Conflicted about conflicting reviews

I hate it when I hear/read bout how great a restaurant is, what a good deal, how delicious etc. and then I read a different review that tells em the exact opposite!

My friend Karen recently recommended Founding Farmers to me telling me that they have oober tasty food and such large portions that you need to share with a group. THEN my boyfriend sends me Tom Sietsema's take on founding farmers which was less than nice (to put it gently).

So what to do next? Look at the restaurants menu? Is that like judging a book by its cover?

I must admit that the french toast filled with vanilla pastry cream and topped with fresh strawberries is a real draw for me...I did kind of get a feeling Tom was being a bit snotty in this review by dissing the Cheesecake factory which can produce good creative food (though they have recently gone down a bit in their standards when I saw they tried catering to the masses with 'small plates' that did not fit into the menu at all and their samosas resembled a badly done egg roll stuffed with cilantro flavored ground chicken-no peas, potatoes or thick scrumptious fried wrapper).

Guess I'll just have to go and find out for myself Tommy boy.