Is there an established way to take into account that people rate different types of restaurants on very different scales? "5 stars great burgers and cheap beer" vs "the avocado soufflé on the 6th course was such a letdown, no creativity at all, ruined my evening, 3 stars". I've seen particularly harsh reviews on fine dining restaurants that speak more about the entitlement of the customer than on the quality of the place.
Firstly: restaurants need to be divided into categories and ranked within the category.
5 star McDonald’s is worse food than 1 star fine dining. (Regardless of number of visitors.)
In the fast food burger category that Mickey D might be the beating a 3 star Burger King hands down in cleanliness, friendly customer service and timely orders.
Secondly: You need to filter out the average Joe’s.
Especially with regards to ethnic food, they try an amazing Pho and be like ”meh, too bland - the mexican one was better”. They’re two different kitchens! You can’t compare them.
Based on a cursory search, I get the impression they haven't solved the particular cleaning problem the author did (i.e. removing places that just have restaurants rather than actually are restaurants). In one case on my food & drink list I have a place that is very highly reviewed, but is actually a museum; I doubt the reviews refer to the restaurant specifically.
It is interesting to play with though. Thanks for the reference!
Then, as someone who's not from Colorado Springs: why is that restaurant in particular so bad? Do the reviews indicate issues with management, or issues with particular waitstaff, or issues with sanitation, or perhaps just the food and recipes are bland? In my experience from Houston, a lot of the "worst" restaurants could be seriously improved if only their management were made aware of issues that show up in reviews.
Best overall is just a start. Typically I have more specific needs, depending who is joining, what I had this week already.
Now that you have the data, you could ask an LLM to rate each restaurant (from comments and website and menu) to find a specific recommendation:
I need a place for business lunch for 2, should be a quiet place, not pizza.
Recommend a good place for a dinner for five, should have vegetarian option. No burgers, we had that last time. We plan on sitting and chatting longer, not just food.
