Star-Dhaka Foodies Award for eateries lanunched

The Daily Star and online restaurant review portal www.thedhakafoodies. com launched an award for eateries in Bangladesh yesterday.

Based on user ratings, top-rated restaurants, three from each of 15 categories, will be presented "Foodiez Choice Awards 2015" comprising crests and certificates.

Addressing the launching ceremony in the capital's The Daily Star Centre, the portal's founder Ashiqur Rahman requested food lovers to vote and rate their favourite restaurants while writing reviews at the portal till January 15 next year.

The website, boasting 35,000 registered users, will also award the 15 most avid foodies with Microsoft smartphones, he added.

The award categories include best Bangladeshi, Thai, Chinese, Italian and Indian cuisines. There are also categories for the most influential restaurant owner, best chef of 2015, and most popular restaurant manager.

Ashiqur added that each of the top 500 users of the website will get 12 doughnuts from one of the world's leading doughnut and coffee company, Krispy Kreme.

Citing www.thedhakafoodies. com estimations, The Daily Star Editor and Publisher Mahfuz Anam said sales in Dhaka restaurants amount to around Tk 300 crore every month while about five new restaurants were opened every week.

Terming competition the soul of any growing industry, he said the entire industry would improve because of the competition triggered by the award.

"Good restaurants can also attract tourists. Bangkok restaurants are a prime example of that. If not on an international level, Dhaka  restaurants can at least get tourists from across the country if they have reputation," he said.

"In short," he explained, "success of restaurants is heavily dependent on maintaining a good reputation. At the same time, a restaurant's business falls drastically if its customers are dissatisfied."

Ashiqur said the reviews and votes would help ensure "fair and updated information on all restaurants while the winning houses will get special promotion". He added that food lovers would be able to see a live leaderboard of popular restaurants anytime.