What About North County?

I am writing to complain about what appears to be a Times’ bias toward not reviewing restaurants in areas such as Anaheim Hills, Brea, Fullerton (east of Harbor), Orange (north of Katella), Placentia and Yorba Linda.

I say this because in a recent OC Live!, I counted write-ups concerning some 88 different restaurants in and around Orange County and of that number, only 14 (about 17%) were located in North County. Two of them were chains.

While the numbers may vary somewhat from week to week, this seems to be fairly typical of the review percentages I have observed in your paper. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that nearly all of the restaurants considered “reviewable” are found in Costa Mesa, Dana Point, Irvine, Garden Grove, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana and Tustin. From what I’ve seen, it seems that there are no (or at least relatively few) places to review in other areas. I know that this is wrong, for I have eaten in a number of restaurants in these cities, including the Wagner House, Foxfire, La Griglia, Steamer’s, the Orange County Mining Company, Veltries and the Main Street Restaurant in Yorba Linda.

It seems that many of the restaurants reviewed are fairly close to The Times’ editorial offices. Could it be that you don’t pay your reviewers for the mileage it would require to come up to our area?

More seriously, is it because these restaurants haven’t purchased ads in OC Live!--as many of the reviewed places seem to have done? Whatever the real reasons, my wife and I do like to eat out. We would very much like to see reviews of restaurants that do not require traveling to the end of the Costa Mesa Freeway and beyond.

ARTHUR E. OAKS

Anaheim Hills

Editor’s Note: Restaurant reviews are assigned by the Times Orange County Edition’s editorial staff and have no connection with advertising. Mileage is not a consideration.