There was a time when I was really into writing online restaurant reviews, a time long before Zomato blew up and hit us with a wave of bird-brained people who started maintaining a food diary of what they ate as reviews and took it upon themselves to ruin restaurant reviews for all of us.

I used to enjoy visiting restaurants and noting little things about the place that made them unique, and the way those little things sum up our experiences. I thought Zomato was wonderful. A brilliant medium to unearth the best food holes in your city and share it with other people. A wonderful place to highlight the very unique food culture of a city, and tell travelers what is not to be missed when you are visiting.

But online food reviews have turned out to be none of those things. Their biggest flaw is that they have little to do with food, and are more about climbing some social influencer ladder, that brings you more points for more restaurants you visit and the more number of pictures you upload. It is cluttered with entitled people, who hold restaurants accountable for not living up to their personal idiosyncrasies.

The reviews range from “Chicken 65 was too red” to “Soup was too watery” to “the waiter did not smile at me”. It also has unappetizing pictures of food, taken just so one can increase their points at the Zomato leaderboard. It has people calling out restaurants for things they were never designed to deliver. It is idiotic to go to a non-veg mess in Royapettah, and say the service was poor, or go to one of the 100s of odd franchises of Murugan idli shop in Chennai, and declare they are serving cold sambaar these days. Look at what they did to Sundari Akka’s shop? I am sure she wants her peace back! What happened to understanding the history of these places, getting deep into the origins of food, and taking a second look at who it caters to? If you go to a high-end bar and then write a review saying the waitress only smiles at the foreigner, that’s because you are probably a creep who stares at women, or that poor girl has just completed a 12-hour shift and doesn’t owe you shit for the generous 50 rupee tip you are gonna leave her.

It pains me to see consumerism take over the love of food to this extent. And it pains to see restaurants be at the other end of it, all while struggling to make ends meet, in an industry with a 70% failure rate. I knew very little about F&B until I had my first tryst with the Hospitality sector, and I can tell you this much – YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT TAKES TO RUN A RESTAURANT!

So the next time you want to review a restaurant, read up a little, broaden your mind about cuisines, empathize with the service staff who stand on their feet all day, and ask yourself if you really know anything at all about food or about writing, and who is this review of yours actually helping! I have a better idea – before you want to review how a dish tasted, with your limited choice of vocabulary, why don’t you go into the kitchen and try whipping up something simple like a khichdi or rasam, and I will review it for ya. Huh?