Andrew Zimmern Has An Intense Loathing For Yelp

While Andrew Zimmern brings us insights on politics and social commentary with his show "What's Eating America," today on Tasting Table we are going to give you an inside look into what's eating Andrew Zimmern. And the answer is — Yelp. To say he doesn't like Yelp would be an understatement, but hate could be too strong of a word. So, in his words, "Yelp sucks!" And while that may seem like a pretty severe stance to take against a social media platform, it is one that Zimmern has stood by for at least a decade and is still speaking out today against the crowdsourcing site. A site, he says via Instagram, is "crowdsourcing the mundane." In the same vein, Zimmern isn't a fan of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list.

"When you crowdsource opinions from people with no context, no expertise, and no real understanding of what goes into a restaurant, you get noise. Not insight," said Zimmern in a recent Instagram post where he goes on a bit of a tangent regarding Yelp. "I don't want to know what the average person thinks of a restaurant," he added, which could (and did) make some fans feel a little disparaged. One commentor said, "I highly disagree, Chef. A restaurant doesn't make money as a test kitchen for 'food professionals.' ... So yes, the general public should have a say in rating the performance and food quality of said restaurant." However, Zimmern seems to care about those comments as much as he does Yelp reviews, leaving the commenters to argue amongst themselves.

It doesn't seem like Andrew Zimmern is taking this stand against Yelp haphazardly. This is the man who wants you to eat typically discarded cuts of meat, which insinuates some open-mindedness regarding cuisine. His adamant viewpoint gives more of an impression of guidance to his fans. Zimmern has many ways to locate hidden gems in a city, but Yelp, he says, is not the place to trust to lead us to those results. "Great food comes from craft, culture, and obsession. Skip the star ratings. Talk to chefs. Talk to locals," he suggests. "That's how you find the good stuff."

In an interview with Business Insider, Zimmern admits that he doesn't find Yelp good or bad for the food industry; he simply doesn't think it's useful at all. "If you are a huge food geek like me that believes in quality ... Yelp is not for you," he says. Instead, Zimmern offers us a different option. When he is set to visit a city, he does his research and suggests we do as well. Zimmern will go through the social media of local chefs and food writers, take note of the restaurants that have recently been mentioned on their pages, and whichever restaurants or dishes get the most mentions are the ones he checks out. And that's not a bad idea, especially if you have chefs and critics you follow and trust. As he puts it, "There are so many better ways to figure out whether a restaurant is good or not."