1-Star Reviews: The Fun & The Folly

Introduction

I’ve blogged before about Amateur Product Reviews:  those reviews that your average joe can post on sites like Amazon, Best Buy, Yelp, etc.  These serve a valuable purpose because we can’t always count on magazine reviews, etc. to be unbiased.  Moreover, it’s nice to see people’s opinions in aggregate; if a dozen or two reviewers complain that the lid doesn’t fit right, chances are it doesn’t.

Being a very reluctant consumer in general, I like to go straight to the 1-star reviews.  I want to know what’s wrong with this thing I’m considering, so that maybe I can talk myself out of it.  I also find that 1-star reviews are the most entertaining.  When consumers feel wronged, their talons come out.

Of course, amateur reviews are as flawed as humanity, and the overall level of discourse is less like your college English class and more like traffic school.  It has recently dawned on me that websites could do a lot better to help consumers separate the wheat from the chaff.  In this post I’ll explain how, and just for fun I’ll throw in a contest.  You might win!

How the review-o-sphere governs itself

The amateur review system has evolved, and some mechanisms are now in place to validate user testimonials.  Supposedly, there are safeguards to detect fake reviews from manufacturers.  Some sites validate that the product reviewed was actually purchased.  And now many sites allow readers to comment on a review, which in many cases means crying foul.

Here’s an example.  A reviewer gave a 1-star review, titled “Symplicity,” to a digital camera.  The review (in its entirety) reads as follows:  “Needed something for my wife to use without too many buttons and knobs. All she has to do is aim and push a button.”  A couple of people commented that this guy probably meant to give this camera the highest rating based on its ease of use.  They’re probably right, and I also liked the comment, “So, you’re looking for a camera that’s like you?”

Amazon keeps tabs on the usefulness of reviews by asking the reader, “Was this review helpful to you?”  It uses this feedback to rank its reviews, so readers can sort by the most helpful ones.  This is a good start, but it doesn’t stop useless reviews from cluttering up the page and distorting the weighted average of a product’s rating.

Yelp offers sophisticated feedback widgets.  A reader can flag a review as useful and/or funny and/or cool.  (I’m pleased to say that one of my Yelp reviews got 4 “useful” ratings, 5 “funny” ratings, and 1 “cool.”  I’m less pleased to report that this review, for Cozmic Café,  doesn’t actually show up in Yelp’s review listing for the place, which fills me with lots of sour-grapes-based conspiracy theories.)

These feedback widgets are somewhat helpful, but still don’t prevent pointless 1-star reviews from tarnishing the average rating of a product or business.  But there is a way to fix this.  After careful analysis I’ve determined that most useless 1-star reviews fit within one of just four basic categories.  By giving readers four more simple buttons to click as needed, a website could easily gain valuable insight into improving rating metrics.  If some threshold of readers flagged a review according to one of these categories, the website could exclude that review when calculating the average rating. 

Category #1 – the Hapless review

This category covers one of the biggest problems with these reviews, which is a person giving one star when he meant to give five, and vice-versa.  The “Symplicity” review above probably fits this category.  Consider also this 1-star review for the iPhone 6S:  “Great item i had recent.”  Considering that whoever posted this is barely able to operate an Internet-connected device, his calling the iPhone “great” really does attest to its ease of use.  It’s a shame that this would-be 5-star review, masquerading as a 1-star review, is bringing down the iPhone’s average.  Imagine if you could flag this review as “Hapless” to alert Amazon’s star-crunching engine.  (Of course one vote of “Hapless” shouldn’t change anything, but if 20 out of 21 respondents click Hapless, and 0 out of 21 click “Useful,” that’s a solid basis for ignoring the 1-star rating.)

