1. The Problem. Restaurant criticism has been broken in Western New York for as long as we can remember, and we're going to specifically call out the issue: Janice Okun at the Buffalo News is a bad role model of legendary proportions, and rather than directly challenging her reviews, other publications have sadly followed her poor examples. In recent months alone, Okun said that a "three-star" Mexican restaurant's top dish was a condiment, specifically salsa. Other Okun reviews have noted that she knew the chefs and owners she was covering, but apparently saw no conflict of interest in writing about them, or in issuing them four-star ratings. And in one of many bizarre little asides, she even described the furniture at one restaurant as lickable. It would almost be funny if it wasn't so serious.

People have long mocked the News for passing off such awful content as reviewing, but it has offered no solution, and doesn't appear to have any succession plan for Okun in place. Competitors have shown no sign of creating viable alternatives to the News, either. What's needed in either case is new blood - trustworthy, smart, and savvy new people who aren't already facially recognizable in the Buffalo food industry. Unfortunately, most local restaurant reviewers past and present fail even the basic guidelines of the Association of Food Journalists - few are capable of being anonymous, rarely do any visit a place twice before publishing a final review, and some even personally know the people who own or work at the places they're covering. There are bigger ethical issues at the News's competitors. Some media outlets here cover restaurants largely or solely in the hopes of currying favor with potential advertisers, not to provide objective and honest reviews. And others knowingly publish the work of writers who are effectively marketers - people who are openly or covertly trying to promote themselves, their other careers, or certain businesspeople they know.

2. Our Efforts. Buffalo Chow was created as an alternative - an honest, free resource filled with useful information. Over the past two years, we drove from end to end of this region checking out restaurants, wineries, and festivals, paid full price for every item and every ticket, and preserved our anonymity with their owners, chefs, and staff. As you can probably appreciate, this is both extremely difficult and exceedingly rare these days. Every single article on this site was created without outside influence, and we're very proud of that legacy. But in our effort to exhaustively catalog this area's best (and worst) establishments, we gave up all of our free time, and ate to excess in the name of research. Our decision to stop work on the site is as much about our health and our lifestyles as anything else. For those who may have seen the Twitter or Facebook teases, our Sunlight Project - the next evolution of Buffalo Chow - would have dramatically expanded the site with some cool new features, but after very serious consideration, we felt that they would cause too many headaches without any real rewards.

3. A Solution. Even if you're not a restaurant expert or a hard-core foodie, we want to encourage you to continue our mission to improve both the quality and quantity of food coverage in Western New York. Support Bill Rapaport's site. Look at the listings and percentages - though maybe not the individual "reviews" - on Urbanspoon. Contribute your own insights to help others learn about places they might like or dislike. And if you have the passion and the time for it, start your own Buffalo food blog. Take pictures of your meals and the restaurants you visit so other people can learn from them - people in other cities snap and share food photos all the time. If you're going to do things properly, we strongly recommend the Canon PowerShot S90 camera for restaurant photography. It takes the best pictures we've seen in low light, and the controls are easy to use. Cameras built into cell phones might be more convenient, but they produce comparatively awful results.

4. A Final Request. Over the past two years, we haven't asked our readers for anything, but today, we'd like to request one favor. Take a moment right now to call a friend, spouse, or other relative, and go with that person to a completely different restaurant tonight. If Chinese is as far as you've pushed your envelope, skip it and do something more adventurous. Then, instead of choosing an item that's familiar, trust your server to recommend something great and new for you to try. For just one night, ignore the price and focus on the value you're getting for the dollar - if you use our archive of reviews, you'll find that highly-rated places are the ones that deliver great value, not just cheap meals. Higher-quality ingredients and venues cost a little more, but when they're really good, they're worth paying for.

Our mission here was to help you eat better. To that end, we're leaving the site up so that our archives can continue to guide you to great places and away from the mediocre ones. We hope that you'll do your part to help both locals and tourists alike find great places, avoid bad ones, and easily locate that information online. Get your friends and family involved. Make Western New York a better place for everyone who lives or visits here, one meal at a time. Both of us look forward to relying upon your reviews in the future.

Jeremy + Christina Horwitz

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