I admit I have a problem. Despite knowing better, I regularly check the Yelp! reviews for the restaurant I work at. Partly because I want to have some sense of what people are saying about us, but also because it gives me an outlet for righteous indignation.
Of course, there are plenty of reasons to hate Yelp! — their extortionist business practices, for one. Still, the worst part of Yelp! is that people actually give weight to what the reviews say. I’ve served guests who stare at their phones reading reviews as a way to decide what to eat, instead of, oh, I don’t know, asking me. This is especially fun when the thing they decide upon isn’t on our menu anymore, which they might have known had they asked or, heaven forfend, read the menu.
Relying on Yelp! and other crowd-generated review sites for dining advice is a terrible idea. Crowd-generated reviews are basically one step up from message boards: for every considered, reasonable take on the issue at hand, there are dozens of morons who have no idea what they’re talking about.
In the abstract, there’s something appealing about the idea of getting a customer’s-eye view of a restaurant (or dentist, or whatever). In a gourmand’s utopia, Yelp! pages provide honest and unfiltered looks at restaurants, to the benefit of everyone involved. Of course, we don’t live in that world, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change the essential problem Yelp!’s core: the average person is a shitty restaurant reviewer.
Let’s look at what might motivate someone to post a review on Yelp!. Basically, there are two possible scenarios: either someone is driven by an extreme experience — good or bad! — or she reviews most, if not all, of the places where she dines. In neither case is one likely to get an honest and useful perspective of the restaurant.
In the first case, extreme experiences are often a terrible way to judge a restaurant. Yes, it can be useful to know that a restaurant once utterly failed to cook the food on someone’s dish, or forced a customer to wait an hour for a reservation, or comped someone’s entire meal just because she was adorable, but none of those situations are likely to occur often.
Additionally, the “I’m so angry I just had to write this” reviews are likely full of distortions, mischaracterizations, and outright lies. We’ve all had bad experiences, and we’ve all been mad at the way we’ve been treated, but most of us don’t need to broadcast that feeling to the entire world. A thoughtful and considered e-mail to the management will both do more to address a restaurant’s real problems, and might be more therapeutic. The raves are nice, of course, but purple prose is, again, rarely accurate. It’s great when someone has a genuinely amazing experience, and it’s nice to know that a restaurant is capable of such highs, but again, a personal message to management will be taken with far greater weight.
Still, reviews motivated by extreme experiences are at least an understandable response to an extraordinary meal. My real issue is with the legion of “wanna-be pro” reviewers who don’t understand professional reviewers’ standards and practices. Professionals dine at a restaurant multiple times to ensure that they get as accurate a portrait of the place as they can. Most have an understanding of history, technique, and style that allows them to fit a dining experience into a proper context. That’s not to say that all professional restaurant reviewers are great; some are lazy, unethical, or just plain have bad taste. Yet they also are subject to both editorial and reader oversight. If they do a bad enough job often enough, they won’t be a restaurant reviewer for long. In short, they have a set of responsibilities, while dedicated Yelp!ers have a credit card, a camera, and a sense of entitlement.
This isn’t to say that all Yelp! reviews are worthless, just that the few diamonds and responsible comments are surrounded by an awful lot of crap.
Oddly enough, Yelp! is actually an extremely useful website in one specific sense. It provides the best way I’ve found to search for restaurants based on a wide range of criteria, from meals served to outdoor seating to average price. It’s in this fashion, as a database of restaurants’ objective features, that it truly does some good.
I fully expect to continue my dysfunctional relationship with Yelp! for years to come. The lure of customer-generated reviews will continue to make it a popular destination for would-be diners of a certain mindset, and the chance to live out the fantasy of being a food critic means it will never lack for submissions. Still, if I’m wrong, I’ll gladly eat crow. Even if it’s undercooked and poorly plated.
No comments:
Post a Comment