There’s a subcategory of Hapless I’ve observed:  consumers who are the real problem.  A 1-star reviewer may not realize, for example, that the product he purchased needs its battery charged from time to time, or that dropping a smartphone and breaking it doesn’t indicate a manufacturing defect.  I recently bought a bike light despite a reviewer complaining, “The act of taking it off to charge it caused the strap to snap on one side.”  I suspect that something specific about that act—such as manhandling the light—broke the strap, because this review also says, “barely fit my handlebars.”  The directions for this light clearly state it’s not designed for oversized handlebars.  I’d flag this review(er) as Hapless.

Category #2 – the Irrelevant review

Amazon in particular is plagued by this one.  A reviewer has a bad experience with his shipping, or the partner seller, or  the means by which an entertainment product is delivered, and gives the innocent product a 1-star review.  Consider this iPhone review:  “I ordered an i phone 6s 64 GB unlocked. When I got the box I found out that the I phone 6s box contained brown colored clay and no phone or accessories. Very shocking.”

There’s a mechanism for dealing with this—the reader comment feature—but these comments are not always helpful.  Consider these comments on the “clay and no phone” review:   “Liar go ask for refund liar thief,” and, “Not true, probably a Microsoft fan.”

Another example:  a reviewer of Eminem’s latest album wrote, “I spent $16 on this album and it wont play. I wrote customer service and they never responded. Guess I’m just out the money and worst of all still no eminent!”  (I take this as an Amazon problem, as their new Cloud Player has received lots of complaints.)  This review elicited the comment, “Fools like this should lose all internet privileges.”  Love it.

Another reviewer of this album wrote, “this CD does skip very bad.”  Look, pal, you’re supposed to be reviewing the quality of Eminem’s music.  I don’t think he gets involved in pressing the discs.

It’s sad to see products dragged through the mud by reviewers who haven’t actually gotten to use them.  Again, a simple response button could tell the website to exclude these reviews from the average rating.

Category #3 – the Nonsensical review

Sometimes a reviewer receives his product intact, and understands that one star means worst, not best, and yet posts such an inane review that his basic brain function is highly suspect.  Consider this 1-star review of the Eminem album:  “Water for someone else.”  That’s the entire review.  What the hell happened here?  Was this guy typing on a smartphone and was so sloppy it replaced every word of his review?  Or was he starting to say something complicated and just ran out of steam?  Or does he think people will actually understand what he’s getting at?  I can’t see how this review could possibly contribute to a constructive dialogue.

Then you get the reviews from people who are obviously bat-shit crazy, like this review for the Apple Watch:  “Causes cancer. Radiation on wrist can bring rumors to your body. DO NOT BUY!”  Obviously this isn’t a person who would ever purchase this watch … so what gives him the right to review it?

Needless to say these reviews shouldn’t dilute the average rating.  On top of that, as a consumer I’d like to be able to filter out all nonsensical reviews before I even start skimming.

Category #4 – the Weirdly Autobiographical review

I want to be careful with this one because some of my favorite reviews are weirdly autobiographical.  Excess detail isn’t automatically a problem, but some reviews say more about the reviewer than the product or service being reviewed.  Consider this excerpt from a laptop computer review:  “My Dad is an Engineer in both Computer Sciences and Electronics/Electrical with many years of experience, and as such Toshiba could fair well to take some custructive criticism.”  Wow.  This guy seems to have some Daddy issues.  Were both father and son ignored by Toshiba’s product marketing department, or does the reviewer assume technical acumen is genetic?  And what does any of this have to do with this specific laptop?

I was researching old-fashioned razors (i.e., that use the double-edged “safety” blades) and one review reported, “I would say 1 out of ten hairs would just fold down and go under the blade. So I started using my wifes cheap razor to finish the job. Finally she got after me and I went looking for my old razor. I then found a stainless 43c. Although I liked the wood better this one cut just like my old razor.”  I have no idea what a 43c is, or how old this guy’s wood-handled razor must have been, or why his wife and her razor have entered into the discussion.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this review, but there are 127 other 1-star reviews of this razor and only so much time in the day.

