www.jeffthefish.com

As you all know, one of the things I’m into is bad reviews. Limpets are another thing I’m into. I woke up from a nap around 8:30pm one night last week with a craving for Filipino food. I needed to find a restaurant that stays open past 9. Sadly, I didn’t find any, but I did find some horrible reviews.

Here’s one for Manila Cafe:

I’ve only been once and it was really disappointing, but I hate giving a bad rating after only one meal. That said, I don’t know if I really care to go back.

Had a beef dish that was basically super salty beef and some dry rice. I’m inclined to give just one star based on how bad this dish was, but based on some other reviews I think I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and try giving it another chance sometime. [Source]

You hate giving a bad review after only one meal, but you will anyway. Is it some sort of contractual obligation? OH BUT WAIT YOU’RE GOING TO GIVE IT ANOTHER CHANCE! How many people are you?

Here’s one for Kusina Filipina that really chaps my ass:

As always I was very excited coming here. I’ve eaten here so many times but not since I’ve started writing reviews in Yelp. Finally was given a chance today. I had no reason to not expect a good review to come out, since from past experience this place has always over satisfied. Unfortunately today, its not going to happen. Sadly, I hate having to review this so poorly. Such a place that has brought me so much wonderful tastes deserves better. But I will not let my past experience dictate how I write this. Lets begin. [Source]

!!?

Restaurants have off days. This is a fact of life, and it can happen to any restaurant. If you’ve eaten here a million times and loved it, but THIS time it wasn’t good, and you admittedly know that the restaurant deserves better, HELLO DOUCHEBAG! You are under no obligation to write a review! Go again and make sure it was a one-off thing before diminishing the reputation of a place you claim to love!

And finally, one for Inay’s:

Ick. I am Filipina, have grown up on good Filipino food. Good Filipino food Inay’s ain’t. I walked in there at around 4:30pm, and saw the food swimming in grease. So, I asked the guy how long the food had been sitting there. He said, “Uh, I dunno, a couple of hours?” Uggh! Gross! He didn’t even know how long since it had been cooked? Yay for e.coli, I guess. I practically ran outta there. [Source]

So here’s a review from someone who didn’t even eat there. You don’t need me to point out how useless this is. Actually, there is one good thing in this review, if you’re a fan of quotemines:

Ick. I am Filipina…

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of horrible reviews I find online. In my search for an interesting place to eat dinner on Friday night, I found this review for Manila Grove at the Great Wall Mall:

Uhhh…………..huh?! What was I just eating?! We ordered this noodle dish which carried a weird after taste, then we had a beef stew with peanut sauce? That was rather bland with NO FLAVOR! I believe one of our entrees came with what I thought was chili sauce but it was actually some sort of anchovy tasting sauce! EWWW! I took a spoon full of that!

Thanks but no thanks, I think this will be my first and last time here. I can say their adobo was not bad, but then again how do  you go wrong with making a chicken stir fried with vinegar and soy sauce?

Anchovy tasting sauce?  I swear, something is wrong with Asians.  AMIRIGHT?

TRUE CONFESSION: We ended up eating there, and it was delicious!  There is nothing better on this planet, I swear to God, than adobo.  There is not a man, woman, or child on Earth who does not enjoy a nice plate of pork adobo.

I know, I should be telling you about Roswell and the amazing things I’ve seen in the desert, etc.  But I’m hungry.  And I love bad restaurant reviews.  Here’s a pretty horrible one for El Mariachi in Banning, CA, where I just may eat tonight. They gave it three stars:

Once upon a time, a really fat El Mariachi carne asada burrito embarked on an hour long journey. Loaded with meat and slathered in guacamole, little did the meat only burrito know it would soon face it’s [sic] horrific demise.

After it’s [sic] hour long journey, it was still pretty tasty [sic]

Well, ok…thanks?

One of my favorite things is to find horrible reviews on the Internet. Before I go to a new restaurant I check the reviews on Yelp. I pass up the four and five star reviews in the hopes of finding rare jewels such as, “Restaurant was too far from my house. One star.” or “Takoyaki (Japanese pancakes*) didn’t taste anything like pancakes. One star.”

I do the same thing for books. Before I buy a book about science, I check for reviews from creationists. Here too there is no shortage of gems for the dedicated digger, such as the guy who called The Plausibility of Life “one last attempt to save a dying theory” and observed that if the book “were a political persuasion it would vote ‘moderate’” in the ironically insane way that only creationists can.

But none of that prepared me for this.

Amazon sent me an email with book recommendations today, one of which was a book called Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of Earth. As the title implies, the book is about how we can determine Earth’s history via geology, a topic ripe for creationist hilarity.

Welp, that didn’t happen. Here is the review that made me shudder:

Build Your Mansion On A Rock.
Basically, you might find rocks and waterfalls as the backbone of this ‘granite planet,’ from the Appalachians to the caverns out West, like that big one, Grand Canyon in Arizona. From shale, sandstone, the volcanic rock in Hawaii, “the rocky middle layer of the Earth’s mantle, constitutes more than eighty percent of the planet’s volume.”

The whole mountainside in Peru, Machu Picchu is made up of rock, while England has those huge slabs called Stonehege; Easter Island is only twelve miles long and has those giant carved statues (hundreds of them, some lying untouched weathered over centuries. There were volcanoes there, also, as America had Mt. St. Helens and Old Faithful. In Knoxville, we had pink marble quarries from which many government office buildings in Washington, D.C. and here in town were built. The black marble is in the hills west of here.

Niagra Falls has the monolith rocks for the water fall over, as many waterfalls in the Western states where Lewis and Clark mapped out that part of the continent. Below ground we have the caves, as they do in Spain, and caverns like Luray in Virginia and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Lookout Mountain is made up of many rocks of all sizes, a maze only a skinny person like myself can get through at times. Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, is built on a hillside of rock. At Cumberland Gap, a controversial tunnel was built under a mountain through the rock; it is fun to traverse, more so than that one under the ocean as you ride into Norfolk, Virginia.

As a Norwegian geologist who teaches in Wisconsin, she uses the rocks as background for tracing the planets, her own political views on America, and sources of fun places to take her children. “Rocks may even cause us to rediscover thoughtful discourse about complex environmental issues and to instill in children an appetite for understanding deep origins and histories.” Touche.

What??? The book is not even mentioned, unless those quotes are from the book, an assumption I don’t feel safe making. This person has over 1500 reviews! It’s weird.  And the ending is ominous and creepy.

And this post is boring.

*That one’s funny because takoyaki are NOT the Japanese equivalent of pancakes. Not even close.