Last week Hampton Roads Magazine released its annual Platinum Plates Awards.

This yearly assault on logic has gone on long enough. It’s time for a change.

Mmmm?

First, let’s get everyone up to speed. Each year Hampton Roads Magazine (HRM)–the monthly publication whose publisher keeps us up to date on college sports and editor blogs on about her personal life–publishes a top 10 list of what it considers the best restaurants in our region. They call it the Platinum Plate Awards. Other less expensive sounding metal types are allocated to everyone who doesn’t win (well, no one really loses – more on that later).

Further adding to the confusion is the fact that numerous restaurants are designated as “Platinum,”  but are not “Platinum Plate Award Winners.” Then HRM gushes about them all profusely while never bothering to review anything. Each summary is essentially a small biography of the chef, with whom HRM’s Editor for Food & Wine–Patrick Evans-Hylton–is clearly very chummy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more interested in the food and atmosphere than how long HRM has been “following” a chef or the names of everyone else who works there. Half the time they don’t tell you what kind of food is on the menu, and they never bother to tell you why one place might be better than the other. It’s clear that they are being very careful not to ruffle any feathers.

When it comes to the ranking system it is almost as if the crew over at HRM simply takes a deck of cards with their favorite places written on them and re-shuffles it each year. Take a look back over the last three years and what do you see? The same names over and over, but rarely do any of them hold a position. No one ever wins the top spot two years in a row. Ever.

Maybe it’s impossible that a fine dining experience can be maintained by any single restaurant for more than a few months at a time, or maybe HRM is just playing the coach at a little league game, making sure everyone gets to play.

Here we can see the winners from the past three years. Those who have won multiple times are in bold. Every single restaurant that won in 2009 won again in 2010.

No one goes home empty handed here – as per the judging criteria: “All restaurants that applied were reviewed, and by virtue of their application, they are at least recognized at the base level of the awards.” However, no restaurants at the lowest or “base level”–Pewter–are even listed in the magazine. I guess we’ll have to divine the stinkers for ourselves.

What really irks me about the Platinum Plate Awards isn’t the buddy-buddy atmosphere, the lack of real reviews, the bizarre rating criteria (“contribution to the uniqueness of the region’s restaurant scene” Really?), the questionable rankings or the fact that everyone who applies wins. What really grinds my gears is that judging is not done anonymously.

Here is how HRM describes their “process”:

Restaurant owners and management applied for the awards by completing a simple application process, which included an application fee paid in the form of a gift certificate.

By using the gift certificate when reviewing a particular restaurant, the dining critics were assured a degree of anonymity, allowing for an unbiased examination.

I fail to see how using a gift card makes you magically anonymous, since you pay for everything after the dining experience is complete. Further, HRM uses many of the same judges each year. They are obviously on very friendly terms with the owners and staff, and the restaurants know that nothing negative is ever going to be printed.

Then there is this little nugget, also listed in their judging criteria: “Some critics chose to use previous visits within the evaluation period in lieu of using the gift certificate.” This further devalues the rating system because a restaurant may be judged months ahead of another one. I guess the “degree of anonymity, allowing for an unbiased examination” isn’t really that important to Hampton Roads Magazine after all. Ideally, shouldn’t all of these establishments be judged within the most limited time frame possible? Let’s not even get into Evans-Hylton making “limited exceptions” to the rules–whatever that means–or the fact that none of the detailed ratings are ever made public.

It’s unfortunate that Hampton Roads Magazine doesn’t take the judging and subsequent awards more seriously. Our area has so many wonderful restaurants, and they deserve to be properly reviewed and ranked. Perhaps HRM could rustle up some anonymous judges or bring in professionals from outside the area to give an impartial representation of what the dining scene in Hampton Roads really looks like. Until then, I’ll continue to ignore the Platinum Plate Awards.