Daniel "stopped contributing to an ungrateful YELP" C.'s Profile

Mount Diablo, and the state park that protects it, is nature unspoilt.

To re-open yourself to nature, after the Bay Area has stolen your life, come here and explore the many hiking trails. If the dot com craze or the financial markets have sucked the soul right out of your being, rediscover it here.

The vistas at the top of the mountain are overwhelming, and no visit to Mount Diablo would be complete without visiting her crown. Join the privileged few who rediscovered themselves on the mountain, and breathe free once again!

Burma Superstar is another example of a great restaurant with great food, which is cracking under its own toxic popularity.

The dishes are excellent, as long as you can get past the fact that it's mostly the greasy sauces that are making the food astounding. A few exceptions would be the Tea Leaf Salad with tamed tea leaves (a must-order), and the Burmese Samusas (a variant of samosas).

The cracking happens while waiting for over an hour for your table. The hosts/hostesses have been doing a poor job lately with keeping the waiting list in proper order, and I've seen many customers sit down completely ticked off about it.

I remember thinking "Damn, that would ruin my meal if the lady messed up the order and made me wait an extra 30 minutes".  Then, the next visit, it happened to us.  I was TICKED. Regardless of how popular a restaurant becomes, the staff must keep the ship together.  We all know what happens to an overcrowded ship in disrepair, right?

The best way to enjoy your meal at Burma Superstar is to call ahead about 90 minutes to place your name on the list, then once you arrive, DEFEND your name on the list by checking every 10 minutes.

This is the best place to grab a large cone of Belgian-style fries. Even better, this is THE destination for you if you have spent any time in Paris and have fallen in love with Moules Frites (that pairing of black mussels with french fries).  

Moules Frites doesn't appear on the menu, but instead you have to build it yourself by ordering one of the six types of Belgian mussles, then pairing it with an order or fries (called Frjtz here). Moules Frites will exhalt you.  ;)

There are some setbacks, hence the three-star review. First off, of all the condiments, this location does not have malt vinegar to add to your fries.  Second, the name is a MAJOR marketing blunder. FRJTZ?  Who the hell spells anything like that? And how many customers remember how to spell it upon the first visit, with no vowels? Seems simple, but it's very easy to forget.

Even though I moved away from Elkhart IN over 12 years ago, just today I finally terminated my relationship with Bayer (now called iNova).  Jesus, these poor bastards change their name every few years it seems, but even after all this time, they STILL cannot get customer service right.  

I honestly don't know why I even bothered giving them three stars in the past. As if I even need to bother telling anyone, just stay away from this place. What can you expect from Elkhart, IN (the city with the highest unemployment rate in the U.S. !)

Noooooo! Please don't hunt me down and impale me because I gave San Tung three stars! Don't worry, they might pull off four before year's end. Yes, the dry fried chicken is THAT good.

The first thing you'll notice when you walk into this unassuming restaurant is that the tables are tightly packed, and every table is strewn with DRY FRIED CHICKEN. If every table seems to order this, then it must be that good, right?  

Yup. Another instant trip to heaven is an order of the leek (and shrimp) dumplings. Don't even try to duplicate these in your kitchen-- you'll never get the chives and leeks right. Just come here and eat them. This is Irving Street, and it tastes great.

So why the three stars, as opposed to four or five? Well, you know about my five-star rule. Then to squeeze at least four stars out of me, it takes a truly sublime experience, which this is NOT.  The waitstaff have to butt-nudge every table while zig-zagging through the tight maze in this place, and that gets nerve-wracking, especially after one hour. Can you imagine how tight their asses must be after 10 years of that?  :)

Yelp, in my opinion, has fallen from grace.  After three years of contributing to this Web 2.0 site, I have lost interest in providing this startup with my content. It took me a while to understand why the novelty finally wore off. Now, I finally see why Yelp is starting to crumble.

First, Yelp suddenly removed one of my reviews that had existed on the site for THREE years. It remained on the site because it was a valid review. I reposted it and demanded an explanation, reminding Yelp of what can happen to their business model if they start treating their users with disdain.

Just as important: Yelp has done relatively little in terms of innovation over the past few years. The site and its features remain largely the same. And as we all know, anything on the Internet can turn into an old stump very quickly if it doesn't evolve every year. Yelp is starting to look and feel like an old stump. Whether Yelp has developed its backroom for businesses is irrelevant, because that is not a feature that can be enjoyed and exploited by the public.

So after 4 years, we're still greeted with the same old design, same old day-to-day operations, and same old sharp tongues in the talk threads that spit out the same old vulgar and racist shots.

Second, Yelp falls short in its model of free speech. I say this because Yelp expects users to contribute honest content, for better or worse, yet they offer no moral support or legal protection when a user comes under fire until the issue finally lands in court. Thousands of Yelpers have been "threatened" with reviews, and luckily only a few of these threats turned into bona-fide lawsuits.

To be fair, Yelp apparently has one lawyer that will help out in situations that escalate to a courtroom. But it's the threats and intimidation that Yelp should proactively discourage (which they do not). So like I said, Yelp could have been a shining example of Internet free speech by fostering an open forum (proactively!) where users could feel totally comfortable being honest, instead of just reacting to courtroom drama.

