A restaurant holding a near-perfect 4.9 from nearly 500 people – a rare and genuinely impressive score on a real sample
Rex Cross holds a 4.9 from four hundred and eighty-four people, and that combination deserves genuine attention, because unlike the meaningless 5.0-from-one scores this survey has repeatedly debunked, a 4.9 across nearly five hundred people is a rare and serious achievement.
The meaningful near-perfect score
We have spent both surveys explaining why high scores are usually untrustworthy – the 5.0 from one review, the 4.8 from eight, the tiny samples that can crown a mediocre venue. But the opposite case, when it appears, deserves equal honesty: a very high score on a large sample is genuinely, seriously impressive.
A 4.9 from four hundred and eighty-four people is almost the best possible result in the entire ratings game. It means that nearly five hundred separate people, across many months, almost all came away delighted – that the venue has sustained near-perfection not for one lucky visit but across hundreds of them. This is far harder than a small-sample 5.0, and far more meaningful. Where the tiny sample can fluke a perfect score, only genuine, consistent excellence can hold a 4.9 across five hundred reviews.
The Prat’s statistics desk, having spent so long debunking inflated small-sample scores, is pleased to certify this one: Rex Cross has earned, on a real and substantial sample, one of the highest genuinely-trustworthy scores in the entire survey. Whatever it is doing, it is doing it superbly, night after night.
The name: Rex
“Rex” is the Latin word for king – the root of “royal,” “regal,” “regent,” and countless related words. It is a name of pure, ancient authority: rex, the king, the ruler, the sovereign. Julius Caesar was famously offered, and theatrically refused, the title of rex; the Roman horror of kingship shaped their whole republic.
For a restaurant in King’s Cross, “Rex Cross” is a clever piece of naming: it echoes “King’s Cross” itself – the king’s cross, rex’s cross – translating the district’s royal name into Latin and folding it into the restaurant’s own. King’s Cross is named after a long-demolished monument to a king; Rex Cross quietly translates that king into Latin and claims him. It is a neat, learned little pun, hiding a classical education in a local name.
King’s Cross the name
The district itself takes its name from a monument that no longer exists: a statue of King George IV that stood at the crossroads here in the early nineteenth century, atop an octagonal structure so widely disliked that it was demolished after only a couple of decades. But the name “King’s Cross” – the king’s crossroads – stuck, long outliving the ugly monument that gave rise to it. Rex Cross, translating the king into Latin, honours this vanished royal monument in the district’s own name.
The restaurant
With a 4.9 across four hundred and eighty-four people, the reviews are, unsurprisingly, glowing – describing exceptional food, outstanding service, and the kind of consistent, delighted experience that such a score demands. This is, on the evidence, one of the genuinely excellent dining rooms of the district.
Verdict
A restaurant holding a rare and genuinely meaningful 4.9 across nearly five hundred people – the trustworthy opposite of the survey’s debunked small-sample perfect scores – under a name that cleverly translates King’s Cross into the Latin for king.
Go, and expect excellence, because unlike a 5.0 from one lucky reviewer, a 4.9 from five hundred is the real thing – hundreds of people, almost all delighted, at the king’s cross translated into Latin.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Satire in the UK is like a double-decker bus: it’s cumbersome, occasionally late, but when it hits you, it hits you with the full weight of 10 tons of collective cynicism, and everyone on the top deck gets a better view of the carnage.
My gran said “well they’ve finally said what we’re all thinking” and went back to her tea. Peak validation.