⭐ Thoughts on Star Ratings ⭐
I saw a clickbait article this morning talking about how every Michelin starred ramen shop in Tokyo Japan had lost their stars in 2024. Now, the goal of that article was to imply that the quality of those restaurants had fallen. Thankfully the comment section was having none of it and pointed out that Michelin stars are only given to niche fine dining restaurants and weren't indicative of the quality of the food whatsoever.
So I went to the Michelin site to see if that was even true. Apparently the ramen shops in Japan have something called a "bib gourmand" which means the food is good but not high end enough for a star. In fact, none of the ramen options have stars. There are 8 Yakitori shops with 1 star and 108 Sushi places with at least 1 star.
Now, ramen is just soup and noodles. It's supposed to be accessible and possibly best eaten at a stall that has a maximum of 6 chairs. If I packed a bag tonight and got on a plane to Tokyo, I bet the first ramen shop I ran into off the train would be the greatest bowl of ramen I'd ever eaten in my life.
But this is all just the rating system of a French tire company who wanted to show Edwardians where to stop for luncheon on their outings into the countryside. To say things have gotten out of hand is an understatement.
Don't get me wrong. A third party group of experts using a strict set of rules and criteria to let consumers know the quality of something can be a very good thing. Michelin uses a team of anon food critics who are already in the food industry in some way.
Giving the public free reign to add stars to something adds in too many weighted results. People tend to leave Yelp reviews only after they have had a bad experience and want to warn others, resulting in a star rating skewed lower than what the place actually deserves. Same goes for Google and Facebook reviews. It's a public complaint department and not a place to get real insight.
Amazon star ratings are a whole different nightmare. Now paid reviews have crept in. Influencers use Amazon affiliate links and receive free items in return for their "honest opinion" then get a few bucks every time their viewers buy the item. We know how honest that can be when money and clout are involved.
You can tell when an item is actually good when the star rating isn't just high, but the number of ratings is too. That gives you enough info to offset the guy who gave it 1 star for the post office taking an extra day to get it to him.
Book reviews on Amazon are a wild combination of both paid influence and subjective opinions from readers who expected book A to be like book B because the covers are both red. Or when a Sci-Fi book written in the 1950's doesn't follow contemporary Sci-Fi tropes and reader expectations.
With TV and movies it's no longer stars but tomatoes. And it's fun because sometimes the professional film critics will hate a movie but the actual audience for the film will love it. You know it's a good movie when both critics and regular people are on board with it.
And that's the rub here. Do you want to know what the average random consumer thinks of something or do you want to know what an industry professional thinks of it?
I think the reliance on star ratings as replacement for in depth reviews is the real issue here. I feel like back when Newspapers were a thing and hired people to review films, food, and tech it held more weight. Now I assume anything printed in an industry magazine is just a promotion.
Back to food, there is that guy who reviews pizza on Instagram. Do I trust his point scale when reviewing the pizza? Yes and no. If I wanted to know the best very specific style of pizza he personally likes, then yes I would take his advice. Do I trust his review on the kind of pizza I like? Absolutely not. Has he eaten more pizza in different places around the country? Yes. But again, it's just one person's opinion.
But that one persons opinion gets taken at some value rating. Someone who walks by a pizza place and sees the score they got from the guy is more likely to check it out if it has a higher score. And at that point, places with high ratings, not just pizza guy but Michelin stars and such, get swamped with people who saw it on the internet. The restaurant becomes very busy and difficult to get into. The waits get longer, the customers get more upset that what they were hoping would be perfect food ends up being compromised in some way due to the popularity. Maybe those ramen shops in Toyko don't want the attention of travelling influencers hoping to ride the clout wave left in the wake.
In Austin we had a bbq place called Franklin's. It was known for being exceptional and selling out by lunch every day. You had to get in line at 8am to get food at 11am kinda thing. The only way I had been able to try it was when it was catered. That was ten years ago. More places have popped up since then and the line isn't as bad as it once was. The food is just as good, the hype just wore off.
Do we rely too much on giving everything a rating? Probably. Is it useful? Yes. Can it be manipulated? Yes. Should we get rid of it? No, but maybe rely on it less.