First off, I just want to say, I love Yelp.  I truly do.  After all, if I didn’t think the idea was a great one, why would I have created a competing site back in 2006 (Oh, wait, that link doesn’t work anymore).  But for all the well deserved adulation that has been showered upon Yelp by yuppie trendsetters in the Greater Bay Area, there is a dark side to Yelp that I didn’t realize until very recently. 

Last weekend, I was in the city trying to figure out my lunch plans.  As usual, in spite of the many options available to me, I gravitated towards a few tried and true haunts that I visit on a regular basis.  Finally, I settled on ramen at a slightly out of the way hole-in-the-wall in Japantown.  This place has, in my opinion, the best ramen this side of Osaka.  It’s popular among neighborhood locals, with an occasional wait of ten to twenty minutes for a table.  But I figured, “Hey, it’s almost 2pm, so there shouldn’t be a wait at all."  So imagine my surprise when, upon arriving, a crush of people milled about the entrance, eagerly adding their names to the ever increasing waiting list the restaurant puts on a chair outside the door.  Doing a quick scan of the list, I figured the wait would be at least an hour.  I must admit, the sight of throngs of people waiting outside my favorite ramen house was a bit disconcerting.  After all, although the place got crowded on occasion, it was never like this.  And then I saw it.  The red sticker that adorns more and more restaurant windows with each passing day:  “People Love us on Yelp!” 

I thought to myself, okay, maybe this was an isolated incident.  There’s no proof that Yelp has directly led to the sudden discovery of this hidden gem of a restaurant.  Undaunted, yet still craving noodles, I took a bus to my backup choice, a Vietnamese Pho restaurant in the heart of the Tenderloin.  For those who are unfamiliar with SF, the Tenderloin is pretty much the place to be if you want to buy drugs, do drugs, or get shot by a drug dealer.  So the odds of finding crowds are rare, unless they are surrounding a chalk outline.  And yet, imagine my surprise when upon reaching my destination, I saw a line snaking out the door of the pho house and around the corner into the alleyway next to it.  And sure enough, when I got to the restaurant door, I saw the red Yelp sticker on the window.

This, in a roundabout way, is the reason why I don’t like Yelp.  It ruins the process of restaurant discovery.  Think about the world before sites like Yelp existed.  Any time you were tired of the same old restaurants, you’d go out and randomly pick a place.  Many times, you ended up disappointed, eating something that would look and taste better coming out than it did going in.  But every once in awhile, you’d find that special place.  The place for those “in the know”.  The place that makes up for the countless dining horror stories you’ve had in the past.  And even more importantly, the restaurant was “yours”.  It was the place that you always had a special table you liked to sit at.  The place where you could order by number because you’d gone through the menu so much.  But with Yelp (and competitors), all we have to do is fire up a website, sort by star rating, and BAM, we know the “best” places to go for ramen, sushi or Italian.  There’s no such thing as hidden gems anymore.  Bad hidden restaurants will remain bad hidden restaurants.  And good hidden restaurants will maintain that status only until the day they get Yelped for the first time. 

Maybe I’m being a food snob.  After all, who really gets hurt when a restaurant gets Yelped up?  The owners benefit from the windfall of extra customers.  And more people get to experience the joy of eating some really great food.  And in that regard, I think Yelp has served its purpose, and done so commendably.  But at the same time, I can’t help but feel a bit sad over the loss of my own personal restaurant roulette, where each new restaurant has a chance to be a new favorite, a new discovery.  So by all means, continue to use restaurant review sites to find the best “place for groups” or “cheap eats” in the city.  But if you’re ever eating with me and I recommend that we try someplace new, PLEASE don’t say, “Let me Yelp it first.”