And while the sample size is large, there’s some selection bias at work. They’re shaped by the demographics of the site’s users, who skew young, middle-class and tech-savvy. “Wow.”Īre Yelp’s rankings definitive? Of course not. You mean best on our island, right?” No, I said. When I called the restaurant to ask if they’d heard that they had garnered ’s top overall rating, the on-duty manager replied, “Oh, cool. It’s safe to say that even Da Poke Shack is surprised to find itself atop a national best-restaurants list. Oh, and don’t go expecting dinner, because it closes at 6 p.m. And there’s hardly any seating, so you might be best off grabbing your food to go - one Yelper suggests taking it out to the sea wall and watching the waves crash as you dine. A few caveats: Da Poke Shack is “wildly popular,” reviewers note, so if you come at peak lunch hour you should expect to wait in line for a bit. They run about $8 a bowl, depending on market prices, and you can round out your meal with some garlic edamame and a can of Hawaiian beer and be out the door for about $15.
It’s called Da Poke Shack, and in Yelpers’ eyes it’s pretty much perfect: an average of five stars on 612 customer reviews.Īficionados swoon for its poke bowls - salads that combine Japanese-inflected spices and greens like seaweed or kimchi with generous chunks of still-floppingly fresh, raw Ahi tuna. It’s a tiny seafood haunt wedged into a condominium complex in Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island. Denver’s highest ranking goes not to Frasca, with its James Beard Award-winning wine list, but to Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs, where you can nosh on reindeer, elk or even rattlesnake meat.īut the top restaurant of all on Yelp’s list is one that probably flies even further below the average food critic’s radar. Southern California’s best include Tacos El Gordo in Chula Vista, Oscar’s Mexican Seafood in San Diego and Joe’s Falafel in Studio City, whose prices all rate just one dollar sign on Yelp’s four-dollar-sign scale. On Yelp’s list, New York’s top restaurant is not Jean Georges or Per Se but a vegan food truck called the Cinnamon Snail that earns top marks for its vanilla crème brulee donut and maple mustard tempeh sandwich. And so those white-tablecloth critical darlings must elbow for room at the table alongside Yelpers’ favorite barbecue joints, taco stands and pho spots, many of which are beloved as much for their cheap prices and homey service as their delicious fare. But they care just as much about traits like charm, authenticity and value for the money - traits that tend to fall by the wayside when the pros draw up their best-of lists. Yelpers are suitably impressed by haute cuisine, and the site’s top 100 does in fact include Alinea (#7), the French Laundry (#34), and Le Bernardin (#45). The resulting list is a delightfully unsnooty antidote to the Michelin Guide. To arrive at the rankings, Yelp’s data mining engineers looked at both the average star rating for each restaurant and the total number of reviews it received. But if you ask the foodies on the customer-reviews site, you’ll get a very different answer - and, in many ways, a better one.įor the first time, Yelp has released its own list of the 100 best places to eat in America, based on reviews from millions of diners who use the site. NEW YORK - If you ask the professionals, the best restaurants in America are fancy-pants establishments like Alinea in Chicago, the French Laundry in Napa Valley and Le Bernardin in New York, where a meal will set you back hundreds of dollars per person. The people are cool.Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu TL:DR - whale watching might suck but if you feel like you HAVE to do it, definitely pick this boat.
I want to give “whale watching” as an experience about a half-star but idk, maybe we would try again on a calmer day and take a full dose of the pills. The company and their workers are top notch though.
We caught this on a pretty bad day with wind, seas and zero whales. I’m guessing 25% of people got sick and another 25% looked pretty miserable. I’ve never had an issue with seasickness before but I took Dramamine anyway. We saw a ton of dolphins that zoomed by us all the time. We didn’t see any whales, and they gave us a 50% off coupon for our next visit that never expires. Writing reviews is hard because we didn’t really enjoy our trip but I feel like that’s because I dont like whale watching.