New SF Weekly food honcho Jonathan Kauffman responds to the big manifesto earlier this week from fellow Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema. The well-written bit is definitely worth a read during your lunchbreak, and though Kauffman touches on a variety of subjects, he confronts the role of amateur reviews, with the premises that Yelp's value lies in the "group-think assessment" (correct) and no one takes Yelp reviews at face value anyway (maybe less correct): "What I think Sietsema gets wrong is his assessment of the general public. For one, we're not all that gullible ... Everyone knows that Yelp reviews (especially) are salted with posts from the restaurant owner's best friends, cranks, and people who don't know diddly about food." [SFW]
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