A well-structured review is easier to write and easier to read. You don't need a rigid template, but a natural flow helps.
The Natural Arc
1. Context (1-2 sentences) When did you go? What kind of meal was it? Who were you with? This frames everything that follows.
"A Saturday dinner with friends, booked a week ahead. We came specifically for the seafood rice, which we'd heard was the best in the neighbourhood."
2. The setting (2-3 sentences) What's the space like? What was your first impression walking in?
"A narrow, tiled room with an open kitchen taking up the entire back wall. Loud, packed, energetic. The kind of place where you feel the room's excitement before you sit down."
3. The food (the body of the review) Dish by dish if the meal was short, or by overall impression if you had many courses. This is where description and assessment live. Focus on the highlights and any notable failures.
4. Everything else (service, wine, pacing) Weave these in where they're relevant, or address them briefly as their own section. Service that enhanced the meal deserves mention. Service that detracted deserves fair criticism.
5. The verdict (2-3 sentences) Your overall assessment. Would you return? Who would you recommend it to? What's the one thing someone should know before going?
"This is a restaurant that knows exactly what it is. A loud, joyful, no-frills seafood house where the rice is the reason to go. The rice justified the hype: a perfect socarrat, intensely flavoured stock, generous with the shellfish. Go for the rice. Skip the starters."
Length
Short reviews (50-100 words): Useful for quick impressions. Cover the essential: what you ate, whether it was good, and one specific detail. These are valuable for casual visits.
Medium reviews (150-300 words): The sweet spot for most restaurant visits. Enough room for description, assessment, and context. Enough to be useful without overwriting.
Long reviews (400+ words): Reserve for significant dining experiences. A tasting menu, a destination restaurant, a place you visited multiple times. The length should be earned by the complexity of the experience, not by your enthusiasm for writing.
The most common mistake is overwriting. A review doesn't need to cover every course, every interaction with the server, every song on the playlist. Edit ruthlessly. If a sentence doesn't add new information or insight, cut it.