Michelin, Yelp, Zagat: Who Can We Believe?
The (Michelin) stars must have been truly aligned for Serious Eaters yesterday, because Michelin introduced its 2008 New York restaurant ratings two days after the Wall Street Journal ran a piece questioning the validity of online restaurant reviews written by bloggers and eaters who don't pay for their meals. (Full disclosure: Contributors to Serious Eats, Slice, A Hamburger Today, and Ed Levine Eats who review restaurants pay for their meals unless explicitly stated otherwise ).
The juxtaposition of these two events provides a perfect opportunity to discuss the relative merits of reviews and judgments rendered every which way, from on high (Michelin and the New York Times) to online (Yelp and Zagat).
