward, followed distantly by Castro Valley (7 posts) and Oakland (5 posts). I really had no idea I was so Hayward-centric. Interesting.

Favorites

Well, the rating system should discern my favorites, but it instead seems to group restaurants into large clumps of general preference. Data is no replacement for human tastes and articulation, unfortunately. If I had to choose, these would be some of my favorites of the past year:

Loard’s Ice Cream – dessert, Castro Valley, Rating of 19

Yanagi – Japanese, Dublin, Rating of 18

Chef’s Experience – Chinese, Hayward, Rating of 17

Genghix – Japanese, Castro Valley, Rating of 17

Astaria – American, San Mateo, Rating of 15

And that goes to show that ratings don’t mean everything. Nor are they necessarily consistent. I’m just a person here, ok, this isn’t an exact science. Anyway, those are some good places — go, eat and be merry!

Aspirations

What are my hopes and dreams for B&C over the next year? Here are a few:

• Post more recipes and home cooking
• Continue to post consistently (at least one per week!)
• Network with other blogs more and exchange links
• Utilize more interactive items such as polls, questions to readers or contests
• Try to provide a few follow-up reviews on places already reviewed

Keeping this in mind, I hope you continue to enjoy B&C over the next year and I thank those who join me periodically to read about food and restaurant reviews in the Bay Area!

*Though, clearly not excited enough to post this on the actual anniversary date; please accept my apologies B&C**, I was away all day yesterday.

**Yes, I just apologized to my own blog.

So, what’s all this business with the ratings on every post?  Excellent question, fair reader, not that you asked.  I’ve made the executive decision to add a “rating summary” to the top of each post to give you the low-down on what I thought of my dining experience overall.  They go a bit like this:

Atmosphere is all about the feel of the place. I’m pretty forgiving, so I’m not looking for white table cloths and “yes madam” waiters.  I like clean, I like nice, but most of all I think the atmosphere should match the vibe of the food, the clientele, and the surrounding area.  Run down or wacky can work well in certain places…. 

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Welcome to my brand new Bay Area Food blog!  I am a native Haywardian who has just been reborn into the Bay for the first time since leaving for college almost ten long years ago.  And guess what?  I like to eat things.  I also like to babble needlessly online.  Lo and behold – the almighty blog exists to which we can all repent our sins!  Or, in my case, rant about excellent Mexican or terrible Thai.  I am here to fulfill all your local restaurant evaluation needs and work out your sarcasm muscles while doing it…. 

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