About Google Maps – don’t know – I can find streets in the boondocks with it, but might not be the case for the whole country yet.
Alternatives: mapquest.com or maporama.com? Other than that, GPS coordinates might be helpful.

About advertising: always tricky indeed. Clearly stating they are sponsored links in not unusual though: see tripadvisor.com.

Woah tiger, easy on the feelings of exclusion… If you look at the top of your browser you will see that the domain you are currently on is “arbitraryuser.com” which happens to be my site where I do whatever I want.

I read you initial comment and decided not to publish it until I was able to reply and since I’ve been changing jobs, planning a holiday and witnessing car crashes and chasing drunk drivers I kinda feel I have every right to do as I please.

Anyways, I agree, keeping it simple is key, Google Maps would be great but I dont really think that Google maps is “there” yet with regards to roads in South Africa.

The one thing I really disagree with you on is the idea of “paid for listings” or any variation thereof. I feel that the minute we let a restaurant pay us money for anything we run the risk of losing our credibility as a neutral information source.

We do feel that giving restaurants access to the site as “Restaurant Representatives” who can answer questions or respond to criticism etc is a good idea.

Of course you have to mashup a Google map for its location and directions;
Restaurants can pay to have their contactdetails (email\URL?) included, so people can contact them (directly) – if the reviews are not too bad…
Tagging seems like a good idea to facilitate searches – maybe a colorcode for price-range?

In general, good idea (although I think I have seen something similar before – San Francisco I vaguely recall, so do some research as well).

J

PS
Too bad there is no option to be informed via email about comments\updates of this post.

Not all of us are “possibly biased / pretentious / condescending”. Unless of course said journos are of the variety that orginally tried to make it in the restaurant business and failed miserably. Left with nothing to do but criticise others in the media.
I’d be inclined to rather “politely” ask ANYONE biased, pretentious or condescending not to contribute further, regardless of whether they’re a journo, secretary or neurosurgeon.

Besides, most of the obnoxious foodie journos I know are so big up themselves they wouldn’t be able to keep the condescension short enough to be accepted.

Not all of us are “possibly biased / pretentious / condescending”. Unless of course said journos are of the variety that orginally tried to make it in the restaurant business and failed miserably. Left with nothing to do but criticise others in the media.
I’d be inclined to rather “politely” ask ANYONE biased, pretentious or condescending not to contribute further, regardless of whether they’re a journo, secretary or neurosurgeon.

Besides, most of the obnoxious foodie journos I know are so big up themeselves they wouldn’t be able to keep the condescension short enough to be accepted.

with hReview you can do exactly that. See: http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview#Multidimensional_Restaurant_Review