Everyone’s a food or drink influencer now, it seems. Our feeds are almost always filled with glitzy posts about trying out this hidden gem here and un-gatekeeping that hole in the wall there.

As much content as there is floating around the internet, we can’t help but feel that honest reviews are in majorly short supply.

After all, it’s tough to be a fully independent reviewer in Singapore. Things are expensive, and for those who don’t do it full-time, it can be tough to carve out an evening for solo drinks.

Here’s where we think Plain Sips comes in: with actually honest (sometimes brutally so, but only if needed) thoughts about the things we try.

That begins with being open about how we conduct our reviews.

We always visit twice, at least

We believe in giving every bar a fair shot. More importantly, we believe one evening in a bar is hardly enough to get a good view of its character and quality.

A single visit might coincide with a million other factors: Maybe the bartender’s having a terrible day; or perhaps the bar is frantically dealing with an unexpected group of 20 that just walked in the door.

More importantly, we don’t believe having five or six full drinks in one sitting is a good recipe for a fair review. As much as we’d like to think we can hold our liquor, we know there comes a point in the evening when our taste buds simply don’t work as well. Returning another day gives us a chance to reset our palates and livers.

During our second try, we order at least one of the drinks we had in our first session. That lets us judge the bar’s consistency, and lets us test if certain drinks we found strange were just made badly the first time around.

We disclose freely and honestly

Too often, we don’t see reviewers disclosing that they had their meals free of charge, or as part of a hosted tasting session. (These, by the way, are also why plenty of reviews often cover the same handful of items, even if a place has plenty more on its menu.)

We doubt we’ll get to a point where PR companies will want to invite us out for drinks, but if and when we do, we’ll disclose it right up front. And even then, our two-or-more-visit policy still applies, so at least one of our sessions will be conducted incognito.

For just about everything, though, we’re paying entirely out of pocket. Yes, it’s a lot of money, and yes, it’s a terrible financial decision, but it’s what we’ve chosen to do and how we think we can offer the most honest reviews.

We score each place we review

Our scoring system, we’ll admit, is entirely nonscientific. It’s a loose aggregate of everything we feel about a place: the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between.

That said, we place heavy emphasis on the drinks. If a place has 100% perfect cocktails, we’d probably give it a 10 even if our drinks were served in dog bowls.

By and large, this is what our scores mean:

10: Worth dropping every other bar for
8.5 to 9.5: Excellent all around
7 to 8: Worth returning to
5.5 to 6.5: Promising, but not quite there
4 to 5: Average at best
3.5 and below: Reconsider before entering