Yelpaholics Anonymous

A year and more ago, when Craig and I were grappling with the reality that he'd just accepted a job in Connecticut and until our house sold would be moving here without me like, immediately, we made a couple of trips to this fair state in order to suss it out a little. Highly stressful trips they were, too, for the both of us. From our base at an off-ramp hotel, we had no idea how to get around, or where was good to visit and where was better to stay away. And when you come from Detroit—I love you, Detroit, but you know it's true—you learn that there are definitely areas of cities you avoid.


Worst of all, we had absolutely no idea where to eat. Now, usually when we're dining out, we handle it a little like this:

CRAIG: Where do you want to eat?
ME: I don't know. Where do you want to eat?
CRAIG: I don't have a preference. Where do you want to eat?
ME: I don't have a preference. What're you in the mood for?
CRAIG: I'm not in a mood for anything in particular. What do you want to eat?

This conversation will go on for a half-hour or so in its own amiable, ambling little way, by the way, until finally we get into the car and go to the same Mexican restaurant we always patronize.

Under the high stress circumstances of relocation, however, these conversations would take on a slight edge:

CRAIG: Where do you want to eat?
ME: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? CAN'T YOU SEE I'M STRESSED?! AAAAIEEEEE!CRAIG: OH GOD I'M RUINING BOTH OUR LIVES!

Well. When we started coming to Connecticut, in order to avoid any more of that kind of thing (which was already spontaneously happening every twenty-three minutes), I turned to Yelp for a little assistance in finding places to dine.

I know that Yelp is not a newfangled web site that all the hep kids have suddenly started visiting. It's not now, it wasn't then. In fact, we'd known a couple of people who were admitted obsessive Yelp reviewers, an activity to which most of us would gently ignore in public, as if the hobbyists had confessed they'd taken up public masturbation as a suitable leisure pursuit.

We hadn't used Yelp much in Michigan because the midwest is largely the land of the chain restaurant, and really, does one need to consult a database in order to decide whether one Applebee's is better than the next? Connecticut is a state in which the seeds of chain restaurants find no purchase, however. There are hundreds upon hundreds of mom and pop restaurants, and there's plenty of fine dining, but there are remarkably few restaurant chains.

Unless you're Dunkin' Donuts, that is. Dunkin' Donuts franchises are the weeds that flourish even on salted, barren land, up here. I could tell you where one Dunkin' Donuts was in Michigan. One. And that's only because it was attached to a gas station. There are about thirty Dunkin' Donuts within a one-mile radius of me here, and they're building another two blocks down the street. Oh, and pretzel chains. Connecticut loves its hot pretzel chains. Dunkin' Donuts, if you ever come up with a pretzel-flavored donut for citizens of the Nutmeg State to dunk, you will have a hit on your hands of astronomical proportions.

You're welcome. I only ask for credit. And a small development fee.

But anyway. Yelp. I was hungry, and desperate, and so on my phone I punched in a request for a restaurant that was within a couple of miles and was cheap and served—yes—Mexican, and we ended up eating at a tiny little dive that had some really incredible food. It was so spicy I walked out with sweat marks on my back and on my thighs, but I like it like that. We used Yelp again for the other meals on those short trips. We'd look for a type of food, check out the reviews, and try the ones that seemed to be popular and get a lot of stars. It worked out well for us.

And it still does, since we continue to use the site to find places where we can grab a bite. It's especially handy when we head into Manhattan, with its bewildering abundance of choice. I find it generally easier to get a sense of what dishes are popular, of how much to expect to pay, and of whether or not I might like a place from reading through a dozen Yelp reviews, than I do from looking at a restaurant's website or accepting the word-of-mouth recommendations of local acquaintances.

If you sense there's a big but coming, you know me well. Because there's one thing about Yelp that really bugs me: I simply cannot stand many of its reviewers. We're talking about a small percentage here. Small, but super-irritating. I've noticed that a lot of Yelp reviewers provoke in me the same reaction I have when I hear someone is rubbing his hands all over an inflated latex balloon: I want to march over and make him stop. Preferably with a good slapping.

It's a phenomenon that seems almost endemic to this part of the country, too. When I was using Yelp back in Michigan, the reviews largely tended be along the lines of I like potatoes. This place serves good potatoes! The potatoes with cheese are good! The steak with cheese is great, and it comes with good potatoes! I really like the chicken with cheese too! I mean, throw a little cheese on something and the good people of Michigan are happy, simple folk who write happy, simple Yelp reviews as they loosen their belt buckles a notch.

But the East Coast Yelpers are complainers. A little bit of cheddar jack isn't going to distract them. Oh no. They're too savvy for your stinkin' dairyland legerdemain. They want to gripe about something, even if it's largely imaginary. In fact, many of them will complain without exactly knowing why, so there are a plethora of seemingly gentle, neutral reviews with a bit of a stinger at the end, like the two-star review of a coffee shop that reads:

This quiet, cozy establishment always has soft music playing in the background, and there's always a comfy chair to sit in. The atmosphere is collegial and friendly. Books and magazines line the walls and in the winter months there is a fire roaring in the fireplace. The coffee is delicious—the best I've ever had. So yeah, I find the place depressing and that's why I give it only two stars.

One wonders what more the poor reviewer would require from a coffee shop to get him out of that malaise. A cotton candy machine? A Zoloft dispenser?

