My blog journey is still very much in its early days. However since posting my first restaurant review in January 2017, it has been an interesting and a rewarding experience. The idea to start writing about restaurant visits and share my favourite recipes is very much a hobby as it’s something I genuinely love doing. Friends and family had been encouraging me for a while to start a blog, but I just thought who on earth would want to read about my food? Eventually I decided to at least give it a go, after all it was only a hobby so why not?
The first task was to think of an appropriate name. I wanted to say something about where I live and for the name to represent me in some way. I quickly came up with the name ‘Pershore Patty’, which acknowledged my hometown and my love for a great burger! I purchased the domain name and set about creating a new website, which was something that I had no idea how to do. I followed the prompts to put together a WordPress site and before I knew it I had a blog.
As exciting as it was to have finally taken the plunge to go ‘live’ with my idea, the only way it would grow and build momentum was if I started to tell people about it. Setting up social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram was the easy part. Attracting a brand new following has taken a lot of work, but I quickly realised this was how other bloggers were interacting with restaurants, other ‘foodies’ and each other, so it was worth the effort.
By learning as I went along and posting fresh content onto my blog regularly, I quickly found myself getting noticed. Within the first 3 months I had been approached by a fine dining restaurant to write a review for them, had nearly 4000 website views in month 3, I was asked to write a feature for a glossy local magazine and a review for a local paper, as well as being invited into the kitchen of a 2 Michelin Star restaurant. I felt my hard work was really starting to pay off and began to enjoy it more and more.
Some weeks can be a challenge to get reviews written, posted and shared on social media around a busy work schedule. The same applies with recipes for the blog, although it has encouraged me to cook more of a variety of meals at home as well as getting a little more experimental in the kitchen. I’m still working on trying to find a balance of posting as often as I can, but not setting myself too strict deadlines. It’s important for me to be able to fit writing in around everything else and above all to still enjoy it.
The really fun part of this experience is of course eating at lots of great restaurants. It’s rewarding to share good news with people and to recommend somewhere to them that’s worth spending their money, so I only write about the places I genuinely think are good. Each review has a positive tone and if there are any hiccups I try not to dwell too much on the negatives. There has only been one restaurant that I visited so far where although the food was great, the service was so poor that I chose not to write about it.
There was one local pub that I visited with my partner where the food was pretty good, so wrote a positive review and told everyone I knew to go there. Shortly after reopening with their new chef, complacency seemed to kick in and everyone who went there upon my recommendation had a terrible meal…eek! Then there was the time I couldn’t speak highly enough about an incredible burger – I raved on and on about it to a friend, they then rushed along to try it out and subsequently found a piece of metal hiding in the meat. These examples show that many potentially good restaurants seem to struggle with consistency, which is a key quality of the most successful dining establishments.
My approach to how I write my blog and choose where to visit is already starting to evolve, even though it is still early days. I want to give readers an honest insight into what the food in my review is really like. For this reason I am careful not to accept too many ‘complimentary’ invitations or to write about just the newly opened venues. It’s not about eating where I can for free, I genuinely want to help guide and make suggestions to fellow foodies on where’s good to eat.
Pershore Patty is about sharing recipes, great places to eat and supporting everything local. The restaurants and food places I visit are within an hours’ drive of Pershore, Worcestershire and include everything from fine dining experiences, local pubs and inns, hotels, world cuisine, coffee shops, burger bars and more.