zagat.com serves me well for restaurant reviews and is worth the modest yearly fee.

iamq, do you travel enough to cities to participate in the Zagat's guides? I now get invitations from them for the survey's for New York, LA, San Frncisco, London, and Florida. As a result I get new free Zagat's guides each year. You only need to answer surveys for the restaurants you've been too, and even if that's only a couple, you can still get the free guide.

Patrick, I could write a fair number of reviews for San Francisco. How does one get the invitations you speak of? When we went to Paris a few years ago the Zagat guide was my best friend. It was helpful on my first trip to New York as well.

Here's a link from the email I just received about voting on the annual London survey, but it includes other cities as well. I'm assuming you can click on this link, register (if you aren't already) and then vote.

http://www.zagat.com/Review/Featured...s.aspx?SNP=NFS

Thanks Patrick.

I rely on the website 'yelp'. It is a pretty good sounding board on most of the decent restaurants in SF. Again, its just another resource....

You do not need an invitation from Zagat's. Just go their site and participate. Anybody and everybody who answers a specific survey with a minimal participation qualifies for that guide book.

Restaurants fail at a higher percentage than any other business. Only one in ten will make it past five years. Most fail within 12 months.