First, a moment of realization and then panic spreads through the restaurant, one of Manhattan's toniest, from the front of the house to the back and downstairs to the basement where the chef is yelling the ear off of some poor, unwitting reservationist. "How did this happen?!?" he screams. "The Zagats are here and they're not on the list! My god, they're going to have to wait now, like regular customers!"

Fortunately for the quivering clerk, the aforementioned scene doesn't really play out in a restaurant basement, but on a stage, during a performance of Fully Committed, a hit comedy that has been running off-Broadway for nearly a year. If the name Zagat means nothing to you, then you probably don't get the joke. If you own a restaurant in a major American city and the name still means nothing to you, then, well, you really don't get it.

The Zagats, Tim and Nina, are well-known for the eponymous, burgundy-colored dining guides they publish-compendiums of customer reviews of eateries from fine-dining shrines to local pizza joints-which can be found

And indeed, some restaurateurs see significant advantages to being pondered and critiqued by multiple voices. "Any new way people can find out about us, that's great," says Michael Bowling, proprietor of Jupiter Grill in Louisville, KY. Other operators regard the reviews as real business resources. As Meyer points out, one-time reviews in newspapers can't account for the fact that restaurants are organic entities which change dramatically over time. And with so many new restaurants opening, reviewers rarely have time to revisit a long-standing establishment. Guidebooks which are updated annually-or web sites, updated constantly-fill the void.

But even as these guides signal the ongoing boom in dining out, their proliferation is raising some serious questions for restaurant operators, and could even be hurting their business in ways they can't see. Because the evaluations presented in today's dining guides, overwhelmingly, are not the opinions of trained critics, journalists, or chefs, but the unknown, hungry masses. And while the Zagat reviews undergo an exhaustive process that the company says balances good opinions with bad, the methods of other guides are lesser known, prompting some to question the fairness of the picture painted.

"The problem is they compare apples and oranges," says Rob Meyne, executive director of communications for Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, Friday's parent. "When the Washington Zagat would rank us against Jean-Louis [Palladin] at the Watergate, it didn't make a lot of sense."

"Those outlets can be just as powerful as a prominent review in terms of sparking a fire," says New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, owner of such hot spots as Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern. "It's something you really have to keep your eye on. It's almost like playing dodge ball and you've got a whole bunch more people throwing at you."

T.G.I. Friday's, for example, takes a beating in the New York City book: "Swanson's TV dinner reheated," said the 1999 review, which also likened the restaurant to "a sign of the apocalypse" and topped it all off with "puhleeze, this is NY, not Dubuque."

"A guidebook should give an informed perspective," says Andre Gayot, founder of Gayot Restaurant Guides, which started in France in 1970 and now publishes annual editions for 25 American cities, with an online arm-Gayot.com-that covers 60 cities in the U.S. "Not everyone shares our [critics'] opinions of certain restaurants or chefs, but still it gives an idea of what a restaurant is really like."

Others have capitalized on similar formats. Bob Sehlinger, for example, supplements critic-written reviews with customer opinions in his Eclectic Gourmet Guides that are now available for eight cities. "The voices don't always agree, and that's just the point. Readers need to see that to make the most informed decision."

Even if they are just regular customers.

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Zagat Survey, Horan Jones, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, EVERYONE'S CRITIC, Jim Gurfein, Tim Zagat, Gourmet Guides, York Leff, Cafe Zagat's, Louisville KY, tim zagat, dining guides, union square cafe, review process, square cafe, eclectic gourmet, horan jones, information restaurants, union square, york city, review sites, there's information restaurants, eclectic gourmet guides,
Approximate Word count = 2561
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)