TheZvi rounds up a Twitter discussion prompted by Paul Graham about the best ways to source restaurant recommendations.

Twitter’s StripMallGuy says they actually use Yelp reviews in their business to screen tenants and to underwrite properties they’re purchasing (“if a restaurant is three stars or less, it’s just not going to be good and 4 1/2 stars means very high chance will be great”).

But that gets at what do people broadly think about the restaurant and therefore will it have problems generating business and therefore making rent – but people broadly aren’t good judges of food and the average taste may not approximate your own. That doesn’t mean Yelp reviews aren’t useful.

• Gas app founder Nikita Bier says “if an establishment has >4 stars and their profile says “unclaimed,” it means 6 stars.” It’s the opposite of an owner posting fake reviews, and indeed they aren’t even doing marketing.

  I only eat at Chinese restaurants with 3.5 stars on Yelp pic.twitter.com/nwKjeI9bcd

  — Freddie Wong (@fwong) September 13, 2022

• What you’re looking for broadly in reviews are consistent themes. Whether Google reviews, Yelp, or Tripadvisor and just like for hotels you want specific complaints. Someone complains about the Ritz-Carlton Central Park having high room service prices? Yeah, ok. You can discount that one star review. Someone complains about mold and chipping paint, and it’s a one-off, maybe it’s from a competitor. But you see that same issue over and over you increase your estimation that it’s real.

• So sort through the worst reviews and see if the things being complained about are consistent, and whether they’re things you care about? Give me a place with hand pulled noodles where the chef is slamming them against the (maybe not totally clean) wall any day.

• Remember, you can’t just go off of ratings and pick the best even if the ratings are sincerely offered (people have bad taste) but more likely the reviews are goosed anyway. Goosed reviews are too positive, especially considering that there are likely a disproportionate number of low scores.

Kimbal Musk (Elon Musk’s brother), himself a restauranteur, offers,

Use OpenTable for reviews by regulars. Use Google for reviews by tourists. Both perspectives are solid for guidance.

Amalgamating ‘locals’ and ‘tourists’ regardless of taste isn’t my personal go-to. Why is OpenRice in Asia generally better and more reliable than U.S. review sites? And I don’t trust blogs and magazines. Most writers,

• Haven’t been to many of the places they’re writing about. That’s almost universally true with “best” lists whether it’s best restaurants in a given city, or best of a type of cuisine. They’re copying, pasting, and rewriting what others have said on the internet (or what’s been fed to them by a PR firm).

• Have bad taste or at least lack context for what they’re eating. Just because they’re impressed with something doesn’t mean you will be.

• May not have the typical experience, because it’s being tailored to them for the review.

Still, I do find Eater‘s “Essential” lists for a city to be generally good, even if I wouldn’t agree in every particular. And generally speaking The Infatuation is still far above-average.

One tool I had never heard of is the which takes restaurant rankings from people you know to offer recommendations to you. And it solves for ratings inflation by forcing rank-ordering of restaurants.

In general I think my framework comes from traveling a lot.

• Avoid tourist areas. I spend a lot of time in airports. They have high rents and have to please a lot of people (lowest common denominator) including at breakfast for brands that wouldn’t ever be open for breakfast. And they’re almost all bad.

  

  The same is true of major tourist spots. Like airports, there’s a steady stream of new customers for even the worst restaurants. Prices are high and the focus isn’t quality.

• Seek out strip malls or other lower-priced areas that offer low barriers to entry. If there’s a Mexican place in a gas station you want to try the soup there. Lower rents mean they don’t need to focus on mass market.

  

• For ethnic foods, follow the locals. Right off the entrance to Hyatt Lost Pines is a spot called Carnitas El Guero. Everyone inside is Spanish and not a lot of English is spoken. There’s a booth for sending money south. The value in a place like this is that there are knowledgeable clientele. They know the difference in the dishes being served.

  Where communities of discerning customers are found, the places they frequent will tend to be better. By contrast, when only one restaurant in an area serves a particular kind of food it isn’t usually great. You don’t have customers familiar enough with it to demand it. There isn’t competition driving quality. And supply chains aren’t as well developed. Try ethnic grocery stores with food counters!

• Avoid trendy. Restaurants with staying power, especially those that vary their menu (showing continued creativity) are usually better than flashy newcomers. Celebrity chef restaurants may be good when the chef is there but as soon as they move onto the next project quality declines. And hot new places become stale quickly.

But the best thing you can do is ask somebody for specific recommendations – provided that person (1) is passionate about food, (2) has similar tastes to you, and (3) guards their own reputation. Those people are gold.

I only recommend places that I know the person I’m suggesting to will love, or at least I will caveat appropriately. And my recommendations change, because restaurants change! A chef or front of the house manager leaves, they change locations or open up another location which can be a distraction. Ownership changes, too! So the best is contingent and that’s knowledge which needs to be constantly updated. You should have a recency bias in considering reviews, even for long-standing establishments.

By the way, if you find yourself in Northern Virginia you should still go to Elephant Jumps for Thai food.

And if you come to Austin, get yourself to Interstellar Barbecue.

In both cases as with all restaurants it doesn’t just matter where you go but also what you get! At Elephant Jumps order off the specials board or from the ‘authentic’ menu. At Interstellar, even though Central Texas barbecue is all about brisket (and theirs is excellent), the peach tea glazed pork belly will change your life.

Ask for specific dish recommendations, too. And don’t ever ask “what should I have” of a server who doesn’t know you. They will tell you what is popular, and you do not want to know this! You want to know what is best! What are they most proud of?