The Town Crier: Angry Yelp Reviews

Ah, food, the sustenance of life. Just as it has the power to unite us around the dinner table, so too does it have the power to tear our emotions apart. Just ask the critics of Yelp, whose horrid dining experiences have resulted in reviews so emotionally wrought that therapist intervention was likely necessary.

If you can’t take the heat, I advise that you stay out of the Yelp comment section, but if you’ve found the Harvard dining experience to be too bland for your tastes, read on to discover the steamiest, spiciest, and most impassioned reviews Yelp has to offer.

B.Good

“I think the only way to get you to understand how atrocious it was without you eating it yourself would be for me to douse myself in lighter fluid and go out self-immolation style.”

-Dan C., Cambridge, MA

According to Dan C., if you came to Harvard looking to find the answers to big, life-shaping, existential questions—“What am I eating?” “How much do I actually love myself?” and “Did I really leave the dining hall for this?”—b.good is the place for you.

Café Sushi

“The bathroom was really sketchy and smelt like dirty bum, but then again, so does most of Boston.”

-Morgan F., Waltham, MA

Everything is relative. A dining experience isn’t limited to the taste buds, so I’d say the Boston-esque scent adds to the authenticity of the experience!

Charlie’s Kitchen

“Blekh to the greasy Reuben

Yeech to the stale fries,

I ingested this crap and I wondered

How come I haven't died?

Reading the stellar reviews,

I wonder at the possibility

That you all have been going

To a different Charlie's Kitchen than me.”

-Sana M., Boston, MA

A meal memorable enough to inspire poetry! Keep Charlie’s in mind when brainstorming for your next creative writing assignment.

Chutney’s

“Eating there is the worst thing I have done to myself lately.”

-Karan K., Somerville, MA

Has Karan been doing relatively well, or was the experience truly that horrid? Either circumstance seems to suggest that a meal at Chutney’s may not be a viable part of a self-care routine.

Clover

“I could save money for years, obtain a degree in agriculture, get approved for a loan, buy a plot of fertile land for a farm, purchase farm equipment, cultivate the land, plant and nourish coffee plants, hire seasonal labor, harvest the coffee beans, roast the beans, grind the beans and brew my own cup of coffee in the same amount of time Clover takes to dribble out 12oz of coffee. Their system has the equivalent flow rate of a dehydrated tapering piss.”

-Nick H., Boston, MA

In the time it took to describe this process, Nick H. could have started his own overpriced, vegetarian hot spot with a menu centered around dehydrated tapering piss.

El Jefe’s

“In a word? Dog food on a tortilla. And a soggy one at that… The meats had one flavor—unless you count sodium and chloride separately. The food assembly was on maximum IDGAF… Even the guacamole was seriously meh. In the name of the Holy Virgin in the Heavens, how do you mess up guacamole?… I want you to apologize (on video) to the city of Cambridge for crushing our dreams that a serviceable restaurant would go in the space you're now clogging with your salt tacos… Not since Cortez has someone laid waste on Mexico to this magnitude.”

-Will C., Cambridge, MA

Points to Will for references to chemistry, religion, and history. For “soggy dog food,” El Jefe’s sure does provoke thought on many different subjects.

Harvard Hotel

“Good but overpriced and pretentious.”

Lynette M., Arlington, MA

Is “going to eat at the Harvard Hotel” code for spending four years at the prestigious institution known as the College? Asking for a friend. In New Haven.

Flat Patties

“This is probably the only food substance that looks like the same before liposuction as it does after liposuction… Made me feel a little sick afterward, not because it was tainted in any way, but because of the guilt I felt afterward. Like the feeling one would get after punching a kitten, I’m guessing.”

G.S., Washington, D.C.

Masochists, this is the restaurant for you.

Hong Kong

“I prefer my sketchiness more mature and accompanied by chicken on a stick and karaoke.”

-Orly M., Somerville, MA

You and me both, Orly. But for now, I’ll settle for Kong and what Yelp reviewer Felecia C. says is Kong’s sole good purpose: “A quick third floor booty shake to ‘Sexyback’ while on your way to another Cambridge watering hole.”