FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions) About
Boston's Hidden Restaurants
People who come to Boston's Hidden Restaurants often ask questions about our site. Some of the more popular questions can be found below; we have included answers to these questions that will hopefully satisfy our viewers. Click any of the links below to get to the questions. And thanks again for your interest in Boston's Hidden Restaurants!
-- What is Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
-- Do you only include positive restaurant reviews?
-- Do you actually go to each restaurant that is on your site?
-- How old is Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
-- What else other than restaurant reviews is on Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
-- Do you review restaurants outside of Boston?
-- What is the purpose of your restaurant blog?
-- I noticed the RSS buttons next to each blog entry. What is RSS?--
-- Who can participate in your restaurant forum?
-- Do you have a newsletter?
-- Do restaurants pay you for your reviews?
-- What future plans do you have for Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
QUESTION: What is Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
Boston's Hidden Restaurants is a Boston-based Web site that features top Boston and New England restaurants that are not as well-known to people who live outside of the area. One goal of Boston's Hidden Restaurants is to bring attention to some great restaurants that might not be in other restaurant guides.
QUESTION: Do you only include positive restaurant reviews?
Yes, we only feature restaurants that we believe are worth going to, yet are not generally all that popular (what many people call hidden gems or hidden jewels). But no, we try not to include hidden restaurants that are subpar. Sometimes there is a good reason why a restaurant attracts few people! One further note is that we do include criticism of restaurants within our blog, forum, and questions and answers area, but as far as the featured restaurants are concerned, they are only positive reviews.
QUESTION: Do you actually go to each restaurant that is on your site?
We have been to every restaurant that is featured on our site at least once, and in the case of some restaurants, many times. However, we also have a section of unreviewed restaurants, most of which we have not been to, but believe are places potentially worth checking out. Each of these unreviewed restaurants includes a form where readers can post their own reviews. Elsewhere within the site, there are a few listings in our Special Features section that we have included based on discussions with people not affiliated with the site. For example, we have not been to all of the popular restaurants listed on our popular and hidden restaurants in New York City page. But the popular restaurants we have listed are some of the best restaurants in New York City, so we know they are good places.
QUESTION: How old is Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
Our restaurant site was founded in February, 2004. Boston's Hidden Restaurants has grown quickly, and as of 2007, we are on track to have more than 1 million visitors to our site over the next year.
QUESTION: What else other than restaurant reviews is on Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
In addition to including featured hidden restaurants on our site, we have special features, including lists of restaurants for specific holidays, neighborhoods, or seasons. For example, we have a page on ice cream stands in Boston and New England and another page on restaurants near Fenway Park. We also have a restaurant blog as well as other sections geared toward general information on the Boston restaurant scene, and we have the aforementioned section on unreviewed restaurants (you can find a link to it in Question 3).
QUESTION: Do you review restaurants outside of Boston?
Yes. We include restaurants from all parts of New England, and, in a couple of cases, outside of New England. We also discuss restaurants outside of Boston on our blog, in our restaurant forum, and in some of our special features such as our New England restaurants for fall foliage trips page.
QUESTION: What is the purpose of your restaurant blog?
Because we are sometimes limited by the fact that Boston's Hidden Restaurants can only feature little-known restaurants in the Boston and New England area, we decided to include a restaurant blog that allows us to talk about all kinds of restaurants in the Boston area, as well as the rest of New England and, often, places as far away as California, Ireland, and Quebec. Our restaurant blog also allows us to talk about some of the best popular restaurants in the Boston area, as well as restaurants that we do not like all that much.
QUESTION: I noticed the RSS buttons next to each blog entry. What is RSS?
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" (as far as people know, anyway!). RSS is a fairly new feature used primarily for news feeds, blogs, and any other items that are updated frequently. Boston's Hidden Restaurants uses RSS to break down its restaurant blog into separate entries that act much like news feeds; in other words, the entries are updated automatically when used with an online or downloadable RSS reader, so people can tell when a new blog entry has been written without having to search through the Web site. In addition to an RSS feed for our restaurant blog, we also have an RSS feed for our Boston restaurant forum, our questions and answers section, and our restaurant openings and closings feature. For more information on RSS feeds, go to our RSS information page.
QUESTION: Who can participate in your restaurant forum?
Anyone can view the discussions in our Boston restaurant forum, but unfortunately you need to be registered in order to join in on the discussions that take place in the forum, and at the present time our forum is no longer accepting new users.
QUESTION: Do you have a newsletter?
Yes, our Boston restaurant newsletter was introduced at the beginning of 2006. An updated newsletter will be released quarterly.
QUESTION: Do restaurants pay you for your reviews?
No. We do not accept money from restaurants in return for reviews, nor do we accept free or discounted meals from restaurants. In fact, we do not even reveal who we are when we check out a restaurant. The goal of Boston's Hidden Restaurants is simply to let people know about which little-known Boston and New England restaurants are worth going to. Our only source of income is advertising (and we do not allow featured restaurants to advertise), so we try to keep our restaurant site as objective and honest as possible.
QUESTION: What future plans do you have for Boston's Hidden Restaurants?
We do have some big plans for 2008 and 2009, including the following: Revamping the Boston's Hidden Restaurants site to make it run even faster than it does now; making the site handheld-friendly by using CSS style sheets to make pages display smoothly on PDAs and cell phones; adding more special feature pages; continuing our move into the use of RSS feeds to introduce our site to people who use online or downloadable RSS readers; and getting the word out on our site through advertising and word of mouth so we can achieve our goal of reaching 2,000,000 viewers in the year 2008. We truly hope to make Boston's Hidden Restaurants one of the top, if not THE top, restaurant Web site in Boston, and perhaps even in all of New England. And, of course, we can't thank our viewers enough for choosing our site. We sincerely appreciate your interest.
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