Trip Advisor's Weird MCR Top 20

FOUR out of twenty.

That is the average number of restaurants in TripAdvisor’s top twenty ‘Best Manchester Restaurants’ (listed at the bottom) that Confidential employees have even heard of. Even Gordo, Confidential publisher and Manchester glutton for five decades, has only heard of four.

The key then to TripAdvisor is how we use it. This involves developing an innate drivel sieve...

For a publication that's been critiquing the region's food and drink for over a decade, that seems a bit off doesn’t it?

We published a similarly perculiar list back in early 2013 and found the whole thing baffling.

Maybe it's us. Perhaps we've become so blinded by seven hour, eighteen-course TV chef taster menus that we can no longer see the 'smaller guys' and the provincials for our own big, fat, triple chins.

So we asked a bunch of pals in and out of the industry: chefs, owners, proprietors, councillors, property developers, hotel managers, marketers, web-designers and a couple of DJs what their favourite Greater Manchester restaurants were. They said:

Trip Advisor ranking is in brackets.

Manchester House (#50), SMOAK (#422), Almost Famous (#277), Room (#264), The French (#44), Salvi’s Deli (#19), Evuna (#39), Australasia (#35), Yuzu (#193), Sam's Chop House (#160), San Carlo Cicchetti (#201), Umeushi (#42), Grill on the Alley (#102), Mr Cooper’s (#151), Greens (#129), Akbar's (#161) and Aumbry (#3 in Prestwich, trumped by the Istanbul and the Bombay).

Not one of that esteemed lot makes Trip Advisor's top twenty list below. Some would say that's democracy, consumer power in action.

In which case we'd ask you, regular consumers and food-informed Confidential readers to think of your favourite restaurant in Greater Manchester. Actually think of your top three, five, ten. How many of your favourites make the list at the bottom of this piece?

Nah didn't think so. So what's going on?

Of course, the principal issue is one of faux-reviewers, usually owners, staff, family or PR-types pushing the restaurant and flooding the site with positive comments. In fairness to TripAdvisor the site does monitor the IP address (your computer's identity) of each reviewer to combat fakes, but this security measure is easily bypassed - there's even a site that instructs you how to do it.

The problem has become so rife in Italy that the Italian Competition Authority launched an investigation earlier this year to establish whether TripAdvisor had 'sufficient measures in place to detect reviews made by people who had not visited the place'.

In a widely publicized case last year, a miffed businessman who wanted to expose Trip Advisor's flaws created a fake restaurant, built in the hull of an old fishing boat in Devon with 'mind-blowing' Michelin-starred food 'bordering on sorcery', and filled the page with beaming reviews. Bookings flew in and the non-existent restaurant crept its way to number 26 in the rankings.

TripAdvisor, red-faced, removed the fake restaurant three months later when punters found an empty alleyway.

The splendid Yuzu only made number 193

Some estimates suggest that 10% to 20% of all Trip Advisor reviews are fake, with over 170 million reviews on the site that's a whole load of codswallop.

Still, to operators, faux-reviewers are not the only concern. There's also the nutjobs.

"The problem with TripAdvisor," says a marketing bod of a leading Manchester restaurant group that wants to remain nameless in case the trolls rain down on their TripAdvisor pages like hellfire.

"Most of the people that use it regularly are either irate out-of-towners quick to scratch out your eyes or gushing locals who eat at the place round the corner seven times a week.

"Because of that it's not a true or well-rounded representation of the city's restaurant culture," the Marketing-bod continued. "It's also completely unpoliceable. If you don't reply the negativity builds up, if you do reply you look petty. TripAdvisor claim there's a defamatory content procedure but it's useless. We've stopped bothering with it."

This marketing-bod raises an interesting point about faceless and 'unpoliceable' internet posters, or 'trolls' (something Confidential knows all too well though our 'rant' function) - it's something Telegraph journalist Alex Proud highlights as the 'online disinhibition effect' (ODE).

The problem for restaurants is that they're not awarded the same luxury, and can quickly find themselves under a hail of negative reviews from a large party of punters, unhappy because a sharp chip got caught in Grandad's throat. And it was his birthday. And the waitress didn't sing to him - 'They always do at Luigi's'.

"We don't really take Trip Advisor complaints seriously," says Franco Sotgiu of Northern Quarter restaurant Solita (#137 out of 1,651 restaurants in Manchester, not bad).

"If customers have a problem it's imperative that they tell us immediately, we drill our staff to act before the customer leaves and posts a negative review. If a customer starts complaining on TripAdvisor we can't resolve the problem there. We need them to tell us so we can act there and then."

Still, TripAdvisor isn't all flimflam. The hotels section of the site with traveller photos can be useful as a general standards barometer. The restaurants section can even be handy in pointing out eateries that we'd usually have missed. As a quick hotel and restaurant directory the site is invaluable.

The key then to TripAdvisor is how we use it.

This involves developing an innate drivel sieve, the ability to spot a moron from 45cm to 75cm (the recommended distance from eyes to monitor, didn't you know?). Raking out those that are more concerned with the temperature of their seat's arse-padding than the stuff coming out of the kitchen. Realising that more than half of the list below have received less than 100 reviews, and that a positive review for the Vivid Lounge with twelve reviews (#16) and a positive review for Australasia with 1,651 reviews (#35) do not match-up.

We don't doubt that listed below are a few little corkers, deserving of their recognition, no matter how scant. The editor had a blinding meal in Saigon Lotus in recent months, while Pieminister is one of the most reliable feeds in the whole city.

Still, any right-minded self-respecting Manchester restaurant goer should take with a pinch of salt a review site that hails a Castlefield function room (not even an actual restaurant) with only 26 reviews as the best restaurant in all of Manchester.

Particularly when all the food for the number one restaurant comes from the kitchen of the Albert's Shed, languishing down at number 58.

Fair? Hardly.

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