
A pub in North Yorkshire has won TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards - lnguyen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/why-a-pub-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-was-named-the-world-s-best-restaurant
======
gehsty
Family owned and ran Michelin starred restaurant who grow the majority of the
food they serve with rave reviews on major review websites....are we still
shocked?

It looks like they have managed to walk the line of fine dining while avoiding
the excess / pretentiousness / intimidation that can come with it, which in
the UK is rarely done well.

------
jzwinck
I've noticed when looking at "democratic" restaurant rankings, they tend to be
dominated by places that cater to some common denominator. Cafes with latte
art, dessert shops, drinking spots. Those are what win, even in rankings
nominally about food.

In many cities it becomes tricky to find an actual restaurant. The top ten
spots might only contain one or two, plus everyone's favorite ice cream
parlor.

~~~
L_Rahman
For all the democratic aggregators, there seems to be a inflection point
beyond which they stop being as useful.

In their earliest days, the primary user base is made of enthusiasts. They
bring opinions and experiences not available through mainstream critics but
with an eye for quality.

At some point, the places being reviewed realize how important the rankings
are. They start building things specifically to improve their position on
these rankings and you reach a trend-driven, inoffensive mid-market
nothingness in the app and in the place itself.

The answer to this problem has always been the same \- find and follow a set
of critics that you like \- keep an eye out for popular food trends and apply
a negative bias towards restaurants nakedly following it \- start
understanding the texture of neighborhoods and the chefs within them: if Alex
Stupak opens a new place in Lower Manhattan for example, it would be an
automatic stop for me.

~~~
ido
If you're looking for a hidden gem in your home town that will provide
something amazing, you may be disappointed.

But when traveling and wanting to grab lunch, looking around rankings in
google maps/yelp you know everything 4-5 stars will at least be decent, which
is not useless information.

~~~
L_Rahman
You're entirely correct and I apologize for not acknowledging this in my
original comment.

------
dtf
The Trip [1] is a worthwhile TV comedy series, wherein the protagonists visit
a number of these haute cuisine pubs-in-the-middle-of-nowhere.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trip_(2010_TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trip_\(2010_TV_series\))

~~~
pjc50
.. starring two of the UK's great impressionists. It's lowkey hilarious.

------
Woofles
I feel it's kind of disingenuous to call it a "pub in the middle of nowhere"
when it's a Michelen star rated restaurant that only offers a tasting menu.
Also the article doesn't describe why it was named the World's Best
Restaurant. It just says they used "an algorithm that takes into account the
quantity and quality of millions of reviews".

Reviewers on Yelp/TripAdvisor/etc are generally really terrible and know
nothing about food, so this accolade is probably not worth much in real value.
However it's crazy how quickly it affected their publicity.

~~~
SeanDav
> _" so this accolade is probably not worth much in real value"_

Not entirely sure what the parent post was trying to imply here but, from the
Article:

\- _" We never imagined quite how big it would become. Things just went crazy.
The phone rang off the hook, and e-mails, e-mails, e-mails. We took 1,200
bookings in four hours, and that has filled us up for the rest of the year."_

Unless the OP was trying to say the value was in the judgement of quality of
the restaurant, in which case one has to ignore the 1000's of rave reviews...

~~~
apetresc
Literally the next sentence after your quote was "However it's crazy how
quickly it affected their publicity."

------
belenos46
"Today, in Places That I Can Never Go, Now"....

------
pjc50
By "middle of nowhere", they mean "A 40-minute drive from York". While it's
technically in the North York Moors it's hardly remote or inaccessible.
Although it will probably now be hard to park there.

(I suspect that this is the usual London bias of journalists and especially
"UK" restaurant critics that regard everywhere not reachable with an Oyster
card as "nowhere")

Edit: HN title has been edited to say North Yorkshire rather than the article
title of "nowhere".

Anyway, there are quite a lot of these places. For a rural pub to survive at
all it has to get most of its income from food. Other examples you might like
are Applecross Inn [http://www.scotsman.com/news/landlady-of-remote-
applecross-p...](http://www.scotsman.com/news/landlady-of-remote-applecross-
pub-crowned-britain-s-best-1-4226095) (genuinely quite remote from any major
city), or these (including several which are not reachable by road)
[http://www.outdooradventureguide.co.uk/10-of-britains-
most-r...](http://www.outdooradventureguide.co.uk/10-of-britains-most-remote-
pubs/)

------
jstanley
When I first clicked on this there was a tiny auto-playing video that I
couldn't work out how to close. Clicking again, it's gone.

If this is some sort of A/B test, I really hope "auto-playing video that you
can't close" doesn't win.

~~~
trqx
Same here, my first reaction was looking for a way to punish such a behaviour.

I then opened the same URL from a private window outside the VM I was using on
the same laptop, and from a different IP (disabling the socks proxy I usually
use), No autoplay this time. This is spooky.

EDIT: it does autoplay if not in a private session.

------
killbrad
The first few paragraphs of this article put me off of the entire thing.

