Using yelp to find new restaurants.

gogofast

Addicted Member
I like finding new places to eat out and the yelp can be a very helpful tool sometimes, but in general, I've had mixed results. Some places are really puzzling to me - for example, with 4.5 star rating of 200+ reviews, I thought I was in a wrong place. Nothing matched the reviews. It turned out that the restaurant was run by a single mother and people were sympathetic so they wrote false reviews. Nothing there were edible really, and they shut down few months after. Also, in a lot of cases, famous up and coming chefs open up a quick boutique restaurants in oddest places, people quickly discover the spot, after a year or two, the chef moves on and the quality of the food plummet. All the great reviews and history of awards become baits for unsuspecting new diners. That was the case a few nights ago. I found an Italian place with 300+ 5 star ratings and numerous "best of ..." awards. It was a total disappointment with laughable dishes and inexperienced staff members. Anyone relying on yelp to find new places should do so with caution.
 
I`ve seen that happen numerous times in the past, you`ve gotta pay attention to the dates on which those reviews were posted, sometimes a change of ownership or chef has taken place, which changes everything.
Or, an owner has all his friends & relatives write a bunch of favorable (but bogus) reviews. Yelp is similar to a Carfax report....nice to have, but nothing in it is written in stone....
 
You have to learn how to spot the real reviews. It's hard to explain, but over the years I've become able to recognize certain ways of stringing words together that raise a red flag. Often, the review will come from someone who only has one maybe two reviews. It will be either incredibly positive in a sea of bad reviews or vice-versa. Those are easy to spot. Also one-line very negative reviews are likely from an asshole competitor who gets a few friends to write them.

Where it gets murky is I can usually tell when an amateur is "writing copy" that's supposed to read as a real review but smacks of marketing by employees or friends of the proprietor.

Real reviews positive or negative usually have at least two paragraphs or one big one if the writer isn't very good at writing, but they read "genuine." Again; this makes little sense to most, but it works for me. :)
 
My favorite was from a guy that said the burger was delicious, but he got it at the drive-thru and they didn't give him enough paper napkins to wipe all the food/sauce from his face. 1 star review...most of his reviews were of a similar niggling manner. I know the guy. I'm not saying he has a big head, but I've met game-show host Chuck Woollery, and his head was small in comparison. Maybe next time he can wear a terrycloth poncho or something.
 
My favorite was from a guy that said the burger was delicious, but he got it at the drive-thru and they didn't give him enough paper napkins to wipe all the food/sauce from his face. 1 star review...most of his reviews were of a similar niggling manner. I know the guy. I'm not saying he has a big head, but I've met game-show host Chuck Woollery, and his head was small in comparison. Maybe next time he can wear a terrycloth poncho or something.

Exactly. That's not a fake review as much as it's a bad one. Amazon suffers from the same thing. A one star review of a product because the FedEx guy left the box in the rain or because it arrived three days late or some other nonsense stupidity that has nothing to do with the product being reviewed. You can't fix stupid.

And like @trinhsman says, it's only a ballpark guide. Even if all the reviews of a place are real, you might not like it because of one thing or another.

But when a place has hundreds of reviews and maintains a 4.5 star rating, it's at least a good bet that it's going to be good.
 
I use Yelp all the time. At one point I had made a bunch of reviews, but deleted them.

Making unflattering, yet truthful and detailed reviews on the mainland works ok. Maui is a smaller community and I don't want to offend someone's aunty or uncle. It would be like going to grandma's and proclaiming dinner sucked.
 
I don't trust Yelp. I'll stick to the reviews published in the paper by people willing to have an identity, rather than those by john q anonymous.
 
My reviews I post on Yelp basically fall into one category. Would I go back? That’s really all anyone needs to know. Even if the food was just fair, but it was obvious they were trying, I will go back. Maybe that dish wasn’t as good as another one I would like better. However, the food can be amazing and if I’m ignored or treated as if I was an annoyance, I won’t go back.
 
Going by Chicago it’s my opinion that most Yelp reviewers are callow transplants to the Bg City who don’t know their asses from holes in ground.
 
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It's definitely not a perfect system, and as already mentioned, you have to be on the lookout for shill reviews. The first thing I recommend doing is switching the sort function from the standard "Yelp Sort" to "sort by newest" (I am not sure the phone app lets you do this?) And, I always look at a sampling of ratings- not just the ones that rave about everything. Also, a quick look at the reviews which are not included in the ratings, the "not recommended" reviews, can be very revealing.
 
A lot of the yelp crowd are whiny, entitled buttholes, who will indeed trash a place because they didn't get enough napkins or a straw.
I'd tend more to believe reviews on chowhound.
About the only bad review I ever got on my place was a guy who gave me one star because he traveled quite a few miles to find us closed on our only day of the week we were closed. :confused:
Use much salt when reading reviews.
 
You have to learn how to spot the real reviews. It's hard to explain, but over the years I've become able to recognize certain ways of stringing words together that raise a red flag. Often, the review will come from someone who only has one maybe two reviews. It will be either incredibly positive in a sea of bad reviews or vice-versa. Those are easy to spot. Also one-line very negative reviews are likely from an asshole competitor who gets a few friends to write them.

Where it gets murky is I can usually tell when an amateur is "writing copy" that's supposed to read as a real review but smacks of marketing by employees or friends of the proprietor.

Real reviews positive or negative usually have at least two paragraphs or one big one if the writer isn't very good at writing, but they read "genuine." Again; this makes little sense to most, but it works for me. :)

Actually it makes perfect sense, though it is impossible to quantify or explain exactly how it's done.

I'm the same with reading stories on Facebook of things that supposedly happened. I can normally figure out pretty quickly when something is real vs some phony made up story. It's just something in the way it's worded, or presented , or......
 
There have been some yelpers sued by the businesses for the bad reviews. Of course you never hear about the final outcome of the suits.
 
I only trust my long time friend`s restaurant reviews , who now weighs ~400lbs, who`s culinary tastes track mine( less any cheese products, he hates cheese), plus several other friends of good culinary taste.
His(my obese friend) eatery recommendations/suggestions have always been spot on for me since 1986..

He, now retired, and a couple of his like minded, and similar tastes, friends do all the exploring/experimenting(usually checking the restaurant out at least two times spaced in time), then I find out where to go for whatever type food + service I `m interested in eating at.. :)

Damn sight more reliable :thumbsup:, than some read between the lines questionable/tainted reviews. :oops:

Lucky, I guess, always having a trusted someone else, personally pre qualify, before going out to eat, at a new to me, restaurant !
 
Yelp expects businesses to pay them for advertisement. When business doesn't, many of their positive reviews will fall under the "not recommended reviews" at the bottom. They will officially say paying them for advertisement has no effect on how their algorithm decides which reviews are recommended, and which aren't. But every new business owner I've talked to has said after they started paying for ads, the positive reviews from the "not recommended reviews" list will slowly trickle into the main reviews list.

On the other hand, I work with a lot of small business owners, and I often go on their business yelp page, and recognize their friends and family in the reviews.
 
I take Yelp reviews with a grain of salt, the things some people complain about boggles the mind. Professional reviewers are much more dependable and more objective. It reminds me of what a theater reviewer once said, if you have only seen 2 versions of Hamlet, one is the best you ever saw and the other is the worst. If you have seen 50 productions of Hamlet, then your perspective changes. I find Eater.com to be helpful to search for restaurant info here in NYC, they are nationwide.
 
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