The good, the bad and the overpriced.

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a web 2.0 restaurant review site with a few twists and the obligatory overuse of gradients, big buttons, whitespace and ajax 😉

Twist 1: The actual review has to be less than 160 characters. This is not so that it can be SMSed but a way to keep people to the point.

Twist 2: When you write a negative review for a restaurant you’ll be asked to provide a “rather go to” restaurant.

Twist 3: I’m thinking of keeping it super simple with just a single star rating accompanying your 160 character review.

Twist 4: Reviewers are brought on board by invitation only… Every user’s first 5 reviews are moderated and you can only invite other people to be reviewers once you’ve reviewed 5 restaurants.

(For those of you who actually read my last rant about systems and rules; The rules I am talking about here are rules that define the specialist functionality… There are plenty of review sites that let anyone paste pages of drivel and never get to the point.)

As any good systems person would, I always test my ideas:

Restaurant: Krugmans, V&A Waterfront

Review: What a lovely surprise of a restaurant! It looks like it’ll cost an arm and a leg but the service is top notch and the food is great. I had their huge camembert & sweet chilli burger at R47. Awesome! (160)

Average Main Cost: R50

Star Rating: 5 out of 5

Restaurant: Cape To Cuba, Kalk Bay Review: Great décor but sadly the quality of food seems to have slipped. We were two large groups and only about 30% of us were “happy”. My meal, the fillet strips in chilli and chocolate, was not worth R99. (160)

Average mains cost: R70

Star Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Rather go to: Polana

Review: Chapmans, near Chapmans Peak, Hout Bay

Review: We only had two deserts and two cappuccinos. The brownies were bad, the tiramisu was bad and the cappuccinos tasted like watered down wimpy coffee and presented similarly. The bill was R90.

Average mains cost: No idea, didn’t look.

Star Rating: 0.5 out of 5

Rather go to: No idea, Where is good in hout bay?

What do you think of the idea? While typing this I thought that one benefit of the 160 character thing would be that you could get the review sms’ed to you… but really, sms is a retarded format that hopefully wont be around in a few more years?

Anyway, let the debate make it stronger or kill it early so I don’t waste my time.

ath,

j