My Thoughts On the 3.5 Yelp Star Rule For Chinese Restaurants
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that there would be an internet meme about Yelp Chinese restaurant ratings. But that's exactly what happened when my son's friend, filmmaker Freddie Wong, posted on Tik Tok the highly inventive proposition that only Chinese restaurants with 3.5 Yelp stars are worth eating at, garnering almost 20 million views. His premise is that more highly rated Chinese restaurants are those patronized by too many non-Chinese diners, whose opinions are counter productive. When Wong asked me for my assessment of the 3.5 star rule, I told him indeed that many great, authentic Chinese restaurants have 3.5 star ratings. However the overhanging fact which prevents the rule from being the gospel truth is that Yelp ratings of Chinese restaurants are categorically unreliable (though not to say individual ratings may well be on point), as I explained in my article from L A Weekly. Why Yelp's Chinese Restaurant Ratings Don't Compute - L. A.