Nobody can pay to be in it. A restaurant cannot buy a listing, a better position, or a kinder word — at any price. If a deal is real, it is listed. If it isn't, no payment changes that. Inclusion is earned by running a special, nothing else.

The restaurant has to say it itself. A deal is printed only when the restaurant publishes it — on its own website, menu, or social accounts. A price found only on a delivery app or a third-party menu site is not enough. If we cannot trace a special back to the restaurant, we leave it out.

We check every week, and we keep the receipts. Each listing comes from that week's sweep, and we keep a log of what was checked, where, and when. If a special was last posted some weeks ago, we say so next to the listing rather than presenting it as fresh.

Specials change. Call before you go. Restaurants end specials early, run out, and reprint menus without telling anyone. That is why every listing carries the restaurant's phone number: a 30-second call is the surest way to confirm a deal is on. We would rather you know that up front than learn it at the door.

We don't print star ratings. Google and Yelp already rank restaurants; we do something different — we tell you what is worth going out for this week. A modestly rated restaurant can run the best special in town, and when it does, it leads the issue. We do read the ratings when vetting a place; we just don't let an average of old reviews outrank a great deal today.

Readers never pay. The newsletter is free, and it stays free. Deals are advertising that restaurants want spread; charging readers for them would help no one.

Sponsors are labeled, and confined to their box. An issue may carry one sponsor, in a clearly marked section of its own. Sponsor money buys that box and nothing else — not a listing, not placement in the listings, not a word of coverage. If a sponsor happens to run a special in the same week, it appears in the listings on exactly the same terms as everyone else's, because it earned its place there.

What restaurants can pay for: the labeled sponsor box; a subscription to our monthly report on the specials being run across their town (the same research, packaged for the trade); and measurement reports on their own listings once those exist. None of these change what is printed, where it appears, or what we say about anyone — including competitors of paying restaurants, whose deals run in full, every time.

Your email address is not a product. We will never sell, rent or share our subscriber list. Your address is used to send you the newsletter, and nothing else.

Photos run only with permission. Pictures belong to the restaurants and photographers who made them. We ask first, we print a credit line always, and a refusal — or silence — means no photo. Photos we take ourselves are the exception: those are ours to run, credited “Photo: Dining Confidential.”

Tips are welcome; they buy nothing. Readers and restaurants alike send us specials and openings we've missed — some of our best items arrive that way. A tip starts our checking; it doesn't skip it. Tipped items are verified and judged by the same rules as everything else.

When we're wrong, we say so. If a listing is wrong — ours, the restaurant's post, anyone's — tell us through the contact link on our website. We correct the web edition, note the correction in the next issue, and fix the process that let it through.