Last published in fall 2016, the Zagat New York City restaurants guide is about to be revived in print.
The 2020 survey will be issued this fall by Zagat.com, which is now owned by the Infatuation, a restaurant rating and guides platform. For the last two years, the guides have had only an online presence.
For the Infatuation, restoring the restaurant-goer’s slender bible was a priority. “From the moment we took control of the brand, we were interested in bringing Zagat back to print,” said Chris Stang, a founder and the chief executive of the Infatuation. “It didn’t take long to understand how much the community wanted the guide back as well.”
It was exactly 40 years ago that the notion of having friends rate a bunch of restaurants started Tim and Nina Zagat, both lawyers, on their effort. Their guides — for New York and other cities and regions around the world — became the standard-bearer in the days before Yelp, the popular alternative to professional critics.
Google acquired Zagat in 2011 from the founders for $151 million, and subsequently stopped publishing the books. The Infatuation bought Zagat from Google last year for an undisclosed amount.
The company has no plans at the moment to bring back any of the printed guides besides the New York survey.
“Zagat published an excellent little phone book,” said Pete Wells, the chief restaurant critic for The New York Times. “I can find the phone numbers and addresses of most restaurants faster by scanning an alphabetical list than by swatting my thumbs at my phone screen.”
But publishing a new Zagat survey requires help from the public, so the Infatuation is also reviving online voting. Voting for restaurants in the new guide will be open through May 5.