An Apple Watch reviewer wrote, “If you wanna dictate something naughty you can’t do it unless you are alone, in that case use your phone.”  Wow.  Some kind of perv, and I wonder what he thought this watch was supposed to do.

Here’s another jewel:  in a review of the Cozmic Café, one guy wrote, “I was told they don’t have beer to which I said it’s on the menu and can someone go upstairs and get me one and they said they were understaffed.  As I was walking upstairs with the guy to go get my beer he says...see you later.”  WTF?!  I mean, sure it’s lame to run out of beer, but I’d be pretty scared if I worked at this café and some beer-crazed guy tried to follow me upstairs.  I think “See you later” is a pretty reasonable response, especially at a place where (as another 1-star reviewer mentioned) “lately I have heard of multiple fights breaking out there, including ones where thirty year old men beat up teenagers.”

I don’t think reviews flagged as Weirdly Autobiographical should necessarily be removed from the average rating calculation, but it’d be nice to be able to filter them out, or (for bored readers) filter the results to show only these reviews.

And now … the albertnet Fake Review challenge!

What follows is a collection of product reviews.  For each product, there are three reviews:  two real ones plus a fake one I made up.  I challenge you to identify the fictitious review for each product.  Send your submissions to feedback@albertnet.us.  The first person to guess correctly on every review, or the person with the best score when I arbitrarily decide I have enough responses, will get a prize.  I don’t know what it will be, but it will be similar in value to the First Endurance EFS Liquid Shot given to John Lynch, the winner of the last Fake Review challenge.  Win this contest and you’ll be just as famous as he, when I publish your name and photo (along with the correct answers) in a future post.

Review #1:  The Turn of the Screw (novel)

a)   The Turn of the Screw is quite possibly the stupidest and most pointless story I have ever wasted my time on. Purportedly a ghost story, the “ghosts” are nothing more than occasional appearances by the former governess and valet, both of whom are now dead.

b)   A friend told me “I couldn’t put it down.” Couldn’t put it down? I couldn’t pick it up! So hard to read...took me weeks to get through. If Henry James wrote this today, he would NOT get laid.

c)   The story is lousy, the characters are unbelievable, the protagonist is annoying, the plot development is glacial, and the ending is absurd. But what makes this book really bad is the writing.

Review #2:  Apple Watch 

a)   I had a hard time charging the watch.. The instructions read that that the charger attached magnetically to the back of the watch. When I placed the charger to the phone it seems to repel the watch instead of attaching to it. I tried resetting the watch twice but that did not help. I was finally able to get a charge by physically holding the charger to the phone and strapping it down, but this took 8 hours and I only got a charge 62%. It is our assumption that the magnet was placed backwards in either the watch or the charge.

b)   this is poop

c)   i thought this watch would replace my iphone (or actually I wouldnt have to buy one and watch is actually reasonable compared to phone cost) but it turns out WITHOUT THE PHONE THE WATCH DOES ALMOST NOTHING also battery life sux

Review #3:  toaster

a)    Mostly works well except something is catching on the bread and tears bits off that get “stuck” down in the toaster and hard to get out. So I tried to fish it out with a knife (with the toaster off, by the way) and got this big electric shock! My wide actually laughed at me and said next time just turn it upside down and shake it. So I tried that and burned the crap out of my hand! Toaster is going back for sure.

b)   I was so excited to buy a four slot toaster, morning arguments solved. However, this toaster was highly disappointing. The level that lowers the slots down is thin plastic and wobbly. The right side of the toaster quickly stopped lowing. The left side often burns part of the bread, while the rest of it is still cold. Overall, a shotty machine. Do not buy.

c)   I looked on line and read reviews and decided to get this one, HA! This does not even pop the toast up high enough to grab! It says that you get even toasting on both sides, not! It worked for about a week and after that half the side of toast would cook and then only half of a half, When I use the Bagle button the Bagle is cooked on both sides, not one like it should have been.

