Hi Eatmejax! (IT’S ME, JAX).

I know it’s a corny name, but what can I do? I’m a corny person.

Anyways, you can read my personal introduction (10-minute long version, Taylor Swift ka?) here. 

Okay – let’s just shorten the intro if you haven’t read it. 

I’m Jax, and I mainly write food and restaurant reviews all over Davao. I’m not a professional food critic (I mean, is there a school you can get certified at? Because I’d definitely be first in line). I’m just someone who genuinely looooooves food. I love to eat, reading, and watching hours of food documentaries, researching about it, attempting to make it and just passionately talk about it.

Because really, do you need to be a chef to know what tastes good?
Can a gamer with thousands of hours under their belt not be able to write a professional review on a game because they are not a game developer or a professional e-sports player? Can a cinephile not criticize a film just because they are not a director, actor, or filmmaker?

That’s where I stand. I may not be a professional, but I approach food with curiosity, intention, and a lot of time spent tasting, researching, and reflecting.

What I’ll talk about here is the method to my madness:

I rate the following criteria:

• food taste
• technique
• creativity
• presentation
• cleanliness
• flavor balance
• food texture
• quality of the ingredients
• value for its price
• And yes, my personal enjoyment
  
  I try to rate the dishes individually because I cannot just say this restaurant is bad when you’ve only had a bad experience with 1 dish out of the 5 you ordered. I cannot say the restaurant is good as well just because of one great dish.
  
  We all have personal preferences, and I make it a point to be transparent.
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  When I dine with other people, I try to incorporate their feedback too. If I’m eating with a group, I average the score to get data and have a more balanced perspective. It’s not just one opinion, but a small data set.
  
  Maybe that’s the accountant in me coming out. I work in management consulting, so I naturally lean towards data-driven thinking. I don’t like writing without having the data to support it.
  
  How I Rate
  
  I group restaurant ratings into five main areas:
• Food rating – how good I find the dishes I ordered
• Value for Money – is it worth the money you’re paying for
• Location – ambiance, cleanliness, accessibility, parking
• Service – what’s the customer experience and overall dining like?
• Variety – menu range, uniqueness and if there are many that standout.
  
  I score my food based on the picture above. That is my personal metric. Of course, other professionals like chefs have other metrics, like maybe their 10/10 depends on how one restaurant perfected a technique they know is difficult to follow in serving a dish. OR maybe your 10/10 is depending on how delicious it is at a certain price level OR if you can make it at home better.
  
  I have my own personal metrics to guide me on my grading system and you have yours.
  
  The food rating is the average score of the dishes we tried multiplied by a 5-star system.
  
  Yes – there’s math involved.
  
  I also round down instead of round up. So if it’s 3.6, I round down to 3.5. I only round it up when it deserves to be rounded up higher.

  As for the overall restaurant rating, it’s the average of all categories. And starting April 2026, I present the score exactly as it is – no rounding.

Why I Do This

I told you, I’m not a professional, but blogging is a personal space, and I love writing about it. It’s more for me than for my readers. 

But I do want to help in some ways:
For my readers – to help you decide where to eat, based on honest and thoughtful experience. Yes – data calculations in a small data set.
For the restaurants – to offer feedback that can help refine and elevate what you do.

At the end of the day, all of this is just one mad woman’s perspective and madness. My dining experience is just one opinion. The deciding factor is always with YOU!