Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

We are serious pierogie eaters in Pittsburgh and Mrs. T's work just fine.

But is this a good thing? You left Le Cirque this time with a better impression of the restaurant and the Maccioni family because they treated you like a celebrity, but they only did that because you embarassed them the first time and because they now know that people read your blog. If they really cared about anonymous customers, you would have been treated well to begin with.

The free meal demonstrates the power of blogging, but it doesn't get the Le Cirque staff off the hook for being jerks. I doubt they treated every customer so well that night, and someone will always have to take the loser table. We can either support these places or not. If I get an invitation to a free meal in response to a bad review, I just ignore it. Let the restaurant prove itself to new customers.