This article appears in Dec 25-31, 2008.
The coast
I’ve been cooking in this city for a while and I took a look at your best of food section, and I gotta say it seems very cliquy and biased. all the same restaurants seem to have all of the prizes,and all of those retaurants have the same owners, or are
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For the thousandth time— but no doubt, not the last time— we don’t decide the Best of Halifax winners. It is a true readers’ poll. The Coast doesn’t influence the voting or skew the results. Is it a perfect, scientifically conducted poll? No. There are no doubt retailers who game the system, just as there are no doubt readers who have stupid or unfound opinions, or at least have opinions that differ from your wise choices. We try to limit the former, and there’s nothing we can do about the latter.
I know of at least one cafe that got some nods this year but hasn’t been around for very long, and definitely isn’t affiliated with any others. If you’re worried about it, make sure you keep stacks of the coast in your place, and encourage your patrons to read it. It’s all about the people who read the coast, if they’re the same every year, the best of’s probably will be too.