From time to time, Culinary Intelligence runs across books, tools, food, places, or even wines that strike us as worthy of comment. (Although we're not going to get into the wine-review rat race, all that much. There's too much of it going on, written by too many people with far too few clues.)

And of course, no set of reviews is worth its salt (hand-gathered sea salt, naturally, at fifteen dollars a pound) without a set of graphic quality indicators -- like the Michelin stars. And so we've created our own tripartite axes of classification for rating things:

For usefulness: the "knife". Since the single most useful tool in a kitchen is a chef's knife, we'll rate things with:

	Zero knives: absolutely useless, pointless, serves no conceivable purpose.		One knife: Well, we suppose someone, somewhere might need this thing.
	Two knives: If you have the need, this is a perfectly good example of something that would meet it, but still not an essential.		Three knives: You gotta have one -- your life is not complete without it.

For accuracy: the "scale". If we're rating a book or an article or an authority, we'll assign a measure of reliability:

	Zero scales: Unmitigated rubbish. You risk bodily harm if you rely on this source.		One scale: Too many errors, factual and doctrinal, to be worth the money.
	Two scales: Generally sound, with the occasional deviation from the path of righteousness, but all in all, OK.		Three scales: The gospel. Trust it with your life and the lives of your loved ones.

For brow level: the "nose". The range of culinary intelligence runs, of course, from the low brow to the high, from chain restaurants to The French Laundry, from Charles Shaw to Veronique Drouhin. When appropriate, we'll rate things on a snob scale as follows:

	Zero noses: Very lowbrow. You will never be on the A list anywhere if you admit to liking, consuming, using, relying on, or even being aware of this festering heap of commonality.		One nose: Pretty darn lowbrow. Like watching Oprah or eating at Subway. You risk your street cred fairly dramatically.
	Two noses: Medium brow. Slightly above mainstream -- no shame in it, but doesn't confer any real aura of expertise.		Three noses: Très haute, at least at the moment (things can slip down-brow, over time, you understand). Good name-dropping ammunition, over lunch at the Lion d'Or.

Obviously, we'll try to be supremely objective about all this, scrupulously fair and unbiased in our approach, and careful to avoid anything that could be construed as libel. But don't count on it.