This can be a mixed blessing. TripAdvisor is a marvelous travel-review website, but not necessarily for restaurateurs. They are at the mercy of masses of frivolous, uninformed, illiterate, unfair, and sometimes libelous diners, who can trip them up with a 1-star review when they least expect it. God help them if a former chef should sit down at the keyboard and start reviewing. TripAdvisor is the wholly uncurated Wikipedia of culinary reviewing.
Among a bouquet of other, 5-star, reviews, one 2-star reviewer of a Thai restaurant complained of its noodles being glutinous and sluglike. But, the thing is, wide Thai noodles are rather like that. Some people even like them that way.
Other reviewers won't hesitate to blast the service at a place, denigrating the staff's personality before even stepping through the door. "This is the saddest, most miserable looking restaurant in town. This bunch doesn't care one jot. No one showed us to a table, so we left." One wonders how long these twitchy travelers bothered to wait. This unfortunate establishment got a 1-star rating without a bite of its food having been tasted.
Other places receive a 1,500-word feature article worthy of Travel magazine, picking at such details as "I would have liked a larger soft drink, and if I'd ordered a Sprite, I would have received one. Unfortunately, Sprite is not to my liking," and on, and on, concluding with a 2-star rating. After publication, these reviewers doubtless revel in what they've written, particularly when they've had something especially snarky to say. Meanwhile, the owner's previously untarnished rating has gone down the crapper. If you look closely at these reviewers' profiles, they frequently have nothing good to say. It's loads more fun for them that way.
Unless a review is grossly inappropriate, bristling with lurid curses, or obviously the work of a disgruntled former employee or competitor ("Chuck's Beachside gave me a cockroach garnish on top of my crab cake. Guess this is because there are so many roaches scampering about with the rats back in the greasy kitchen while the chef snorts coke"), there seems to be nothing proprietors can do but bow and scrape, replying meekly to the review and promising that they will try with all their might to correct the errors of their ways--that, in fact, they are doing so right now!
Such responses begin calmly enough, with "I do apologize and am extremely grateful for your comments [i.e., pig-headed abuse]" and then quickly move on to a level of illogic nearly equal to that of the original review. "We were having such a lovely conversation, even laughing about the silly errors that my staff made, that I am appalled that you would smear me with the sort of rating you gave! I hope to see you again very soon."
Rather than rely on God to punish negative reviewers with everlasting damnation as restaurant owners in Hell, some owners get mad as hell and refuse to take it any more. Screw obsequiousness, they say.
One such owner is Buffalo Bill, eighteen-year-long proprietor of Ye Olde Buffalo Tavern (Public House, Restaurant, and Letting Rooms). His pub sits athwart a corner facing the Hua Hin Fishing Pier parking lot, affording patrons a fine view of both the ocean and a passing polyglot population that might include four Thais to a motorbike, fisherman and dog on motorbike, old Thai women pushing food carts, and sandalwood-scented, middle-aged white women in tie-dye, who appear to be in search of enlightenment. It's a swell place to hang out, drink, and gawk.
Its walls and columns are arrayed with images of sports teams, old cars, ships, and revolutionaries of all stripes. Pop music plays all the time. A painted trail of ivy crawls along the wall border. With a lending library, captain's chairs, diamond-paned doors, and a brass-bound antique box to hold hand-ironed dinner napkins, the British pub atmosphere is complete.
The food is both traditional Thai and European comfort food, almost invariably good While we were having dinner there, we chatted briefly with the eponymous Bill, a seemingly jolly, outgoing bloke with a mop of salt-and-pepper curls.
Afterward, I wrote a TripAdvisor review, including both of our names, to express our appreciation. I reported, honestly, yet quite pleasantly, that the burger and Bloody Mary weren't quite what we'd hoped for. For that reason, I gave a 3-star rating that was very nearly a 4. Unfortunately, TripAdvisor doesn't allow for halves.
That we returned two or three times despite my rating was, I figured, a tribute to the place's quality and a boon to its coffers. I failed to account for how closely owners scrutinize and calculate the ratio of ratings to number of reviews on TripAdvisor.
Shortly after my review's publication, we stopped in for lunch. Buffalo Bill greeted us by name and asked if he might sit with us for a while. Sensing that this was no casual request, I at once tried to co-opt him by commenting on how vastly improved today's Bloody Mary was.
"It depends on which girl makes it, of course, but I see that your husband didn't order the burger," he replied, before launching into intricate explanations of how some of his staff hadn't quite mastered Bloody Mary technique and how his different cooks handle the frying pan differently, rendering vastly different burger tastes and textures.
"Next time you're in, I'll cook you a burger myself! But now," he grinned, "you've given me an excuse to kick my staff's arses."
"I used to take TripAdvisor reviews personally!" he exclaimed. Then, indicating a 5-star TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence that hung the wall, he went on, at additional and considerable length, about how my 3-star rating had damaged his reputation.
"Oh, your review wasn't bad. It was quite good, actually. But TripAdvisor often isn't fair. One reviewer even called me obese! There's no call for that now, is there? So I responded to his review in the same vein: 'I seem to remember a bald-headed man and his scrawny wife with dyed-orange hair at table 4.'
"Later, when I took my wife out to dinner for her birthday, there they were at another table. I saw his wife mouthing, 'Don't look! It's that horrid Buffalo Bill!' and hubby grimacing in disgust. I went up to their table and said, 'So good to see you again. Thanks so much for buying us drinks the other night.'"
Other TripAdvisor reviewers of Bill's place can expect written responses along the lines of "How do you know what shoe leather tastes like? Perhaps this is what you are used to eating." Every review of fewer than 5 stars can expect a tirade with some degree of taking things very personally indeed--not unlike Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, the mustachioed purveyor of gourmet soups who, at the smallest perceived slight, would roar, "No soup for you!"
When I courageously suggested that Bill might want to state his case in an online response to my review, this wouldn't do. He preferred that I change the rating (which, per TripAdvisor rules, can't be done) or remove and replace the review entirely (which can). I have to admit that, given my timidity and my sympathy for restaurant owners, I caved.
When one removes a review from TripAdvisor, the site requests one's reason for doing so. Among the choices are "Want to edit my review," "Would rather not say," and "Am being harassed by the owner."
Given my sympathy for most restaurant owners, I lied.
