Eat and Tell By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

November 5, 2008
Eat and Tell By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

YOU too can be a restaurant critic. And not just an anonymous Zagateer, dutifully filling in forms. You can have fans. You can get the glory of personal thanks from chefs you’ve deified, or the smug satisfaction of hate mail from those you’ve savaged. You can hobnob with sous-chefs at food events. If your soul is for sale, you can cadge free drinks or meals.

As a bonus, you might even get a sex life — and if so inclined, you can discuss it in detail, online, with fellow foodies.

Where, oh where, you ask, is this magic matchbook cover? How do I apply for this once-in-a-lifetime offer?

It’s simple. Just sign up at Yelp.com and review away.

O.K., so maybe you’re not in the most erudite company — a lot of the reviews are of the “OMG, it was total choco-gasm!” variety. Not every chef appreciates diners who yank out pocket cameras when the amuse-bouches arrive and leave “You’ve been yelped” cards with the check. And Thomas Keller, maestro of Per Se in New York and the French Laundry in California, swears he has never heard of Yelpers.

But with 4 million reviews written and 15 million visitors a month, Yelp is a growing force in the food-obsessed corners of the Web, where life is all profiteroles and beer. According to Web traffic counters like Alexa, Nielsen Online and Google Analytics, Yelp is growing much faster than its closest rival, Citysearch, and has either surpassed it in page views or is on the verge of doing so. Both have many times more visitors than Insider Pages, Zagat, OpenTable, Chowhound or other restaurant sites.

“It’s an exciting new channel for us to harvest,” said Liz Johannesen, marketing director for Kimpton, a national chain of boutique hotels and restaurants. “We went from disbelief to suspicion to fully embracing it.”

Some restaurateurs still dismiss Yelpers as a fork-waving mob of know-nothings. Paul Kahan, the chef and an owner of Blackbird, Avec and the Publican in Chicago, became known there for complaining that sites like Yelp were “a forum for people who don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about.”

But, he conceded in an interview, the sheer volume of amateur opinion is useful. Any reader who struggled through 20 to 30 Yelp reviews of one of his restaurants, he said, “would get a fair impression of it.”

The critical masses are open to anyone. You don’t have to eat in the fanciest restaurants. You don’t need a Culinary Institute of America degree to prove your kitchen cred. You needn’t be a dismissive snob. You don’t even have to have a terribly discerning palate.

But it does help to have a winning personality, some appealing personal snapshots and a flair for writing. Fellow Yelpers vote for their favorite critics and the coveted Review of the Day.

Or, in Yelp-speak: “Kudos on your ROTD, dude! Want to go DYL tonight?” (That would be “destroy your liver,” an invitation to imbibe.)

Within Yelp dwell the Yelp Elite, who write often enough and cleverly enough to tickle the algorithms at headquarters into singling them out for promotion.

For example, Megan Cress — known online as Megan C. of New York — has been Yelp Elite for three years running. She has written more than 300 restaurant reviews (95 of them “firsts,” posted before anyone else). She has 957 friends and 151 fans on the site.

(By contrast, a New York Times restaurant critic might take six years to amass 300 reviews. The critic visits a restaurant several times, strives for anonymity and tries to sample every dish on the menu. Whether he or she has any friends is not recorded.)

Ms. Cress “networks for a living,” she said, introducing people and companies for a finder’s fee. Yelping helps; people who like her reviews often send her e-mail messages, and she decides whether answering them would be useful or fun.

There’s a sexy wink to many of her write-ups, which include her own “date rating” and “pickup scale.” She recently reviewed the Navy mess in the White House, as the guest of a friend who works in the West Wing, she said. She pronounced it “deeeelish” and tried a quick flirt with the Secret Service.

Yelp does not disclose exactly how one attains Elite status, but it’s clearly not all about seriousness of purpose.

A year ago, after meeting him at a bar, Ms. Cress introduced Stephen Crocker, executive sous-chef at the Peninsula New York hotel, to Yelping. Stephen C., by contrast, has not attained Elite status: because he wants to be taken seriously, he writes fewer but longer reviews, concentrating on presentation and price.

“It’s a great place to catalog and share your thoughts,” he said.

Although its initial focus was on restaurants, Yelp now accepts reviews on virtually anything with an address: doctors, shoe stores, doggie salons, even Broadway shows. Ms. Cress gained early Yelp notoriety by reviewing the plastic surgeon who enlarged her breasts and posting a picture of her torso in a bikini. “He told me he made thousands in referrals from that,” she said.

Because the company started in San Francisco, it is not uncommon for a restaurant there to have 300 reviews. In New York most have fewer. Le Bernardin, for example, had just over 100 reviews as of this writing. And the L train — yes, the subway line — had 39, which is probably an indication of how many Yelpers are young and live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Nationally, the company says, 81 percent of Yelpers are under age 40, which may help explain why every pizzeria in town gets notices and why reviewers of the priciest restaurants often explain how they afforded them. Caroline W. went to Per Se because her friend had a new boyfriend who wanted to impress them both. (He was “criminally wrong for her” but they loved the food.) Elton L. thanked his corporate expense account. Manda Bear B. said, wistfully, that she was taken by her ex (“a keeper and a bachelor in NYC :-) Sigh”) to celebrate six years since they met.

Others review expensive restaurants by the tidbit method. Jeffrey Chin, a 33-year-old bank computer consultant known as Jeff C., goes to charity tasting events at which many restaurants offer mini-versions of signature dishes. He has a bite of each and thus reviews up to 25 restaurants a night. That builds his numbers and helps him decide whether he wants to spring for a full meal.