Review #4: Tom Danielson’s Core Advantage: Core Strength for Cycling’s Winning Edge (book)

a)   I would buy this book but not from somebody who was suspended for doping-specifically for using Testosteron-as a Physiciian I know that Testosteron is useful in the recovery and healing of tissues, especially muscles.If his training was as beneficial as he describes why did he need Testosteron-also being as long in the Pro Peleoton as he ,he must must be pretty stupid not to know how easy it is these days to discover Testosteron.Therefore with me he has no credibility and I will not buy the book

b)   It’s a shame how these books get published. The so-called co-author, Allison Westfahl, actually knows a lot about core strength training and theres lots of useful info here. Problem is she’s a nobody and couldn’t publish a book without tying it to a celebrity name so she let TD (aka Total Douche) pretend to co-write this. Almost worked but she should have hitched her wagon to a clean rider, if there are any left.

c)   I noticed the chapter on doping was missing. Can’t trust a doper. Maybe I will wait for the B sample of this book before buying again.

Review #5: cordless drill

a)   never should have bought cordless drill, remember when drills had a cord and you could just go whip it out and use it, now i always have to plan ahead and charge the batteries, this one particularly bad won’t hold a charge and tajkes forever to charge up do not buy!

b)   Only lasted two years and stopped working while my son was assembling soccer goals. Thought it was the battery and installed fresh one from the charger. My son came running to me yelling the drill was on fire. When I got to the drill smoke was pouring from the battery.

c)   came with black marks along handle, tip and back of drill. case had interior scratches, battery had a charge, and scratches, second battery had scratches. im not talking about scratches you could blame on rough shipping, this thing was dropped a few times outside of its case. nobody wants somebody elses tool. *cough* 

Okay, get those contest entries in! Remember, feedback@albertnet.us. 

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Spotting Bad Restaurants

Introduction

I fear for the one-off, family run restaurants in this era of Yelp, smartphones, and opentable.com. At the rate things are going, the most popular restaurants will be the ones with the best web presence. Given the cutthroat competition among restaurants, this could lead to the demise of some really great places. (I’m still mourning the loss of my dearly departed La Fiesta.)

You might think citizen reviews like you’ll find on Yelp are democratic and fair, but really they’re not. Why not? Because when I find some tiny hole-in-the-wall that’s great, I might not choose to Yelp about it because the next thing you know, it’s overrun. Our local breakfast place is swamped every morning after a certain rerun of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” airs. Meanwhile, I get friends visiting from out of town who, instead of asking me—a bona-fide local, and a food fanatic—where to eat, tell me where they want to go based on some website or TV show.

So when I’m in a foreign city looking for a restaurant, I put away my smartphone. (“Luke, you switched off your targeting computer. What’s wrong?” / “Nothing. I’m all right.”) If I can’t get a tip from a local, I’ll fly almost completely blind. I’ll even check out strip malls: oddly enough, I’ve found some real jewels in such unlikely places.

This strategy is of course highly risky. This blog post gives you some pointers for spotting a bad place right away based on a few powerful clues (what Malcolm Gladwell calls “thin slicing”). Anthony Bourdain has written on this topic as well, but his book costs money and isn’t sitting right in front of you. And I promise to make this post as entertaining as possible, weaving in the case study of a truly revolting restaurant I was recently a victim of.

What’s in a name?

Probably the name of a restaurant doesn’t ultimately mean much. But there are a few ways to at least tell how authentic a place is, and what clientele it’s aiming toward. For example, “Thep Phanom” is an excellent restaurant, and I doubt the chef who started it really cared whether or not people would recognize the name of a Thai angel, nor whether or not they immediately recognized the restaurant as Thai. Meanwhile, “Thai-riffic” and “A Taste of Thai,” not to mention “Café de Paris,” are making damn sure everybody—i.e., tourists—know what kind of food it is.

