Why I hate Yelp and Restaurant Reviews

People go out to eat for a lot of different reasons. Yes, everyone needs to eat, but people go out because they want to impress a date, impress a client, because the name is hot, to be seen or see people, because the chef was voted #1 in what ever her specialty, the room is visually cool and sometimes because the food is good. I go to restaurants differently than most I guess and although I look at Yelp or those sites, I usually take most of them with a skeptical eye. First most people yelp to show off. And you can show off by nit picking a place rather than saying, it was good. I've seen 'reviews' that make me wonder if the restaurant had changed owners, servers, chefs and decor since the last time I was there. And rarely do the 'reviewers' say much that doesn't really reflect back on them.

I know restaurants have bad days. And depending on the place, I can excuse some mistakes etc. My tolerance for mistakes depends on the price and the hoity-toityness of the place. I expected Le Francais to be 0 mistakes, it wasn't when the Lachowicz brothers owned it (and ruined it). I also expect any simple mistakes to be corrected and if necessary something to counter the mistakes, like a dessert etc.

But the yelpers like to show off. Like the people that notice the shadow of a boom mike in a movie or which way the tie of the guy behind the actors moves in different shots. No one really cares about some of the minutia that these people pick on.

But I do read them. Usually only to see if the same issues are raised by multiple people. If a number of people say their reservation was delayed a hour, then the restaurant has a problem. If one person says their table wasn't ready for a hour, that may be a situation that the restaurant couldn't fix.

So the point of this is to not accept what an anonymous poster writes. Heck, I barely accept the recommendations of friends, because what they like is certainly not what I like. Francesca's is a good example. I really dislike the chain, but I have a friend who adores it. But I know we are looking at the situation from two very different points of view.