The Onion Ring Standard

Sola cepa. Onion alone. 

Why on earth would I start a blog where all I do is review onion rings? There's a short answer, and a long answer.

Short answer: I like onion rings. 

Long answer: I've recently developed a philosophy about judging restaurant quality solely by the quality of their onion rings. It started as an anecdotal observation: restaurants I liked usually had good onion rings. Gradually, I started ordering onion rings at more and more places, whether as a side, or an appetizer, or standing alone. The more onion rings I tried, the more my observation rang true. 

Eventually, this developed into a fully-fledged philosophy of food. Well, not really. But I do use it as a standard for judging restaurant quality. Onion rings seem easy enough to make, just bread some onions and fry them. Why bother doing anything more?

Because they're so seemingly simple, it might be tempting to put less thought or care into making them. After all, there's so much else to do and better things to focus on. Why care about the lowly onion ring? 

If the onion rings are good, that's often a signal that the chefs and cooks put a thought and care into every part of the menu. It's a simple test to see whether a restaurant is any good, one I think is more effective than getting any random thing off the menu. 

Sola cepa.