A Dining Critic's 20 Resolutions For 2011

Lee Klein January 3, 2011 7:30AM

Another year gone by, another fifty or so restaurant reviews under the now-taut belt. While looking back over my life and work of the past twelve months, I can't help but note that imperfections abound. And so, resolutions to improve. For 2011, I vow:

To not eat pork belly or a banh mi for at least one whole month.
To never drive to a stationary food truck court. Sort of counterintuitive, no? I mean I thought the whole idea was for them to drive to us.
To make it to more dives.
To stop muttering unpleasantries under my breath whenever it takes ten minutes or more to get the check. Which is pretty much always.
To refrain from asking the sommelier whether he or she can recommend a good French wine with cute animals on the label.

To remember to bring my pen-flashlight to reviews.
To remember to bring earmuffs and mittens to reviews.
To remember to remove quarters from my car before handing it over to valet.
To finally meet The Burger Beast, and to turn him on to cheese blintzes. I'd like a good blintz blog. I mean, "The Blintz Beast" has a nice ring to it.
To order more vegetable-based entrees. These seem to be getting a lot better.
To order less middle eastern platters. These seem to be getting worse.
To be very skeptical concerning claims of organic and farm-to-table labels.
To say to waiters, "Why don't I just send you the review when I'm finished writing it?" in response to being asked "How was it?" after every single course.
To use the term flavorful less often.
To try and pretend that hosts and hostesses at fancy hotel restaurants aren't annoyingly pretentious.
To always carry around my novelty sunglasses with strobing lights around the frame, and to put them on whenever music in a restaurant becomes too clubby.
To continue to stress value.
To continue to mock Miami Spice.
To not "accidentally" pee on the shoes of bathroom attendants when they hover too close to the urinal. Actually, I never did that, but having to bring cash to the restroom in order to take a leak is capitalism run amok.
More snappy one-liners!

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