Is Yelp actually better than traditional restaurant critics?

1 min read

I found this interesting article in The Restaurant Manifesto called  Critics Under Review – quote below – is this fair?

“But new restaurants are like toddlers that need time to shed their baby fat; they must learn to crawl before they can walk or—in the most hyped cases—learn to fly up to their lofty expectations.

The unfortunate result is that many restaurants with real ambition never get a chance to grow into adulthood without judgement already having been passed.
In most cases, if the quality of a new restaurant improves after review season has ended, it will happen without much recognition from the press or restaurant critics.
With as many technological advances in mobile communication it’s puzzling that a critic’s views would not evolve over time.  Is it really fair to file one definitive review based on a few early experiences and be done with it? Isn’t this akin to reviewing a piece of theater based on the quality of its dress rehearsals?”