Your stars mean less than you think — Dennis Teng

August 19 — The democratization of information has led to an overwhelming number of opinions, but not all of them deserve to be considered equally important. As someone who has spent much of their life working with food, I have witnessed a curious evolution: the diner has transformed into the reviewer. No longer is dinner simply dinner; it must now be documented, interpreted, and rated.

Ratings range from four stars to eight out of ten, or even 7.3. Would you return? Wouldn't you return? Overrated. Underrated. Worth it. Not worth it. Hidden gem. Eew, cringe.

It seems that the complexity of a restaurant, which involves various professionals such as cooks, growers, fishermen, craftsmen, servers, cleaners, designers, producers, and many others, has been reduced to a single number chosen by someone sitting at a table while looking at their screen. We should question when this became the norm.

While the right to express an opinion is valuable, it is not the same as having the authority to judge. There is a distinction between personal taste and expertise. When attending a performance by a concert violinist, one can express dissatisfaction without concluding that the performer's bowing technique is poor. Similarly, disliking a building or a piece of software does not imply expertise in architecture or engineering.

Yet, in the realm of food, attending a meal appears to grant us expertise in cooking, which is not the case.

Food gives us valuable insights into our own preferences and experiences, but it does not confer expertise in the broader aspects of a restaurant's operation. The five-star rating system is an oversimplification that fails to capture the multifaceted nature of a dining experience. It combines various factors such as deliciousness, technical execution, hospitality, value, originality, comfort, cultural importance, luxury, authenticity, and personal preference into a single symbol, making it appear more objective than it truly is.

The aggregation of different preferences, expectations, cultural backgrounds, and levels of knowledge into a single rating number is a flawed concept. It attempts to make the incommensurable appear commensurable, creating a pseudo-quantification that masquerades as objective measurement. This system erases the distinctions between different opinions and creates the false impression that everyone's taste is equally valid.

While social media has amplified the expression of opinions, it has also normalized a peculiar form of epistemic entitlement: the belief that because someone has experienced something, they automatically possess the knowledge to judge it. This solipsistic mindset ignores the limits of one's own taste and assumes that their subjective preferences constitute the limits of the work itself.

In situations where large numbers of people provide feedback on a restaurant's issues, such as consistently lost reservations or excessive waiting times, the aggregated data can be useful. However, the difference between a rating of 4.7 and 4.5 is difficult to interpret as meaningful insights into cooking techniques or restaurant performance. Rating systems create a false sense of precision, where subjective preferences are dressed up in mathematical language.

Food is immediately accessible to everyone, but tasting something does not equate to understanding the complexities of a restaurant's operation. Dining is a subjective experience, and while opinions are valuable, they should be distinguished from expertise. Restaurants, in turn, must separate meaningful feedback from the noise of ratings and performative criticism.