2012 Edition: New Orleans Dining: A Guide   for the Hungry Visitor Craving an Authentic Experience
Novelist and epicurean essayist Steven Wells Hicks knows that a restaurant meal is more than a plate of chow. Over all, it's a holistic experience; one that includes the aura of the surroundings, the professionalism of the staff and how the establishment fits within its neighborhood or city itself. Ultimately, a restaurant's mission is to first set, and then fulfill patron expectations, and success or failure is wholly dependent upon the tastes, preconceptions and caprices of every customer who walks in the door. In the thirty-plus years since Hicks wrote his first restaurant review for the former "Jackson" magazine, his work as a marketing planner and strategist has given him perceptive insights into consumer expectations and those factors impacting subsequent satisfaction levels. It is those factors he brings into play as he defines, examines and reports at length on more than two dozen restaurants the generally succeed in not only living up to consumer expectations, but reflecting the authentic, prismatic cuisines and cultures that make New Orleans one of America's premier dining destinations. In addition to "New Orleans Dining," Steven Wells Hicks is the author of three novels: "The Gleaner," "The Fall of Adam" and "Horizontal Adjustment." When not anonymously investigating New Orleans restaurants, he makes his home with his wife, The Sensible One, upriver in Mississippi.