Vice versa, Americans tend to give very high scores (4 stars is “not great” instead of “pretty good”), so in touristic places you’d see the tourist traps get bigger ratings than the local spots. I noticed that a lot in Europe.
Tabelog was such a great resource when I visited Japan! It took a minute to adjust to a normal rating scale instead of “anything less than 4.5 stars is bad” but once I did it was great. I noticed less obsession with portion size on Tabelog too, which I really appreciated. I’m not usually eating out to save money, I want to know if the food is good!
Yup, specifically a small town USA thing. There’s a contingent of people that expect every restaurant meal to be too large to eat in one sitting - if you’re not taking home leftovers it’s not enough food. “Huge portions” is common praise in restaurant reviews. I hate it so much.
Here’s a review of a sushi restaurant in my town. Not a word about the quality of the food.
One of the interesting differences about reviews in Japan is how people give ratings for restaurants close to a normal distribution here.
Like, most places tend to hover around 2.6 stars on Tabelog, so anything from 2 to 3 stars is usually average or decent.
You’ll see this on Japanese apps/websites, but maybe less so on Google Maps because foreigners/tourists tend to give 5 stars a lot more freely.
Vice versa, Americans tend to give very high scores (4 stars is “not great” instead of “pretty good”), so in touristic places you’d see the tourist traps get bigger ratings than the local spots. I noticed that a lot in Europe.
Tabelog was such a great resource when I visited Japan! It took a minute to adjust to a normal rating scale instead of “anything less than 4.5 stars is bad” but once I did it was great. I noticed less obsession with portion size on Tabelog too, which I really appreciated. I’m not usually eating out to save money, I want to know if the food is good!
Hmm, I don’t normally find reviews are focused on portion size. Would I be right in guessing this is a US thing?
Yup, specifically a small town USA thing. There’s a contingent of people that expect every restaurant meal to be too large to eat in one sitting - if you’re not taking home leftovers it’s not enough food. “Huge portions” is common praise in restaurant reviews. I hate it so much.
Here’s a review of a sushi restaurant in my town. Not a word about the quality of the food.