More Proof

February 6, 2023

Tavern Blue refuses to accept reality. The fake reviews keep flowing in, and they keep spending critical time painstakingly responding to these blank reviews rather than improving their restaurant. I am SO here for it.

They responded to my post this weekend and it was actually shocking. They called my accusations “baseless,” and concluded that I called their reviews fake solely based on the fact that their reviewers were (mostly) from India. Not once did I mention their grammar being poor, but they sure did! Listen, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that Americans suck and expect everyone to speak English, while everyone from literally anywhere else is bilingual+. I’d hang on by a thread having a simple conversation in Spanish even though I studied it for three years. My point was that the reviewers (from where I specifically pointed out: Cameroon and Senegal and then later when a new batch of reviews came in from India) were just naming a menu item and listing ingredients, or pulling a fact from the website and not sharing personal experiences because they clearly did not have any experience. Tavern Blue has no issue pointing out their Indian customers’ lack of perfect English, and even posted a photo of the group they just shamed. I would never make such a blanket statement about any group of people.

Back to the discoveries. Over the weekend, as you could have guessed, Tavern Blue was inundated with many more suspicious reviews. Each time with the owners taking time out of their management duties to respond. Luckily, a lot of these Google accounts allow you to view other businesses they've reviewed in the past. I've included screenshots of 5 examples of accounts that have all made very similar reviews of the same businesses, all within the last few days. This is just five out of roughly 30 that I browsed through, more that I haven't. I can guess that Tavern Blue would suggest that I am being baseless in my assumptions again, and it's possible, if not probable, that all of these people simply visited these places recently. Let's say they all went to a bagel shop in New York City, a puppy mill in Indiana, a pressure washing company in Georgia, an auction house in the UK, and an animal hospital in India (perhaps they all purchased puppies at the mill and all had similar health issues very soon after, not unreasonable). If you take a closer look at any of these businesses review pages, they look a lot like Tavern Blue. A sudden influx of 5-star reviews with no personal experiences. Scroll a bit further and you'll begin to see the real reviews from real customers with actual criticism that the business owners can't handle, or don't want to.

In my original post that they found to be so painfully insulting, I 1. Said, "I love this place" 2. Pointed out that we go there [as paying customers] every 6 months like clockwork 3. Suggested that everyone reading this also go there to experience it and enjoy themselves 4. Called the business owners impressive, brave, and unwavering in their businessing ways

I don't understand what more I could possibly do as an honest and helpful reviewer. They can take the suggestions from my two Yelp reviews that I know they've read, or they can carry on, business as usual. I just do not agree with their ingenuine business practices at all.

Fun side notes:

- Oops! Their newest reviewer I assume got caught up in their list of fake reviews to leave today and reviewed something called RMC instead of Tavern Blue. God, Deb! - To add to the fun, I've included screen shots of the newest reviews that Tavern has so graciously blessed with more godawful responses where they kiss their own asses right in front of us. Yucky - For some reason they think I own a restaurant