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"Dirty. Ants. Burnt food. Extortionate prices." That one-star review, left on the Facebook page of a Bondi cafe, prompted the owner to reply. But not in the now traditional TripAdvisor "I'm so sorry it didn't work for you we're currently working on fixing that" manner. More in a completely furious, social-media-reviews-do-my-head-in kind of way.
After an angry digression around maple syrup, the owner unleashed his crossness at both his own staff and the demands of consumers quick to post their views to social media, but not raise them with staff. (The consumer's reply states that he did so several times.)
"Do you know how to/can you simultaneously manage ten, gen Y part-timers, so well, that you are able to ubiquitously catch every sloppy act of laziness (and there are more than you can ever prepare or train for these days), across a menu that has so many components and potential pit-falls-before they are almost certainly pounced upon by the average, ‘scarcity-based, pumped-up, myopic consumer-come-casual-social-media-activist-OUTRAGE-readied-advocate’ for unreasonably great food, at unreasonably cheap prices, in impossible time frames???"
It's hardly a template for perfect customer service – although astonishingly it ends with the suggestion the customer come in for a breakfast so the cafe can make amends – but it does shine some light on how some cafe/restaurant owners feel about the glut of customer reviews now posted online. Or a portion of the negative ones, at least.
But how do diners feel about them? I'm all for diving into inviting-looking cafes and bars on the off-chance they turn out to be brilliant – stumbling across somewhere fabulous is one of city life's great joys – but when it comes to planning a dinner with friends, I'll almost always Google the place I have in mind. In Sydney, I particularly rate Time Out's comprehensive reviews. But I'll often take a look at social media mentions, too.
A one-star review won't stop me going if most of the rest are positive – some of the most hilarious write-ups on places such as Square Meal and TripAdvisor are from people saying: "I ordered the cod, and when it came I realised the squid would have been better, but they outrageously wouldn't give me both dishes for free, even though there was a tiny smudge on the wineglass, so I walked out" – but particularly for small, neighbourhood places that don't get properly reviewed often, other diners are the last line of defence. If I'm paying $75 for dinner and wine, I want it to be decent. Hell, even if I'm paying $20 for coffee and breakfast (or a lot more in some places) I don't want to feel swindled.
But I've also been to places raved about for Instagram-crazy social reviewers to find them rubbish, and visited top-recommended restaurants to find them underwhelming. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a food blogger with similar tastes who covers your city comprehensively, if not you're going to have to decipher exactly what “nom nom nom” really means in this context.
So tell us. Do diner reviews help with choosing somewhere to eat – or just make the decision ever more difficult? Is the problem that most people review only the places they really love or completely hate? Do you rate restaurants online? Let us know below.
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