Jeff Parker, Restaurant Critic

We have commented before that the Claremont "City Manager Update" has in recent months become somewhat laughable with its puffery. Before it became just another obligatory PR vehicle, it would contain real information for the councilmembers to keep them up to date on events in the city. It would inform council about things such as significant police contacts, street closures, infrastructure work--things that constituents might be asking them about.

Now, however it has degenerated into a weekly piece flogging the town for another Money Magazine award, or perhaps recognition from the California League of Cities.

The example at hand today is city manager Jeff Parker's comments on the Three Forks Chop House (click on the image or here for a larger version). He lifts a review from gayot.com and makes this comment:

The review...gave it [Three Forks Chop House] one of the highest ratings, 14/20.

We here are no experts on restaurant ratings, but 14/20 didn't seem all that stellar to us. So we went to gayot.com and checked the website's rating scale. Take a closer look by clicking on the image.

It seems that a rating of 14/20 merits only one chef's hat. Far from being, as Parker asserts, "one of the highest ratings", this rating is in the bottom half of the numerical ratings. Of course, the rating system appears to be skewed to the high end--a little "grade inflation" in the restaurant criticism biz. Aren't there any "poor" restaurants? We've been to some in Claremont that would reasonably fall into that category, if fairly defined. But maybe if you are a restaurant critic, like Jeff Parker, with a city credit card, it doesn't pay to visit poor restaurants.

Just to be clear: Parker tells the City Council and the community that the restaurant received "one of the highest ratings". In fact, it received one star out of a possible four.

This is not all that different from Parker's comments at the council meeting. We watched the rebroadcast of the September 25 council meeting, and heard Parker "justifying" the use of $1,000,000 in general fund money for Johnson's Pasture after he made sure council knew that--we paraphrase--"the city never admitted any wrongdoing in the $17.5 Palmer Canyon fire settlement".

Everything is perfect in Claremont, the best of all possible worlds.