A good review by London Times restaurant critic Giles Coren can add $1 million to a restaurant's business. He not only looks for the standards of good food, good service and nice atmosphere, but more importantly to him what he considers an exceptional dining experience, whether it be in a five-star establishment or a hole-in-the-wall. Those exceptional experiences generally mean living up to and exceeding what the restaurants bill themselves to be. He goes to North America in search of those exceptional experiences, he writing that "million dollar" review for one restaurant in each city he visits. Because he can't eat at every restaurant in each city he visits, he gets his trusty research assistant Julia Pileggi to narrow the field to a short list of five, those five where he dines in deciding which restaurant gets his review.