Yelp doesn’t mind. Some of its “firsts” are by grabby members who pass a restaurant that is about to open and write something like “Can’t wait to go here.”

More than one Elite member described Yelping as addictive.

“You get so much positive reinforcement,” said Rebecca Shansky, who has a doctorate in neurobiology and works in a Mount Sinai Hospital lab but whose online persona, Becca S., is a babe who hangs out in cocktail lounges. “People tell you you’re cool, you’re funny, you’re a good writer.”

“It’s kind of like a cult, except instead of Kool-Aid we drink alcohol,” said Su Kim, of Laurel, Md., who is known as the Washington area’s “Primemeatiser” because he holds carnivore-only events.

He started a talk thread with the words, “You know you’re addicted to Yelp when ... ” The answers included: “ ... when you go to a restaurant for the sole purpose of adding to your review count, not because you’re hungry,” “ ... when you hate going abroad because you can’t Yelp about all your wonderful finds” and “... when you’re dining with non-Yelper friends and they ask, ‘Are you Yelping this in your head?’ ”

For some, the allure is in meeting people. Yelp sponsors monthly Elite-only events at which restaurants, distillers and vintners offer free samples to build a reputation. (Joncarl Lachman, a Chicago chef and restaurateur, called Yelp “word of mouth on steroids.”)

Independently, Yelpers agree online to meet at restaurants, go on DYLing pub crawls and so on.

Lauren Smith, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said she arrived in New York two years ago from Hayward, Calif., knowing almost no one. A friend introduced her to Yelp, she wrote 11 reviews in one night, got instant praise, liked it, and saw an open invitation to meet others at a bar that afternoon to play party games. Now all of her local friends are Yelpers, she said.

Yelp does care about identity. Elite members must use their real first name, last initial and photo. Some go further, piling on the poses, and adding shots of pets, lovers and favorite dishes.

As a reviewer, it makes you real; as a networker, it’s a come-on. Anyone can e-mail you without learning your real address.

“If you don’t have pictures and a few reviews, people don’t trust you,” said Nina Cheung, 30, who has been Elite for three years. “You have to be there to review, not just to hook up.”

The downside is that semianonymity can be breached. When Ms. Smith returned to Artichoke Basille’s Pizza the day after reviewing it, the counterman she had described as “my Italian cutie with a flirtatious smile” shouted: “You write for Yelp, don’t you? You’re Lauren S.!”

“If I was white,” Ms. Smith, who is black, wrote in her review update, “I think I would have turned as red as the sauce from embarrassment.”

And when Kathleen B. Reynolds, another Elite, returned to her hair salon after mentioning that some of its stylists disappeared midcut, her stylist looked her over and said, “I guess I can’t take any cigarette breaks when I’m with you, hmm?”

As critics, Yelpers have different aspirations. The incredibly prolific Ed Uyeshima, 49, of San Francisco, had 976 Yelp reviews (accompanied by 2,197 photos), and another 1,483 on Amazon .com. That led The San Francisco Examiner to make him its freelance reviewer of events for tourists. His thoughtful reviews are written on nights and weekends because his days are spent marketing financial services.

“And I do have time to do other things, I swear,” he said.

Ms. Cheung — Nina C. — works as a secretary. Because she was one of New York’s first Yelpers, she has 119 “firsts,” but no desire to turn pro.

“I think my writing style’s kind of juvenile,” she admitted.

Mr. Uyeshima said he found Yelp a friendly milieu. On Amazon, he said, he is attacked by readers who dislike his book reviews, particularly if they disagree politically. On Yelp, you can’t vote a review “not helpful” but you can click “send a compliment.”

“That’s an interesting nuance,” he said. “You can breed a lot of hostility on a site, but Yelp doesn’t encourage negativity.”

People in the wider food business are deeply divided about Yelpers.

Sites with higher gastronomic pretensions like Eater, Grub Street or Serious Eats tend to be dismissive. A particular complaint is that, unlike anonymous posters, Yelpers can be e-mailed after a review and offered free food or drink. Several Elites said they or friends had had such offers, but argued that it was rare and, in any case, they would not change what they wrote.

Another fear is fake reviews posted by a chef’s friends or enemies.

But Ms. Johannesen, of the Kimpton chain, said she thought those were easy to spot: any author with a sketchy profile and few posts was suspect.

Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s founder, said a business could also flag a suspect negative review and ask the company to look at it. When Yelp caught a circle of San Francisco businesses writing five-star reviews for one another this summer, “we purged them from the system,” he said.

Another criticism is that Yelp solicits restaurant “sponsorships.” For a fee, a restaurant can keep one favorable review, marked “sponsor,” at the top of the list. Mr. Stoppelman emphatically denied that unfavorable reviews were reordered or removed for sponsors, unless they were clearly fakes.

The Fifth Floor restaurant in San Francisco, which has one Michelin star, pays Yelp $300 a month for such a sponsorship, said Todd Stillman, its general manager. On the day he said that, Fifth Floor’s top two Yelp reviews, including the sponsored one, were raves. But three others in the top 10 were pans.

Mr. Stillman shrugged it off and said he had used bad reviews to correct staff or kitchen problems, or had e-mailed the reviewer with an explanation. “Feedback is good when you’re in the customer satisfaction business,” he said. “If you don’t evolve in this marketplace, you go extinct.”