Why do foodies seem to despise tourists so much? Actually, it’s not the tourists we mind, it’s the places that cater to them. I prefer to eat at places whose livelihood depends on repeat business. When you’re guaranteed a revolving door of undiscriminating one-time diners, you can focus on your profit margins and serve up whatever cheap rubbish increases those margins.

I recently went (unwillingly) to a place called Cozmic Café. The misspelling of Cosmic suggests that the owner is either sloppy or (more likely) wants to tell the world that he’s not afraid to “think different” and do things his own way. As soon as I saw that “z” I feared the worst. But I wouldn’t rule a place out based on its name alone, and I gamely went along with my wife’s unilateral decision to go there. I should have been worried when she didn’t tell me where we were headed. It was the dining equivalent of being approached from behind, having a sack pulled over my head, and being stuffed in the trunk of a car.

Watch out for gimmicks

There’s a very successful restaurant in San Francisco called “The Stinking Rose.” Normally, a restaurant that survives for decades in such a competitive market is bound to be good. But the one time I went there (dragged by guests from out of town) I really didn’t like it. You know why? Too much garlic. Well, duh! There’s a reason most restaurants don’t go through 3,000 pounds of garlic a month. But people go, because they read about it in “Sunset” or something, where it’s featured because hey, catchy name, interesting idea!

Fair-trade coffee, and related do-gooder notions, are also gimmicks. Why? Because with just about every single consumer product we buy, from the disposable plastic bottle to our new PC to the clothing on our backs, we are raping the earth and/or exploiting cheap sweat-shop overseas labor. Unless you’re eating at a farmhouse where every single item was raised within a one-mile radius, you’re part of the problem. When I go to a restaurant I want to have a good time, which means not being reminded of how guilty I should feel. Throwing me a bone—“nobody was slain over this coffee, and the corn that this poor cow ate, that made it overweight and miserable and arthritic and that changed the pH of its blood, was organic!”—makes me feel worse, not better.

I consider vegan restaurants a gimmick. Why? Well, first of all, they’re serving a niche market. A lot of normal restaurants, at least around here, have plenty of good vegetarian and vegan options on the menu. Lots of these offerings (e.g., a simple pasta with marinara sauce,) aren’t ostentatiously vegan. But vegan places often seem to like to make fake meat out of weird soy protein. Yuck. Regular restaurants don’t try this sleight of hand (how about a carrot made of duck fat?). What’s the point, when good basic food can be vegan? I think they’re just being flashy. When a place is strictly (or even mainly) vegan or vegetarian, it’s expecting repeat business from people who are rewarding it on its political or ideological beliefs, and/or people who are tired of shaking down waiters about whether the salad dressing has anchovy paste in it. This is all fine if you’re a vegan, but I’m not, and I want good food, period.

Cozmic Café isn’t strictly vegan or even vegetarian, but these offerings are prominent on its menu. Their sandwiches, for example, include The Very Veggie Wrap, The Vegetarian, Vegan BLT, Nut Burger, and Garden Burger. The menu didn’t grab me; in fact it repelled me. But my wife assured me this was a good place; she’d been there before. Word of mouth is important.

Safety in numbers?

Of course there is reason to believe that a popular place will be good. It’s not a completely reliable rule, though. Plenty of mediocre chains, such as Cheesecake Factory, PF Changs, and Macaroni Grill, are routinely packed. (I used to travel a lot to Columbus, Ohio and every restaurant I ever set foot in there was completely packed.) All the places in Fisherman’s Wharf seem to thrive. And I already mentioned how popular The Stinking Rose is. So lines aren’t everything.

However, if a place is dead, that’s really not a good sign. Not only does it mean the locals have abandoned it, but it means the food probably won’t be as fresh because there’s not enough turnover. Now, if you go into a place at an off hour, and there aren’t many customers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if you’re on the early side, you should see signs of activity in the back, like they’re at least expecting a good crowd. If even the kitchen is dead, and there’s a skeleton staff, something is up. Perhaps the place is on its last legs, or it’s a drug front.

