night out where you can do everything perfectly because I’ll tell you something – that takes some doing.”
“I don’t want my team to work like that. I want my team to have a balanced life. When you get these criticisms, sometimes, you are wrong, and you go ‘yep, we didn’t get that right, we cocked up.’”
More hurtful still are those reviews from customers who’ve had their reservations cancelled because the restaurant was closed, as he went to every effort to make sure to contact them all directly to apologise.
“This is the situation I’m in, it’s been in the national press for God’s sake, it’s not like there’s no awareness – if my restaurant had burnt down or flooded, the result would be the same situation I’m in now with no power; there’s no difference,” he said.
“I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to let my customers down. I’ve spent three decades working my ass off and this is what I get out of bed for, to make people happy in their happy time. That’s what I do.”
But worst of all, the chef said he can prove that some reviews are outright fictitious:
“They’ve not been to my restaurant. I know the reviews are absolute bollocks.”
“I haven’t had a reservation system. There’s no way they had a booking for tonight because the bookings I’ve had, we’ve spoken to personally.”
Despite it, all the chefs conceded that while flawed, TripAdvisor has a level of overall credibility.
“Its quantitative trend is right. You’ve kind of got to take the rest and swallow it.”
Chefs have you received fake or unfair TripAdvisor reviews? Share your experiences in the comments!
