I'm going to all the restaurants that serve phở in Portland, Oregon's city limits and rating them. You can see the ranking, but not the point values until I've visited twice. Technically you can go get the data as it's open source and get the scores, but most people are too lazy to do that. It's a simple static site built with astro, so hammer away at what I did wrong.
I've been going in spurts over the past couple years and I'm hoping to get through the first round within the next month or two. I'm a white guy that doesn't know anything so of course the ratings are completely subjective.
That would effectively remove all negative reviews. Eating out is expensive enough as it is, I'm not going to pay for mediocre food a second or third time around.
A better approach (for almost anything) is just to focus on reading 2-4 star reviews since they're usually the most measured.
People visiting for a few days go with a “10 restaurants you have to try in Portland” which are just mediocre chic restaurants you can find in every other city. They don’t realized how underrated Asian food in Portland is. One, Google Maps and Yelp reviews are negative signals of for Asian food. Restaurants that highly rated above 4.5 are so for the “ambience” rather than the food. Two, the restaurants are dispersed rather than being concentrated around a Chinatown or Little Saigon.
I've done a similar thing with Pizza places around me and discovered that my tastes were different when I ordered the same type of pizza pie and had them all at the same time, compared to what I preferred in the restaurant.
Might be worth a try
Maybe one day you can write a book like Ivan Orkin did with Ramen :)
PS. "DM" me if you're interested in further talk. lakota gmail