Roy's New York
Can someone give me a little insight as to whether this place is worth going to? Hawaiian fusion sounds kind of interesting and Zagat gives it a "24," but I'm a little skeptical. It would be for a business lunch in the Financial District. Thanks.
Bill L.
Oct 10, 2003 04:59PM
It's right next to the World Trade Center site. The food is mediocre, but that's the case with all Roy's restaurants (it is part of a chain). I'd go elsewhere if you cared about the cuisine.
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Thank you. That 24 in Zagat didn't feel right.
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I don't get it. Why would you dismiss the tally of hundreds of diners in ZAGAT but casually accept the unverifiable opinion of one person on the Internet as gospel?
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Because the one person on the internet is willing to put her name next to her opinion on a site that is rigorous about policing those who would shill for a restaurant and those who have an agenda aimed at damaging a restaurant's reputation. The posts you read here are written by people with no axe to grind. Hang around here a while and you'll figure out whose taste is similar to yours. Zagat provides a useful service, I guess, but having run restaurants in NYC for 25 years I wonder who those hundreds of people are, and just how many of them have reported on some of the restaurants listed.
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And also, the poster in question (Cabrales) is perhaps known as a discerning diner/poster to the person interested in the opinion.
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Not a frequent poster, more of a lurker, but I will second the opinion that Roy's is overpriced and pretty mediocre but my only caveat is that I ate there about 2 1/2 yrs. ago.
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I agree, I'll take cabrales over Zagat any day.
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Few people have the passion for dining out that Cabrales has.
She has dined all over the world more often then I've seen rerun's of Friends.
I have never been let down by any of her recs.
Robert.
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My endorsement to Cabrales' postings (not that she needs it). I have read hundreds of her posts and have the utmost respect for her opinions. Some kind of a Food/Restaurant God methinks. I am not going to Roy's anytime soon--in fact I read this post (about Roy's) only because she wrote it. I am stopping now. Go Red Sox. :-)
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Someone posting here doesn't have to be either a shill or a naysayer to be completely unreliable. Attaching an unverifiable name to an unverifiable opinion proves nothing. I post here a lot and I could tell you I ate a marvelous meal at Jean-Georges last night and describe it down to the last detail and you'd have no idea if I spoke truth or not. And since I'm one of the hundreds of people who submits opinions to ZAGAT (which, by the way, requires considerable effort), I'd personally rather take my chance on THAT consensus than to be so naive as to swallow any SINGLE opinion posted online about restaurants or on anything else, for that matter. Given the nature of the medium, all statements made on the Net have to be considered suspect, including mine.
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So why are you even here reading Chowhound? Why not just burry your head in a Zagat survey and be happy?
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The reliability of opinions on Chowhound is something users are well able to gauge for themselves. But one inarguable thing is the _focus_ of our discussion. And this particular one is digressing further and further from the topic of chow in Manhattan.
If anyone feels a need to continue this debate, please do so on the Not About Food board so we can keep this Manhattan board chowcentric (if so, feel free to post a "heads up" here to inform others that you've made the jump).
Aside from that, further off-topic additions to this thread will be deleted
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Thanks, everybody for your support. :)
Dining is so subjective that everybody should choose for herself. And that would include a choice to follow Zagat or any other guidebook. Also, a restaurant can offer a meal on a given that, even more objectively, might be better than a meal it offers on another day. So each diner is free to express her own views on a restaurant, but likewise each recipient of information on the board is free to follow or reject the views articulated :)
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In answer to your question:
1) The answer confirmed my suspicion and I suspect that most of the people who use this site may have better judgement than your average Zagat reviewer.
2) Why was I suspicious? Because I subscribe to the Calvin Trillin view of the world that intangable clues about a restaurant can tell you a lot. Come on, a chain Hawaiian fusion restaurant in a hotel in the financial district? Next question.
3) For those of you who don't recognize the Trillin allusion, he has been known to dope out places to eat based on the iconography of their yellow page ads.
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