bcbusiness.ca july 2015 BCBusiness 51
Online reviewing platform Yelp
has changed the way we decide
where to eat and where to
shop—turning everyone and
their neighbour into a published
critic. But is that a good thing?
Vikram Vij pores over a menu at his Vancouver
diner, Rangoli. "Do I really want Indian food?" he muses.
Others who ask that question often turn to Yelp. Over
the past decade the San Francisco-based website has
become the giant of the online ratings game, boasting 2014
advertising revenues of US$377.5 million, over 135 million
monthly visitors and well over 70 million reviews.
One of those reviews resulted in a radio showdown with
Vikram Vij himself. In December 2014, Montreal resident Raj Basdeo
(on Yelp as Rajendra Rejean K.C.B.) posted a lengthy one-star review
of the renowned chef's flagship South Granville restaurant, Vij's.
Vij's, the review claimed, "sold its soul (and its ability to make good
food) in a Faustian stroke of treachery in exchange for some paltry
C-list notoriety..." In nearly 850 words, Basdeo managed to reference
Chinese sweatshops, Insite and intercontinental ballistic missiles
before describing the restaurant's patrons as "yellow-bellied posers
with the intestinal fortitude of lily-livered chicken shits."
Vij himself does not lack intestinal fortitude. He contacted Basdeo
for an explanation. On December 23, the two men ended up on
CBC
Radio's Daybreak Montreal program. Basdeo confessed he had not
been to Vij's for at least four years before posting the review, which
he described as "light-hearted." While there was no shouting match—
the two did not converse on air—Vij decried the nastiness of Basdeo's
attack. "Don't get personal," he pleaded.
b y S t e v e B u r g e S S
★ ★ ★ ★
of the crowds
*
or not
