Omnivore - Second helpings: Why review Truffles Grill at all?

• James Camp
• The dining room at Truffles Grill

Is there even a decent reason to review somewhere like Truffles Grill? Especially if I have nothing surprising to say?

As usual, the commenters on my story are playing out the exact arguments I had with myself about the review. I considered not even writing it. As commenter Kelly W. said, “Change the name and you’ve just reviewed every O’Charlie’s, Houstons, Cheesecake Factory, and so forth in the country.”

But there are two reasons why I decided to review Truffles. The first is that it’s slightly different from many other chain restaurants in that it’s modeled after a well-liked restaurant in Hilton Head, one that many Atlantans may have visited and enjoyed. It’s represented by a major Atlanta PR firm (Melissa Libby PR). It has an overall rating of four stars on Open Table. It has received a ton of fawning chatter on blogs around town. (One post, from Pretty Southern, curiously went up yesterday after my review came out and bears a striking, almost word-for-word resemblance to the press release about Truffles I received a few weeks back). Even John Kessler has some positive things to say in his one star review for the AJC.