"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." ~ Yogi Berra
That was truly the case for anyone who wanted to go dine at a restaurant in London that beat out thousands of upscale restaurants in the city to earn the top ranking on the review site TripAdvisor. You see, there was just one small problem with the place: It didn’t exist!
The restaurant was just a listing created by a freelance writer who used his home, a shed in the Dulwich area in South London, as the inspiration for a high-concept new restaurant that he posted on TripAdvisor: “The Shed at Dulwich.” He listed its location as the street he lived on with no address, calling it an “appointment-only restaurant” to make himself less vulnerable to fact-checkers and would-be customers. When his “restaurant” was approved by TripAdvisor to be listed it started out ranked as the 18,149th restaurant in London: dead last. The writer then started having family and friends flood the site with fake but seemingly authentic reviews. Within in a few months The Shed at Dulwich climbed all the way to number 1 in the rankings!
Yogi said, “Never answer an anonymous letter.” Never make reservations at an address-less restaurant!
Fortunately for us, we have plenty of REAL restaurants here on St. Simons that are great, ao we don’t need a “Shed at Dulwich.” And instead of adopting this Yogi-ism: “No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded,” March is the perfect month for locals to get out and enjoy our wonderful cuisine. The weather is great and the tourist crowds haven’t quite yet started to arrive. So, as Yogi said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” or pick one up at a breakfast spot in the Village, lunch in Redfern or dinner on the North end. If you go for Italian with a light appetite, you can always take a page from Yogi’s book and tell them, “You better cut the pizza in four slices because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” But if you decide to post something on TripAdvisor about your experience, don't sign your name Yogi!
