How to tell if a restaurant is actually good

Nearly every restaurant worth considering sits between 3.8 and 4.6 stars, so the rating rarely separates them. What does separate them is in the review text, and there are only a handful of things you need to look at.

Read the recent reviews first

Kitchens change. Chefs leave, owners sell, prices rise. A rating averages years of experience into one number and hides all of it.

Sort by newest and read the last two or three months. If those reviews sound different from the older ones, believe the recent ones.

Look for what repeats

One person complaining about slow service is a bad night. Fifteen people over two months is how the restaurant runs.

The same applies to praise. A dish named by twenty different reviewers is genuinely good; general enthusiasm about the atmosphere is not evidence of much.

Read the three-star reviews

Five-star reviews are often written in a good mood and one-star reviews in a bad one. Three-star reviews are where people weigh the good against the bad, and they are consistently the most useful text on the page.

Match the reviews to your visit

Most reviews say what the visit was for: a quick lunch, a birthday, a work dinner. A restaurant that is wrong for one can be perfect for another.

Filter mentally for reviews that describe the visit you are planning, and ignore the rest.

Check the owner's replies

How a business answers criticism tells you how it is run. Specific, non-defensive replies to real complaints are a good sign. Copy-pasted thanks on every five-star review and silence on the complaints is a less good one.