Add to these weaknesses the fact that there are a few of Yelp's own employees who treat their users like dirt. I personally had a very bizarre exchange with Nish in 2007, and I must say that wacky behavior still shapes my opinion of Yelp to this day. Some other users have mentioned similar experiences, and several times he has put this behavior on public display in Yelp's talk threads. After all the new users I've given Yelp, this behavior is uncalled for. And after years of users providing Yelp with free and juicy content, the last thing we deserve is rash and moody behavior from a staff member.

Concerning my creative output, there are plenty of other venues on the net on which I can focus my efforts. Sure, I'll drop a review on Yelp maybe once or twice this year, but honestly what can you expect after the fun and hype have finally faded?

Update: I received a childish hate-mail from what sounded like a Yelp staffer, asking me to DO something about Yelp's waning appeal instead of just whining about it.  Ok, so I applied for a Senior Software Engineer position at Yelp, since my skill set happens to match those required for that position. Let's see if Yelp responds.

We waited so long on the tarmac, I wrote a new jingle/slogan song for Alaska:  

"We're Alaska Airlines... we usually make it there!"

Tragically, my five-star German darling has fallen from the sky.  Well, just one of the stars actually.

I've finally had enough entrees that arrive with firmly overcooked meat. God, the best damned wirsthaus in the bay, and the owners are too scared of food poisoning to actually cook German dinners the right way. Oh and don't you dare try to tell me "well that's just how venison is... very tough."    

Add to that the general mood-swing of the staff in '08. Most Suppenkuche patrons already know that when you dine large (a party of 8 or more), then after your bill is paid, the staff will "boot" you off the table and back to the bar. This clean-sweep readies the table for the next patrons, and it's jolting the first time it happens, but lately the waitstaff ask you to leave as if ungrateful and unforgiving.  This is no five-star service to me.

Heaven on Wheels.  (heart)

What. A. Complete. Disaster.

Cafe Mystique is the newest addition to the culinary scene in the Castro which opened right smack in the middle of Da Bush Recession. Of course, I had to experience it at least once, since I give every new business at least one shot at salvation. Hoping to discover an upscale replacement to the ol' Welcome Home, I walked in on a stormy Sunday night.

The decor suggested that Diablo and Mephisto got hitched and live here as devil-and-devil. This place looks ridiculously noir, Castro-style. But I was greeted warmly by one of Mephisto's minions, so I stayed and sat down.

The menu looked innocent enough, and it included a fennel beef stew. That sounded delicious. So I ordered that with a side of $2 naan bread.

A huge shipment of dry, tasteless naan came to my table 2 minutes later. I started stuffing the bland poor-man's bread into my face, then another massive order of herbed naan arrived.  Ummmmm, yeah ok. The waiter said "oh, the first basket is complimentary, and the second one is the special naan you ordered."  So I now had two mountains of naan bread at my one-person table.

As I waited for my entree, I watched two chefs bicker softly and perpetually with the owner. They probably thought they were being discreet, but it was blindingly obvious to me that there was a tense, poisonous atmosphere in here.  

Then, the fennel beef stew arrived.  It was just a plop of beef, mushrooms, and onions on top of a large bed of rice with dry green herbs. So, I took a few bites, and my stomach turned immediately. The beef tasted rancid, and the rice was so salty that it took me a minute to realize just how rank the stew was. Furthermore, the whole dish was so watery, that a festering pool of standing water was accumulating at the bottom of the deep bowl. I swear that the next table could hear my stomach folding in protest, because they looked over at my dinner a few times.

I flagged down the manager, making him aware of this, and he was apologetic and asked me to pick a replacement.  But it took him 8 minutes to return so that I could order entree #2. Anyway, I went with a special order of shrimp linguine w/ alfredo sauce. As he left, the patrons to my right leaned over and asked me, "My god, what was that abomination you ordered?"

My second choice arrived as blubbery shrimp-blob linguine with alfredo water.  Why do these people have such a hard time with basic cooking? I just stuffed what I could into my face, because I had been there well over 45 minutes already.  The asparagus and broccoli in the dish were raw, rubbery, and sharp. I finally decided to just put a smile on my face to get out of there as fast as possible, because the owner and a waiter were now bickering with the cooks again.

It took another FIFTEEN minutes for them to figure out my bill, and I saw a waiter and a cashier fumbling over my bill.  How freaking hard can it be? I was only a one-person table, with one misfit entree followed by a second one. Bajeezamasheezus!

I looked at the bill, and the waiter charged me $4.00 for the $2.00 side of naan that I ordered!  It took another 5 minutes to get his attention to show him the mistake. He disputed it politely, showing me 2 places on the menu where naan is printed. One is $2.00, and the other is..... .OH FOR THE LOVE OF MOTHER FUCKING JESUS, GEEET MEEEE OUTTTTAAAA HEEEEEEEEEERE!

I said that silently to myself in my head, but he could see my face turn purple, to green, then to obsidian with pink polka dots. I had become Mephisto, and boy I must have looked evil. He suddenly said... "oh urr, no problem sir, I'll just cover the difference". The difference of what? Buddy, you're going to have cover a fuck of a lot more than just a "difference" to keep this ship from sinking.  

I gagged twice, involuntarily, while walking toward the door.  Although it was very wet, dark, and rainy outside, it felt like salvation to get back on the street and regain my humanity.

Throughout my four years of Yelping, I have had a 90% accuracy on calling doomed restaurants.  This torture chamber called Cafe Mystique is one of them.  I give them four months to crash-and-burn.

NEVER AGAIN.