My favorite that I’ve used for years, foursquare, is shutting down in a few days. Pretty bummed because I found some of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to with it. 15 years and thousands of reviews, all in the trash now.
Google maps is useless for most cities, in mine every restaurant has a 4.7-4.8, and seems gamed.
Yelp is an awful company I’d rather not use, and its based on top reviewers, rather than reviews.
Tripadvisor is missing way too much to be useful.
What are ppl using nowadays?
I just use google maps but only read the recent reviews and do my own calculation on the ratings. Any review older than a year is pretty much useless. The reviews can be 4.5 stars, but then you check the reviews, the most recent month has like nine of ten reviews at one or two star reviews, and that’s how you know its terrible. Conversely, it could have an average of 3.5 stars for all I care, but if the recent year has like nine of ten reviews at five stars, then I’d probably trust it a bit more than a 4.5 star restaurant with bad recent reviews.
TLDR: Read Recent Reviews and the ratings, ignore any old reviews, especially anything older than a year.