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Meet the contributor

Nolan Pierce

Restaurantor contributor

Nolan Pierce investigates restaurants in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana for Restaurantor. The researcher focuses on the establishments people keep going back to: local pizzerias, family restaurants, breweries, hamburger places, diners, and independent establishments that might never appear in any national "best of" lists yet are extremely important for their community.

1 Published guide
From this contributor

Latest guides by Nolan Pierce

Browse restaurant guides, dining recommendations, and local food stories researched and written by Nolan Pierce.

1 guide

Local Reputation Carries Weight

Nolan Pierce considers that the most powerful message of a restaurant is its loyalty.

A full dining room on opening weekend can be completely irrelevant. An establishment that keeps feeding its loyal guests through years reveals a completely different picture. This is the reason why Nolan’s investigation goes beyond star averages and viral notoriety.

The background of editorial work of Nolan Pierce is focused on business, consumer experience, and food service investigation.

What Nolan Checks

In his evaluation of restaurants, Nolan checks for consistency of food, service, cleanliness, pricing, value of portion, atmosphere, menu, and the overall sentiments of recent customers.

Nolan also evaluates common trends between the reviews. Are they praising the same foods? Is poor service always cited as an issue? Have there been changes in quality lately? Most often, common trends provide more information than individual positive or negative reviews.

Midwest Coverage

Nolan covers Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, including large dining scenes like Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne, among others.

Nolan’s best categories of coverage include pizza, burgers, breweries, casual American foods, comfort foods, and family diners.

What Makes a Place Worth Including?

Nolan’s answer to this dilemma is clear-cut: it must provide good experiences more than once.

Readers of Restaurantor need recommendations that come from consistent excellence and not just hype. The job of Nolan is to find those establishments that build a reputation meal by meal.