Rubbish restaurants highly rated on TripAdvisor...
Discussion
How does that work?
I went out last night with work for someone's birthday to a place I'd discounted due to its looks. But when I looked on TA for suggestions it's number one in our local town with 500+ good or very good vs 16 average or worse reviews. So, let's not judge a book by its cover...
They lost our reservation, then made a great fuss about finding us a table upstairs before moving a few round the near empty restaurant. The menu was full of typos and had a bizarrely complicated description of the ordering process. The wine list was straight from Makro with a 200-300% mark up.
The decor was, er, challenging... Orange feature walls, big dinosaur stencils and too many, overbright downlighters. Tables from IKEA and chairs from a conference centre covered in long black Lycra. There were also some remembrance poppy pictures on the walls, but wrapped in cellophane and unframed.
The salad bar had been copied from Pizza Hut in the 90s, with catering size bottles of dressing. And the contents had clearly been recycled as everything was a bit tired and served still in Tupperware pots.
It's a steak restaurant so we were still hopeful that 500 people can't be wrong...
Mine was a bit overcooked and looked like it had been cooked in a dirty pan (I ordered blue, it came rare and covered in black flecks like the butter had burnt). Not the worst I've had but ignoring the over cooking it was no better than average. Someone else's sirloin was 1/3 fat and none of them looked like the advertised 8oz. One other steak (out of 8) was proclaimed as very good, and the rest fine.
The sauce came in small stainless pots you'd serve milk in in a cafe. The veg came in square bowls that dwarfed the steak. And the plates were served with the steak away so all you could see was the veg and chips.
None of us could face our or coffee, but when the staff found out they wandered off and we had to go looking for our bill.
It is a fairly small, touristy town but there are at least three places we've been that are massively better and I would happily go back to that are ranked lower.
I can only think that the clientele is self-selecting and that anyone who can cope with the decor has no idea.
ETA the owner replies vigorously on TA so I'm looking forward to seeing what he says now I've signed up...
I went out last night with work for someone's birthday to a place I'd discounted due to its looks. But when I looked on TA for suggestions it's number one in our local town with 500+ good or very good vs 16 average or worse reviews. So, let's not judge a book by its cover...
They lost our reservation, then made a great fuss about finding us a table upstairs before moving a few round the near empty restaurant. The menu was full of typos and had a bizarrely complicated description of the ordering process. The wine list was straight from Makro with a 200-300% mark up.
The decor was, er, challenging... Orange feature walls, big dinosaur stencils and too many, overbright downlighters. Tables from IKEA and chairs from a conference centre covered in long black Lycra. There were also some remembrance poppy pictures on the walls, but wrapped in cellophane and unframed.
The salad bar had been copied from Pizza Hut in the 90s, with catering size bottles of dressing. And the contents had clearly been recycled as everything was a bit tired and served still in Tupperware pots.
It's a steak restaurant so we were still hopeful that 500 people can't be wrong...
Mine was a bit overcooked and looked like it had been cooked in a dirty pan (I ordered blue, it came rare and covered in black flecks like the butter had burnt). Not the worst I've had but ignoring the over cooking it was no better than average. Someone else's sirloin was 1/3 fat and none of them looked like the advertised 8oz. One other steak (out of 8) was proclaimed as very good, and the rest fine.
The sauce came in small stainless pots you'd serve milk in in a cafe. The veg came in square bowls that dwarfed the steak. And the plates were served with the steak away so all you could see was the veg and chips.
None of us could face our or coffee, but when the staff found out they wandered off and we had to go looking for our bill.
It is a fairly small, touristy town but there are at least three places we've been that are massively better and I would happily go back to that are ranked lower.
I can only think that the clientele is self-selecting and that anyone who can cope with the decor has no idea.
ETA the owner replies vigorously on TA so I'm looking forward to seeing what he says now I've signed up...
I've noted this as well.
We use TripAdvisor to find out about the best places in our area. There's some very good restaurants in the area, and some other 'left field' places for want of a better word that rank in the top ten out of 500. By this I mean restaurants that are effectively cafes.
It seems to me that the TripAdvisor ranking is effectively something like How Good You Are X How Many People You Can Get To Write Reviews.
By that I mean that an average place who is good at asking for reviews can rank higher than a very good place who don't consider TripAdvisor a priority.
We use TripAdvisor to find out about the best places in our area. There's some very good restaurants in the area, and some other 'left field' places for want of a better word that rank in the top ten out of 500. By this I mean restaurants that are effectively cafes.
It seems to me that the TripAdvisor ranking is effectively something like How Good You Are X How Many People You Can Get To Write Reviews.
By that I mean that an average place who is good at asking for reviews can rank higher than a very good place who don't consider TripAdvisor a priority.
Was this one of the review sites mentioned on Radio 2 recently where anyone can login and place reviews. The result being a lot of friends of, or actual owners of, were placing good reviews of their own restaurants and poor ones of their rivals? That leaves it all open to interpretation...as I have found too.
I was watching Dave Gorman last night and he had a segment on people buying Twitter followers. I just Google 'buy trip advisor reviews' and found this:
http://real-tripadvisor-reviews.com/
http://real-tripadvisor-reviews.com/
Pferdestarke said:
And many of the 5 star reviews that aren't fake are written by complete idiots who don't know a good plate from a terrible one.
Cooked to perfection.
Melted in your mouth.
To die for.
Amazin quadruple-cooked chips.
You know what I mean.
Quadruple cooked chips!!! Pah! Send them back and insist in quintuple cooked, well-pissed-on-by-the-chef-and-waiter chips!Cooked to perfection.
Melted in your mouth.
To die for.
Amazin quadruple-cooked chips.
You know what I mean.
Trip advisers does have its place, in Riga we visited 3 of the top 5 restaurants. 2 were amazing (for completly different reasons) and the 3rd was average. Without trip advisor we probably won't have found the 2 good places as they were off the beaten track a bit, so I have mixed feelings about the site.
DoubleSix said:
OP, do you perhaps live in Wales? You have described what passes for a restaurant in that part of the world to a tee!
Really? I mean considering get size/population differences between England and Wales it should hardly be surprising that there are more good restaurants in England, you've got a population over 20 times larger ffs.Edited by The Nur on Saturday 24th October 15:26
I don't rely on trip advisor for reviews now. Too often the response to (what I feel is an honest response to "how was your meal?") is an offer of a free drink if it isn't mentioned on trip advisor. Unless a reviewer has a varied range of reviews and ratings, I just don't trust them.
There are some restaurants that are now publicly against trip advisor as some people seem to think that a threat of a bad review entitles them to something for free.
There are some restaurants that are now publicly against trip advisor as some people seem to think that a threat of a bad review entitles them to something for free.
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