I go to Yelp to find restaurants. It's definitely my preferred source for deciding where to eat. But it's important to clarify that drawing useful conclusions from Yelp reviews is not at all about just looking at the stars--- it's much more of a black art. Why?
Well mainly it's because so many reviewers are useless idiots. I could generalize by saying things like "everyone's a critic" and "everyone thinks they're an expert on food because everyone eats". While that's true, the resulting spectrum of useless Yelp reviews deserves some analysis.
Typically after reading a couple of the 4 and 5 star reviews, and also looking at some of the stats, I skip straight to the bad reviews. They are where you really learn about a restaurant, and often times an angry idiot means a good restaurant. Here are some archetypal examples:
1. Good service is bad
You would be amazed at how many people don't understand how a restaurant works. This review, for example, and includes complaints like "we had multiple people come to our table" and "the water pourer didn't stop pouring". When hicks go to restaurants with actual sommeliers and team service, hilarity ensues.
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2. Didn't actually go
Feeling entitled must be hard work: I encounter a fair number of negative reviews which are about the experience of considering the restaurant and then not actually going there. In this example, the writer complains, "i must say the guy that answers the phone with an ascent [sic] really does not inspire you to be a patron". ONE STAR FOR THAT PHONE CALL. No need to actually show up, let alone try the food.
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3. Not Authentic
Almost every Asian restaurant on Yelp has a block of bad reviews for not being sufficiently authentic. Mind you, nothing the kitchen does could possibly console these reviewers. Sometimes they complain that the soup wasn't like their mom used to make, or they nit-pick some debatable and semantic aspect of the menu: "As a Chinese person, I have to say that I am frankly insulted that Taiwan Restaurant represents their food as "Chinese cuisine."
(And for sushi places specifically, you can find one star reviews where the premise boils down to: "I think I saw some Koreans in there.")
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4. Too Authentic
Also afflicting decent Asian restaurants are negative reviews from people who don't understand what kind of restaurant they're at. There are lots of examples of this, but here's an example where someone complains about dim sum: "The ladies pushing the carts weren't that friendly and made us feel rushed". For serious? Rushed? I've had a lot of dim-sum, and as far as I can tell it's mostly about waging all-out war against your neighboring tables to claim the most pork buns. Friendly and leisurely service is not why you are there.
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5. The Pet Peeve
Many of the one star reviews are, at their core, about a totally arbitrary complaint that wouldn't matter to anyone but the reviewer. I've seen complaints about how napkins are folded, about the length of the menu, about the clothing of the wait staff. This one, for example, complains about the other patrons at the bar that were "loud and cocky at the bar... with no girls. it's like, dude, i get it, you guys are rad, but where are the girls?" The mystery of a lack of girls at a bar in San Francisco has a certain... obvious explanation. Let it go.
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6. The Life Story
Some reviewers go on and on about about something that is unrelated to the restaurant, as though Yelp is their Dear Diary. It's supposed to be a review about a specific restaurant, but it starts out with a poem or some shit, and then plows into a sentence like "My wife and I honeymooned on Santorini". I've also read reviews that start with three paragraphs of describing the places their group of "crazy girls" went prior to the restaurant the review is supposed to be about.
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7. The Shill
My favorite reviews by far on Yelp are the ones that are plainly fake. These are hard to find in San Francisco, but in other towns where the number of reviews is in the 10s instead of 1000s, there's often at least one or two.
There's this particular diner in Jackson, CA, for example, that is pretty unremarkable and yet really well reviewed. If you dig into it you find reviews that say things like "Owners Bart and Maura have improved upon the family business with some recent expansions" and "the new plates and flatware really add class to the place". These are written exactly like a marketing brochure, and noticeably different from normal reviews once you know what to look for. I assume that there's a way for "Elite" yelp reviewers to get paid to post shill reviews in their own names, and it shows.
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8. But We're Special
When I read reviews of expensive, high-end restaurants in San Francisco, it's surprisingly common to see one-star reviews which, upon reading, basically say "I am outraged that this expensive French restaurant with only ten tables didn't take my party of 7 on a Friday night even though we didn't make a reservation". I appreciate that San Francisco is a casual city, but it's also a very busy city--- walk-ins are not typically reasonable on the weekend. Do your homework.
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