The worst breed of Yelp reviewer, though, is the Yelper with Attitude. They know everything about food, and they want you to know that they know it. And they're going to make sure you know it in their hundred-word Yelp review, damn your eyes. Yelp on the East Coast is full of reviewers who write mini-essays that are less about the restaurants in question, and more about the reviewers themselves, and their psychological dramas.

I'm usually all in favor when a person makes the broadest of statements about his qualifications for making sweeping judgments about a restaurant. I wouldn't bat an eye at someone saying, I eat a lot of Indian food and this place had some yummy stuff! I do, however, find my eyebrow arching and my hackles rising at something like:

I have been on vacation to Phuket twice and I can say with authority that the $6 bowl of pad thai I ate from this establishment did not compare to the masterful culinary delights prepared by trained chefs with the freshest ingredients at the resort hotel at which I stayed.

Because that review is not really helpful. All it tells me is that the reviewer wants me to know he travels, that he spends a lot of money traveling and wants everyone to be aware of that fact, and that he is very concerned with the number of stars his hotel has received.

If I'm dining at Chip's Pancakes, which serves fifty-two varieties of pancakes (I've only worked my way through three, but I've got time and an elastic stomach), I can be sure that here in this area of the country, tucked among the many rapturous reviews from pancake lovers, will be one Yelper who declaims:

I decided to bring my hard-earned consumer dollars to Chip's because after a long drive along the highway after my vacation at the Cape, I was definitely in the mood for some rustic, simple fare after a week of seafood dining. What a mistake on my part! I was horrified when I stepped into this establishment to find at my table an assortment of flavored 'syrups', the containers no doubt made sticky by the countless grubby fingers of children, judging by the placemats, which have illustrations for young people to 'color' while waiting for their food. The 'maple' syrup was only maple flavored, a faux-pas I was happy to point out to the confused and badly-trained wait staff. The 'butter' (which I darkly suspect was really margarine, and was not whipped, as I prefer!) arrived in a 'patty' served in a CARDBOARD tub! But the last straw was when I saw my pancake! I am accustomed to my pancakes being of a thinner and more crepe-like consistency! I suppose I should not expect refined eating at an establishment that panders to the lowest common denominator.

No, Yelper, you really shouldn't. We're talking about Chip's Pancakes, which advertises itself with big fat pictures of big fat flapjacks on monster-sized signs that loom over I-95. We're not discussing Le Bon Creperie du Fwahfwah down in the Meatpacking District. At the Creperie you can get your refined eating. At Chip's you get a big fat plate of big fat pancakes with a design made in them out of blueberries. Shove some in that bag fat piehole of yours and spare me.

This type of reviewer is the sort that will often go to great lengths to let others know exactly how well-educated he is, how sophisticated, and how truly attuned to excellence is his palate. You can smell 'em coming a mile away, especially when a review begins:

It was a blustery autumn day, and I had just emerged from the rehearsal of the Jacobean revenge drama in which I was starring, and had a few minutes before my class in African tribal drumming was to begin. I carried a copy of the exquisite Colombian poetry of Anabel Torres beneath my arm. I paused before the door, hesitated, and with mild interest ripening into piquant curiosity, at last stepped over the threshold into the quaint establishment known as Swanky Frankie's Hot Dog Shack.

Oh yeah. These reviews sound like a blast to mock. And they are, for about the first dozen. But I get the impression that most of these self-absorbed reviewers are not the kind of people I'd want to hang out with. They just get nasty. They write irate, outraged, self-righteous reviews in which they admit they weren't dissatisfied with the prices, the decor, or the food itself, but because of some imagined slight that sent them into a tizzy—they were seated too near the kitchen, say. It seems instead of making a good faith effort to resolve the problem (like, by asking someone nicely, "Can we maybe get another table?"), the reviewer stews and sits stonily and is even more outraged when the wait staff don't notice their obvious, passive-aggressive displeasure.

Then he runs home and pounds out a scathing Yelp review, of course. Because that'll show 'em.
I've seen reviewers write exquisitely-detailed screeds about the disputes they'll have with restaurant owners and waiters that would make even the most die-hard proponent of the motto the customer is always right raise an eyebrow and admit, "Well, maybe except in this case." The amount of pride that some of these people take in stiffing their servers on a tip, or attempting to get them fired, makes me want to track down the reviewer in a restaurant, wait until they've ordered a hamburger, then ambush them and drop a loogie on top of the pickles and lettuce myself.

But even when they're not going to those extremes, up here the Yelpers always find something to complain about. The place in Hell's Kitchen that specializes in cramming homemade ice cream between homemade glazed doughnuts and then covering them with gooey syrups? It doesn't have healthy alternatives, one Yelp review will sniff. The fantastic ice cream shop down the street that serves exquisite little half-pint cups of gourmet ice cream layered with homemade cookie dough, in exotic flavor combinations, served with a little wooden paddle like they used to when I was in second grade? It lacks an attractive view from the front windows, says one Yelper with a lofty, two-star dismissal.

You know what, Yelpers? Moderate your expectations. Seriously. Find a healthier dessert place among the several hundred cluttering Hell's Kitchen. Resign yourself to the notion that a street-level storefront tucked among the residences on West 47th is not going to have the same view as a chi-chi place atop the Time-Warner Center. If the food sucks, fine. Tell me. If the service was truly rotten, I want to hear about it. But if you're more interested in informing me that you have impossible standards to which very little can match, I'm already yawning and rolling my eyes.

If Maria Callas were alive today, she wouldn't be teaching master classes. She'd be writing Yelp reviews.