Jeff Ruby of Chicago Magazine has just published a spirited defense of traditional restaurant reviewers. He was spurred to action by some salacious comments made by Anthony Bourdain, who has pronounced traditional restaurant criticism all but extinct: “The dinosaur has died. Only the brain has yet to receive the message.” Citing four reasons why Yelp can’t be trusted, Ruby gives his thesis of why restaurant reviewers will outlast the user generated review site. And (the very best part), he does this with his own handy dinosaur metaphor! Check it out below.
In Bourdain’s world, Yelp apparently represents the mammals that ruled in the long global winter that followed. That analogy is wrong. Yelp is not the evolved mammalian species. It is the asteroid. But the dinosaurs in this metaphor, flawed as we are, will roam Earth long after Yelp is gone.
Wow, that was a lot of dinosaur talk to deal with. Either way, it’s an interesting position and definitely worth a read.
Critic Will Survive the Age of Yelp [Chicago Magazine]
