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yet, most of what i read irks me because of its raging, venting way. oh well, its not like i haven't written similar things because of bad experiences.
best of luck to this guy.
I don't know anything about this particular restaurant but it seems like he's accidentally targeting the wrong audience. Wine pairing menus, fancy plating, an article in Vice, Kickstarter... none of these things strike me as targeting his desired customer, which is someone with modest expectations and expecting just dinner, not an event to review.
HN is usually pretty good about calling out founders who blame everyone but themselves for failings. This is exactly that, just in a restaurant context. The problem is that Ari thought that Alma's humble origins mattered to people coming in for a good meal such that they would somehow obscure some pretty big problems with the restaurant. I can't imagine ever excusing a product's flaws simply because the founder had d…
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On your homepage seanmcbeth.com the javascript (or whatever does the animation) is totally choking my Firefox (latest) running on a Mac Pro Desktop (latest). Infact when I tried to write this comment it was literally like 300 baud until I closed your website page. (All of this is to your point and ironically..) Btw it looks cool but if I can't easily scroll your homepage you have lost me as a potential client.
This is indeed a defect, so your criticism wasn't negative or unwarranted :) Filing a defect report is one thing, complaining about the very idea of having an animated background, yelling at me for being a "typical front-end dev, doesn't test in Firefox" or something like that, that's the sort of negative criticism I'm talking about. My point was, even the people who are engaging in dismissive, negative criticism nee…
You know, at the risk of heaping on the negativity, I read their Yelp ratings and while some are excellent, others are genuinely a sign of a restaurant in crisis. Consider the gentleman from New Zealand who made reservations via an email to the owner five weeks in advance, spent the afternoon walking around downtown LA to avoid rush hour traffic, and then showed up only to be told that they were closed for a wine tas…
I've generally been growing to the idea that I want to hear all criticism towards my projects, whether it's good or bad, whether it's constructive or not. People suck at communicating, but when they leave criticism, there is always a reason somewhere at the core. It's the old saying that it is apathy, not hate, that is the opposite of love. So when people are heaping hate on one of my projects, I am now starting to t…
Take, for example, a recent review on my iPad app:
As a creative professional I can tell you that this is junk. Today I had an important meeting and this app acted up to the point the client laughed hard for how bad it was. Stay away!
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This is indeed a defect, so your criticism wasn't negative or unwarranted :) Filing a defect report is one thing, complaining about the very idea of having an animated background, yelling at me for being a "typical front-end dev, doesn't test in Firefox" or something like that, that's the sort of negative criticism I'm talking about. My point was, even the people who are engaging in dismissive, negative criticism nee…
You've got one heck of a good attitude and I really enjoyed reading your website. Best of luck in all of your projects!! :)
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Bad Yelp ratings routinely destroy businesses (which usually function as the livelihood of the owner(s)). When OP said "good riddance," he was saying that he was happy to see the demise of this restaurant because he disliked the part of Europe his wine was from. IMO, that is the kind of "extreme overreaction" you are referring to.
I'm gonna go with stormbrew on this one. You say "destroy business" and destroy livelihood as if this guy is going to be kicked out on the streets because his business didn't work out. Give me a break - yeah, it's sad for him that his business failed, but I'm sure he'll find another upper-middle class job soon. Being a special snowflake founder doesn't excuse him from being criticized about running a fine-dining esta…
I agree with you about the current problematic trope of losing a job = destitute for life, but at the same time we seem to have converted every small-businessperson into a '[startup] founder'.
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The second paragraph says "the restaurant was never, ever full." So it seems like they expected to handle more business, and in fact the lack of business shut them down. Maybe they had problems with the growth, but if they were never full then they really shouldn't have. Restaurants with growth problems need to serve food quickly so they can get people in and out to make room for more people, this restaurant apparent…
The negative reviews could be why it was never full. I wonder if there are consultants in the restaurant business that can help places like this through the wave of people that are more interested in eating at an acclaimed restaurant than trying some small new place that opened up nearby.