Tripadvisor's Weird MCR Top Twenty Restaurants

Confidentials 26 February 2013

THIS is a list of the top twenty restaurants in Manchester. From Tripadvisor.

"With any restaurant," says Davenport, "you never know if the staff are posting the comments and the ratings, or friends and family. Tripadvisor does have checks in place and they do from time alert businesses to suspicious activity but it can all be easily bypassed."

Yes, Tripadvisor: that rowdy clarion call of uncontrolled consumer bile or love; that equivalent of Manchester Confidential's rants being rated and assessed and given equal value whatever the merits of the words, and the objectivity, and even intelligence of the writer.

As Kira Cochrane writes in The Guardian, there is something 'simultaneously brilliant and annoying about TripAdvisor: its celebration of consumer power, of the right for everyone's opinion to be heard and accorded equal weight – and the bewildering contradictions in its reviews'.

For the restaurants themselves Tripadvisor can be a double-edged sword. Or more like a double-edged chainsaw in a foodie version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Damien Davenport, proprietor of 1847 Bistro, found this out very graphically when he launched his vegetarian restaurant a couple of years ago.

"To start with Tripadvisor worked for us. It gave us profile and boosted visits as we initially had very favourable comments. But it can quickly turn sour.

"For instance a group of 18 wanted to take advantage of a Confidential deal but we told them it didn't apply to groups. So they individually printed off 18 forms and came anyway and obviously wanted to sit together. They said they only wanted two of the three courses on the deal and asked if instead of the third course they could have free drinks. I said no.

"After a lot of distress on the evening they left. But later members of the group began to post negative comments on Tripadvisor and our position in the rankings dropped. Tripadvisor refused to remove any of the comments even though the person who'd arranged the clandestine group visit was disciplined by her organisation for the manner in which they'd conducted themselves. Tripadvisor did however remove some of the very reasonable responses I made to the complainants.

"It's so hard to combat Tripadvisor unfairnesses but now that we're a more mature business, I really don't care about the site. Most of customers are regulars or come via the usual media or by word of mouth anyway."

A problem with Tripadvisor rankings is that you only have to have a few good reviews to put you right on top of the pile. Thus the lowest number of comments, 23, in the Tripadvisor Manchester top twenty restaurants is for Umezushi and yet it holds the number one spot.

We love Umezushi at Confidential but its high ranking shows the limitations of the ranking system.

We're sure those boys at the Japanese place under the Victoria Station arches aren't guilty of any shenanigans, but a top spot for a recent arrival can be easily engineered.

Umezushi grub, here and at the top

"With any restaurant," says Davenport, "you never know if the staff are posting the comments and the ratings, or friends and family. Tripadvisor does have checks in place and they do from time alert businesses to suspicious activity but it can all be easily bypassed."

Thus if the computer IP addresses of comment makers on Tripadvisor are different from each other then the site has no way of knowing if it's being manipulated - unless restaurants are stupid enough to post identical comments.

Despite all the caveats, the Tripadvisor top twenty restaurants is weirdly interesting.

It's top heavy in Japanese and other Eastern cuisines which haven't always been a strength of Manchester dining aside from Cantonese cooking.

Where the whole Tripadvisor notion falls down is as a guide to the city. The top twenty list is rubbish for a general visitor, taking them out to a Greek restaurant in Northenden amongst a parade of shuttered shops. It's laughable in a way, and a real argument for the list to be ignored.

A truly representative selection for Manchester visitors would have to include places such as Cicchetti, Australasia, Solita, Room, Red Chili, Zouk, Damson (MediaCityUK), Podium, the restaurants at Abode and others.

Most of these places are of course a price bracket above the places listed in the Tripadvisor selection which may reveal something about the profile of the Trip ranters - that's not meant as a criticism by the way, just an observation.

You also wonder whether there's diner inertia going on here. Some of these places are so local as to suggest lots of people in the neighbourhood keep going back and maybe don't go anywhere else. Also many of the top twenty are very small and thus, again, likely to attract a passionate and loyal following (and more able to manipulate the stats perhaps).

Mind you at Confidential we have over the last couple of years praised in the list Umezushi, I am Pho, Kyotoya, 63 Degrees and The Rose Garden.

It's also given Confidential a couple of ideas, having never reviewed Habesha and Desi, but generally it's a maverick clumping at best. Most of these restaurants, particularly Annies and Olive Press, are a mile off being anywhere near a Manchester top twenty restaurant list.

Maybe at Confidential we need to do our own top twenty for Manchester.

Or even a top 100 for the North West.

Watch this space.

1) Umezushi (Japanese-Victoria Station area) Our review here.

2) Alexandros Greek Restaurant (Northenden)

3) Pacifica Cantonese (Eccles)

4) Saray (Turkish- Chorlton)

5) I Am Pho (Vietnamese – Chinatown) Our review here.

6) Sapporo Teppanyaki (Japanese – Castlefield)

7) Arian (Persian – Chorlton)

8) Sugar Junction (Teashop – Northern Quarter) Our review here.

9) Rice Bowl (Cantonese – City)