Kin is deaf in one ear and has almost total hearing loss in the other, and nothing can ruin a meal faster than not being able to talk to one another or to understand the waitstaff.ĭoes service matter to you? I don’t mean simply “good service” from friendly waitstaff. In our case, I try to avoid choosing restaurants that Yelp indicates are noisy. If you look at the menu and suddenly start craving the jalapeño cheese grits, it’s probably worth looking to see what other diners have said about the jalapeño cheese grits.ĭoes ambience matter to you? Lighting. (The US is overrun right now with “American (New),” so it seems.)ĭo you have special food needs? Does, for example, the restaurant offer vegetarian or gluten-free options? Does it appear, based on reviews, that the kitchen is accommodating? (One of my favorite local restaurants has a policy of “no substitutions,” and you can see by the reviews on Yelp that this makes people furious.)Ĭan you actually view the menu? Does something there appeal to you? After all, looking at a menu posted on a restaurant’s front window has driven how we’ve made these decisions, long before the advent of Yelp. Set your expectations, and then evaluate the Yelp reviews based on what’s going to meet (and ideally, exceed) those expectations.Īre you craving a particular food or flavor? If you want sushi, search for “sushi.” If you want Indian food, search for “Indian food.” When you search for “restaurants” in Yelp, you’ll find that ethnic foods are sometimes less likely to show up in the results. Perhaps the most important advice I can give when making a restaurant decision based on Yelp: figure out what are you looking for in your dining experience. So I look for patterns in the reviews – similar comments, similar impressions about an entree or an entire establishment. And statistically, I suppose, even the worst restaurant can get it right one time. You want to be able to identify, for example, what’s consistent across reviews.

But you have to read the reviews thoroughly, and read a handful for each restaurant. You can still learn a lot from these reviews, I’d argue, even if you know nothing about Tori or Angie or Todd. from Springfield, Illinois is simply an asshole and that’s why he ended up with lousy service.

from Junction City, Oregon had ever eaten sushi before she left her scathing review about her meal being “fishy tasting”? Perhaps Todd R. I mean, who’s to say if Tori K from Redondo Beach, California has a decent palate? Who knows if Angie S. One of the challenges of relying on user-generated reviews is that you don’t know those users. I look to some of the other information in a review – information that I find much more valuable than the rating by itself (although, to be honest, I wouldn’t eat at a place with less than three stars). Using Yelp – for me at least – doesn’t mean choosing the restaurant with the most stars. I’d rather look for something uniquely local than choose my dinner based on the comforting familiarity that restaurant chains purport to offer. I believe that all cities – even the smallest of small towns – have dining gems. But when you’re in a strange city, it can be difficult to find restaurants that are actually worthwhile. I travel a lot, and one of the great joys of doing so is trying new restaurants and eating new foods.

Yelp reviewer rach