Reviews vs. Restaurateur

Loosely based off a recent dining experience at a certain Mexican restaurant, whose food was sub-optimal, despite the multiple but largely nondescript reviews claiming it was worthwhile. It's almost as if I'm the only one who doesn't like eating there! 

Ultimate Offering

You can spend an entire day cooking something. You could use all the finest ingredients you can get your hands on. You can painstakingly get everything right, from the measurements of various ingredients to the exact timing of the necessary processes. And at the end of it, the people eating it will still manage to find some flaw, such as "It needs more salt" or "You put your heart and soul into this? Eww."

Second Amendments

Based on that one recipe on the Internet for roast chicken, where the recipe author (you know the one I'm referring to) pins their own comment on the video with, like, 3 paragraphs of erratum. And I don't think it was nicely formatted either. But it does make me wonder if some of my cooking failures might have been because I missed some critical after-the-fact information while reading an online recipe. Then I can use that as an excuse for my poor culinary skills.

Second Opinion

When it comes validating things like whether you can replace some ingredient listed in a recipe with something just as dastardly, the Internet is second to none. Though it can be difficult to distinguish between culinary wisdom and unsolicited cooking advice, you can be 60% - 70% certain that what you're reading has probably been successful in somebody's cooking. Even if it means adding sleeping pills to soup.