can you link us to your yelp review? being able to see what you wrote would better help us understand how out of line the chef was.
Ignore Crafter. He thinks almost all aggression is justified.
Ninja’d with an answer to my question.
What did the manager say/do?
I wouldn’t expect that at a diner either. And the chef sounds like he needs to grow up.
eenerms, it sucks that you had to waste your 25th anniversary on this place. Maybe you can take your wife to someplace that you know is good to make it up to her.
Frankly, it sounds like a helpful Yelp review instead of all the
bullshit I see most Yelp reviewers posting about even the most mediocre places.
I hope he replied publicly. Then his immature response will be on display for any potential customers to see should they find your review on Yelp.
You were in the right posting your experience, and the chef has completely shot himself in the foot (actually, more like the femur) with his response. Most rational people will realize that every restaurant will get a deserved bad review on occasion, and will take it into account when reading reviews. But the owner going nuts on the reviewer? That’s an immediate “Stay Away” flag.
I had a similar experience when I posted a negative review on a food cart that opened in the 'hood. The food was truly just this side of awful, with almost no effort put into preparing it. The owner of the cart responded to my Yelp review with a large ration of backlash and indignation, implying that it was MY fault that they sucked. They closed three weeks later.
Interesting. I think I have pretty high standards for food. I’ve eaten at many Michelin starred restaurants (some deserving, some not as much), a bunch of holes in the wall and tons of stuff in between. I think I eat out more than the average person (probably 4-5 times a week). And my experience is actually that it’s the negative Yelp reviews that are more often off-base. Yes, I have been to mediocre places that have good reviews. But far more often, I’ve been to solid places that have several bad reviews, often for one-off issues or completely irrelevant stuff (if you’re going to the top fine dining restaurant in a major city, do you really need to give it a bad review because it’s expensive? I think we all know what we’re getting into there).
Really this same problem afflicts most online reviews. The people who have complaints are much more likely to go to the trouble to write up a review. Granted, if a place has ONLY bad reviews, there’s probably something to it. But almost every place that has any significant number of reviews seems to have a few people complaining that it was the worst meal of their lives. Give me a break.
As for the OP’s situation, I think the chef is pretty clearly out of line, and not too smart about the PR or customer service side of his business. On the other hand, if I read the OP’s review, I’d probably discount it unless several other reviews reiterated the same themes, because it sounds like fairly isolated problems. Not to say that it should have happened, or that the OP shouldn’t have been annoyed. I just don’t think it’s especially predictive of what someone else’s experience would be there unless it’s a real pattern (and if it’s not predictive of my experience, it’s not really relevant in my decision on where to eat).
If you didn’t like the place why would you want to go back, anyway?
I never give restaurants a second chance.
Yelp has turned into the Jerry Springer show. I don’t know how many stories just like this I’ve read on the Consumerist and elsewhere. Leaving a bad review is just asking for a (verbal) chair shot from the restaurant, apparently.
My husband is going doing a ‘do over’ next week;)
In general, business responses to even unreasonable reviews should be polite, professional and stress the business’ goal of satisfying the consumer.
I see a fair number of responses to online reviews that are hostile, combative and leave the impression that the businessman is a jerk. Ones that whine about the business owner’s personal/family problems as justification for their poor performance are equally bad.
Coming off that way, no matter how “in the right” you may be, is self-destructive.
And, depending on the cost, I’m exactly the opposite. Everyone gets one mulligan, unless they actively piss me off (and the response to this review would qualify.) I sometimes afford two mulligans to a place. Even my favorite restaurants have days that are not good as others.
The manager thanked me and said, they wanted to know what the problems are so we can remedy them. He also offered to buy us a after dinner drink!
I’ll give a place a second chance if I’ve had a few good experiences. But if they blow it on my first meal there, I’m not going back.
Did you mention those things in your review?
See, I’ve had a number of places be completely unremarkable or even blow it on the first time, but I’m happy I didn’t let my initial experience discourage me. It helped that these places were recommended by people whose tastes are similar to mine, so I just chalked up the experience to bad luck. Barbecue, especially, is one of those things that is a roll of the dice.
Last year,I posted about a bad experience I had with an owner of a restaurant and Yelp. Their family harassed me via private messages on Yelp (various accounts) and by posting reviews calling me a liar. Good times.
For what it’s worth, a few months ago, a friend decided we should get take out from there for dinner, so he called in a pickup order. He showed up at 6 PM (15 minutes after placing the order— their door sign said they didn’t close until 8) and was greeted out front by the owner’s son who said, “Oh,finally you’re here to get your order. We want to leave!” He shoved the bags into my friend’s hands, then turned off all the lights and locked up. Friend got back to my place and they had literally forgotten to include half of the order. And, of course, they were closed.
Needless to say, I stand by my negative reviews on their customer service.
That’s my experience as well. I trust the OP in this case, but a lot of times you have to wonder about the character of the negative reviewer. Last year I was trying to decide if I wanted to go to a sort of meditation retreat thing. I only found one review, and it was really bad. By the time I had gotten about page 4 of the review (it was like a 10-page rant), I’d concluded that the reviewer was a whiny complainer. When he said that the owner was a “Godless Liberal Democrat”, I said “sign me up!”
I also recently read some reviews for an electronic musical gadget. One of them gave the thing one star. He bought one and it wouldn’t turn on. So he bought another one and that wouldn’t turn on either. Apparently he didn’t read page 3 of the manual, entitled “How to turn this unit on.” Anyway he concluded that it was the worst drum machine ever. (It’s not a drum machine.)