Hilarious: man stood with neprestaurant at #1 on TripAdvisor
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: the number 1 restaurant on TripAdvisor.
I find this story so hilarious and it could totally happen to me that I fall for it completely. When I'm abroad, I still check TripAdvisor quite regularly. Anyway, I always have to look up every tip I get there, and often you really come across nice little restaurants. Take restaurant The Shed, in London. It was just at number one on TripAdvisor for a while. Can't miss it, right? Although...
That restaurant didn't actually exist. ‘Owner’ Oobah Butler writes for the website VICE.com, but before that, he had another interesting job: writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor. And so he came up with the idea: if you can fake all that, can the restaurant itself also be fake? An experiment he fully committed to and reported on the website.
What is a restaurant without professional photos?
Now the problem was, of course, that he first had no space for a restaurant. But: he did have a house. Okay, great, the location was figured out. But a restaurant does need some food-worthy photos, so he arranged for photographer Chris Bethell to take pictures of the food. But, what food exactly? As long as it looks a bit appetizing and modern, it's fine. So yes, with some dishwasher tablets, footwork, and shaving foam, you can get quite far. Just look.
Let the guests come!
The website was there, a phone was purchased where reservations could be made; completely ready for the start. The address was still a bit of an issue, so he decided to just mention the street and add that it was an ‘appointment only’ restaurant. And so the garden shed where he lived was renamed The Shed at Dulwich, the newest hotspot in London.
He started at place number 18,149, or completely at the bottom, but this was of course familiar territory. The solution lay in all the fake reviews, of which he had ample experience.
And then it happens... The reservations come pouring in. Requests for birthdays, weeks in advance. Two months later, he is at number 156 in London without having served a single dish. Hilarious: he even receives sample packages from companies that want him to use their ingredients or cookware. Ah, the life of an influencer... He is approached by PR agencies to get articles on websites and rises to number 30. The reservations go through the roof, but they always get the same answer: we are full. And yes, make something exclusive and people want it even more.
On November 1, 2017, he succeeds: he is number one in all of London.
The phone just keeps ringing
People keep calling, up to 116 times in one weekend. He always says they are full (in the rare case that he actually answers). A bit of a runaway joke? Certainly. 89,000 people search for his restaurant online in a week. The trendiest hotspot in London and no one has been there yet. But that is about to change, because he is going to do it: for one time, The Shed is seriously opening.
The problem is that he can't cook himself, so guests are served frozen meals for one pound on some garden chairs and a rickety table with a little lamp. Call it romance and people are fans. He has three tables at most, and he is stressing out: are people really going to be happy with this kind of ready-made meals?
And the answer is... Yes. People thought it was AMAZING. Seriously, please read the whole story on VICE because it is so hilarious. And it just shows that if you make something a hype enough, people will become fans. Even if you pay a fortune for a meal of less than a euro. Then you've been to the coolest hotspot...
Image: VICE/Chris Bethell
