Chowhound is a weekly column about what’s trending in Detroit food culture. Tips: [email protected].
Whipping posts: Some of what restaurants are subject to via online reviews just isn’t right. Everyone’s a critic, as the saying goes. These days, anyone in our high order of primates with the ability to wield their opposing thumbs has a weapon at hand to post piss-and-vinegar vitriol online. Once we take offense, it’s easy to go on the offensive and start slinging shit; clicking and sticking it to whoever has the audacity not to satisfy our every whim or — God forbid — tell us no. The hospitality industry is particularly vulnerable to review vigilantes who impugn reputations with impunity, exercising free speech through screeds spewed with the same, self-entitled lack of social consciousness and gleeful pride one might take from sneaking out a rotten egg fart in public. Granted, we’ve all got it in us, but when you’re on the receiving end, it stinks.
Wouldn’t it be nice if restaurants had a forum to air their grievances over the more egregious examples of posters putting them on blast? What’s fair is fair. If anyone can say anything they want on record, the flip side of that should be a possibility that their spin on things might have to face the music of somebody else with a byline; someone who’ll make it their business to advocate for innkeepers and their crews by holding up preposterous postings as evidence of what ignorance and arrogance some customers bring to the table, dish out to staff, and then write a revisionist account of for posterity’s sake. Again, my mind goes to the ludicrous allusion of the brainfart expressed for the greater good. I don’t buy a whiff of it.
Once a month going forward, Chowhound will turn the tables on a few, select social media whiners whose recent restaurant character assassination work we’ll deem deserving of address. Comments that come across as gratuitous and contemptible will be subject to a good tongue-lashing. Postings either plucked from the public domain ourselves or provided by proprietors pleading cases we can argue as unreasonable prosecutions in open, online court will provide that fodder. We’ll crack our whip over horse’s ass complainers who make it plain that they haven’t a leg to stand on in justifying their damaging and hurtful reviews.
Perchance you’re someone who likes to log on and weigh in on where you go out to eat. Whether or not you find yourself tied to a future Whipping Post installment may depend on how you put things. It’s understandable to be sorely disappointed over a misfired filet and at a steakhouse you had high hopes for, or when special arrangements you made with your reservations go awry. I get the frustration of forgotten drink reorders and dinner plates that come to the table too many minutes apart, and the potential consequences of missed dining room-kitchen communications on food allergies, diabetic desserts, and such. But when I read personal attacks on individuals or groups of people couched as fair criticism of a restaurant’s business model, I bristle.
Consider these comments on Rocky’s of Northville, made by a “Mr. J.B.” recently: “This is a place where all of the local grandparents gather for dinner. It was like being at a senior citizen dining hall which served liquor.” To know anything about Rocky’s long-standing, stout reputation, or to glean a good measure of consensus regarding same from its preponderance of four- and five-star Google reviews (mine included), is to read a decidedly different story than the one Mr. B. felt the need to share in all its snarky ageism and aspersion. While his award for Rocky’s fare was minimal (one star), the man failed to mention a single specific as to why. By the way, Mr. B.: what’s your beef with breaking bread among some of the older crowd? Given your photo (white beard, bald head), you look to be pushing 60 or so yourself. Curious.
To some degree, we’re all influencers now. I confess, before I head out to eat somewhere for the first time, I scroll the reviews and, yes, read one or two of the bad ones out of gawker curiosity. I’m guessing most of us do. Times have changed. When I started working in restaurants, the only bad press there was to fear was a chance newspaper review written by the one or two critics in town trying to cover a big beat of food businesses on a once-weekly basis. Over the course of twenty-plus years (1983-2007), the restaurants I either worked in or owned were reviewed only three times in total. Now, restaurants are subjected daily to critique-ready customers unconstrained by standards of balanced, accountable journalism, and informed, fair reporting. People can say whatever they want, for all kinds of reasons and with many agendas, for all eyes to see. Every dish and drink served now runs this gauntlet of risk lined by know-it-alls with smartphones phishing for freebies in a virtual fish bowl. It’s a damn shame no one can change that. What can be done, maybe, is to bait our own hook, and catch a few feckless bottom-feeders making big-mouth basses of themselves in their small likes-and-shares ponds.
Restaurateurs: Our whipping post welcomes your submissions of reviews that typify what’s being perpetrated against you under the protections of free speech. Get ready, Google and Yelp hobgoblins. Your mischievous musings are now officially under further review. What goes around comes around — if you can’t cease and desist, don’t be surprised to find yourself outed as a five-star foodie poseur in our forum. Posters selected for exposure will be afforded “Whipping Post Poster Child” celebrity through Chowhound, and are eligible to receive a gift card to Kroger so you can just eat at home instead of going out to eat and making others miserable.
Just kidding about the prizes, of course. All “winners” can expect is a good calling out on the carpet. Restaurants interested in bringing perceived vendetta-reviewing to our attention can contact Chowhound at: [email protected].
Stay tuned.
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