Word of Mouth - When to Believe it.

Moving to a new community in a new state is scary. It takes a while to get acclimated to your new surroundings. Find a doctor? A beautician? A mechanic or handyman? Etc. What we learned is that you can glean a lot of information by bobbing in the clubhouse pool on your noodle. Yes we have noodles in every color - an accessory we never needed in NYC that has become essential in Florida. So there you are bobbing around the pool talking to this person or that group and the subject is always who do you go to for medical, hair or plumbing? And of course, where to get the best pizza, or pasta, or burger. What we've learned the hard way is 'consider the source'. You don't take an Italian food recommendation from someone raised in Michigan or Ohio. Especially since we're from NYC and my husband was raised in Little Italy! So we've gotten very selective about referrals. A great resource is a website called www.urbanspoon.com where you can get reviews and menus about any type of restaurant you might be looking for. We've found this very helpful. And now of course, y'all have ME and my reviews of our monthly Great Escapes. Hope you enjoy!

Where are we going to eat tonight honey?

My friends and I enjoy eating out at restaurants that take us AWAY from our retirement community. That's right - out of the 'bubble'. Each month I will write a short review of the restaurants we pick. Which were the home runs, which were clunkers (yes we've experienced both). I will post a link to the restaurant so you can do your own research and check them out yourselves. And I'll give it a rating based on the following criteria: Ratings from 1-5 (with one being least favorable and 5 being most favorable) Categories like Venue, Food, Price. I can't offer you the opinion of whether I'd return or not because we'll always want to try a new restaurant. And for sure there are hundreds of restaurants in Tampa Bay to keep us busy for a long time. We'll keep going till either our digestive tracts fail us or our eyesight renders us unable to "Drive at Night"!