The protocol this publication is built on.

1. Visits

Reviews are based on a minimum of two visits, made at least two weeks apart, by different reviewers when possible. We attempt to visit during peak service for a venue's category — a Friday or Saturday for supper clubs, a Tuesday for fine-dining tasting menus — and on a second occasion that is not. Opening-period coverage ("First Look", "Opening Notes") is bylined as such; weighted scores on opening-period pieces are provisional and we re-visit at six months.

What we cover.

Four Loons covers independent restaurants, cocktail bars, and dining establishments — primarily in Minnesota, with occasional pieces on the broader Upper Midwest when a venue is relevant to a Minnesota reader. With rare exceptions, we do not review national chains or fast food. The exception is a regional chain that a Minnesota reader would recognize as distinctly theirs — but even then, the bar is the same as for any other venue. A kitchen that is the same in Minneapolis as it is in Phoenix is not what this publication exists to document.

2. Identity at the table

We do not identify ourselves as Four Loons while reserving, ordering, or paying. Tables are booked under reviewers' personal names. We do not ask for menu modifications, off-menu items, or extra courses. We do not request the chef or owner. The only exceptions are tasting menus the kitchen knows in advance is press service — those are declared in the review's Disclosure field.

3. What we pay for

We pay every check at our own table. Reviewers are reimbursed for the cost of food, drink, tax, and tip at industry-standard rates. We do not accept comped meals on visits used for scoring, with the single exception above (declared press tastings).

Comped meals offered after a review is published — by operators we have reviewed — are declined. Comped meals at venues not under review (an industry friend's birthday, a wedding, a charity event) are not used for scoring and not written about.

4. The rating system

The score is a weighted average across seven dimensions:

What a loon means.

Loons are exceedingly rare. A one-loon designation means a venue is doing the central thing it sets out to do at a national level of execution — a restaurant whose food a serious diner would travel to, a cocktail bar whose program a serious bartender would study. Two loons means that excellence is consistent and the room around it supports it. Three loons means the venue is defining of its category in this state. Four loons is generational — a recognition the publication may not award in a given year at all.

Most competently-run venues do not earn a loon. That is the design. The largest single category, by intent, is no-loon: a venue can be worth a regular table, worth a Tuesday night, worth a recommendation to a friend, and still not clear the loon threshold. The score is published in either case. The loon is the additional thing.

The award is computed deterministically from the score. Each tier requires both a weighted-score minimum and per-dimension floors — a venue cannot earn a loon by averaging out a weakness in the area it claims to be about. The floors below describe the universal weighted-score minimums and the minimum any single dimension must clear. The gating dimension — the one the venue must lead with — depends on the venue type and is described in the section after the table.

The gating dimension depends on what the venue is.

A loon is won or lost in the dimension the venue's existence is organized around. A restaurant's gating dimension is Food. A cocktail bar's is Cocktails. A wine bar's is the wine program (which lives within Cocktails / Beverage). A bakery is judged on Food but the criteria inside Food shift toward pastry and bread, not entrees. The publication does not hold a neighborhood bar to a restaurant's food standard, and does not hold a restaurant to a cocktail bar's beverage standard.

Within a single venue type, the seven-dimension weighting also shifts. A brewery taproom's Cocktails / Beverage dimension is weighted more heavily than a restaurant's; its Service dimension is weighted less. The full venue-archetype matrix lives in our editor sub-rubrics. The principle is consistent: the publication scores a venue against what it is, not against the form next door.

No loon does not mean no review.

Sub-loon is the publication's largest tier by design. A score of 2.95 is published as 2.95 — we do not round to 3.0, we do not soften the number, we do not bury the prose. The dek and the body carry the verdict in plain language: a sub-loon review can be a warm recommendation (“worth a regular table; we will visit again”) or a plain account of what did not work. Sub-loon reviews can also earn editorial badges — “Notable Wine Program”, “Notable Cocktails”, “Notable Service” — when a single dimension stands out above the venue's overall placement. Badges are recognition; loons are awards.

We score in increments of 0.1 within each dimension. We do not round the published number. A 3.6 is a 3.6.

Opening-period pieces are not loon-eligible.

Any review labeled First Look or Opening Notes carries a score but cannot earn a loon. A kitchen — or a bar program — in its first weeks is not the kitchen we will judge at a twelve-month revisit, and we will not commit a loon to a venue we have not yet seen settled. The opening piece does the work of introducing the venue and starting the public score history; the loon is a question we answer later.

5. Revisits and re-scores

We revisit reviewed venues at twelve months. If a revisit materially changes the score, we publish a follow-up note and update the rating; the prior score remains visible in the page's history.

Operators may request a re-review by email. We do not commit to a timeline, and we do not commit to a re-visit being conducted in the framing the operator proposes. We do read the request.

6. Conflicts

Reviewers recuse themselves from venues run by anyone they have a professional, personal, or financial relationship with — including former coworkers, household members, former employers, and operators they have previously written for in any context. A recused reviewer is replaced by another from the team; the piece is not bylined or attributed to the recused person.

The team's collective conflicts (vendor relationships of the publication itself, paid speaking engagements, etc.) are declared on individual reviews where applicable.

7. Governance & accountability

Four Loons is owned by a single private entity. Editorial decisions — which venues to review, what the rubric measures, when a score is revised — are made by the publication's editor. The editor is accountable for everything published here. That accountability does not require the editor to be publicly named; it requires that the editor act as if they will be.

Operators and readers may reach the editor directly at editors@fourloons.com. Correspondence is read; legitimate disputes are escalated to a documented re-review (Section 5). The editor responds in writing.

The ownership entity does not hold, has not held, and will not hold equity, advisory positions, or paid relationships with any venue the publication reviews. If that changes, the relationship will be disclosed in the footer of every page on which it could conceivably apply, and the relevant venues will be removed from review eligibility.

8. Corrections

Factual corrections are published in the original piece, dated, and noted at the bottom under a Corrections heading. We do not silently update reviews after publication. If a correction changes the score, the score change is also dated and explained.