There were two employees in Cozmic Café when my family went there, at around 5:30 on a Sunday evening. One person was working the counter, and there was one in the kitchen. There were no other customers. When I was trying to find items on the menu I could imagine my kids and me eating, another guy showed up. I let him go first. Big mistake. Every single thing he asked for they were out of. For five minutes straight they shot down everything. Finally he just asked for a smoothie and the cashier was like, “We’re out of bananas, but I could try to think of something else to thicken it with.” It was like the Monty Python cheese shop skit. That place wasn’t just empty, it expected to be empty.

Does décor matter?

Of course the matter of décor depends on who’s dining and what they value. I was shocked, around a decade ago, to discover that regular people, even some of my friends, don’t overmuch care about food. This doesn’t mean they don’t like dining out; they enjoy a good scene, a friendly wait staff; pleasant decorations. In the flip side, there’s a lot of great food to be enjoyed in nondescript settings. I don’t personally worry too much about décor, unless it’s a celebratory meal or a date or something. (Yes, I still date. But it’s always the same person.)

Really bad décor, though, can be a good warning sign. If the place isn’t clean, or the aesthetic choices made suggest that the person running the place is an amateur, or a whacko, you should pay close attention. Or, if the décor feels like a theme park, that could be your tip that the restaurant is owned by a giant conglomerate, which might mean the food will be engineered rather than crafted.

Cozmic Café is a fascinating case study. The space has so much potential; it’s a great old building with fixtures, a cool upstairs area, and best of all an actual cave that you can sit it. (It’s in Placerville, an old mining town.) A restaurateur who knows what he’s doing could do amazing things with it. But the Cozmic folks have hung really bad art everywhere. The paintings were evidently designed to be disturbing, which is fine in a gallery I suppose, but while we’re eating? This was classic amateur art, just a couple steps up from Napoleon Dynamite’s. Kind of a fantasy theme, the Hobbit faerie shtick, but taken in advanced, edgy, vaguely pornographic directions, with a little dash of menace, and also sci-fi elements like a space station here or there. I got the impression these “artists” or perhaps “artistes” were guys who tried to get jobs with Kincade but were turned down for lack of technical skill. This made them bitter so, without actually developing the technical skill they lacked, they lashed out with art that makes you go “ew.” It’s the kind of art, come to think of it, that’s daring you to admit that you’re thinking “ew,” though that would be admitting you’re unsophisticated and lack the intellectual equivalent of facial hair and tattoos.

Why bad art in restaurants matters is that it can indicate poor judgment on the part of the management. If they do their aspiring artist friends a favor by giving over their restaurant as a gallery, what does this mean about the cook staff? Could this “amateur night” mentality extend to the kitchen? Would they hire, say, a hapless pal who was fired from Denny’s for incompetence?

While I was laboring over the menu at the front of the Cozmic, my wife, kids, and mom were looking around the restaurant. My kids, who were really scared by the bad art, begged me not to go upstairs. This made me curious, plus I had to use the bathroom. (What about handicapped folks, Cozmic, or whatever you’re calling them? Where do they go?) I went upstairs and it was just more of the same bad art up there. Speaking of which, the bathroom—the one bathroom—was totally disgusting. The toilet was all backed up. I really had to pee, and while doing so I was ready to jump back away from the sudden puddle I might create if my pee actually overran the edge. It didn’t, but it was really close. Perhaps only surface tension carried the day. That toilet was almost as harrowing as the art.

Of course I should have left right then. But this is the kind of counter-service place where you pay in advance. Curses.

Does the staff seem professional?

It’s hard to predict how the service will be when you’re casing a restaurant, but if the person who greets you seems awkward or unprofessional, or if nobody greets you, that’s probably a decent indicator of how well the whole operation is run.

I’m not a fascist about service, and I’ll usually suffer through a bad meal rather than send something back. The last thing I want when I’m trying to enjoy myself is to have to complain, and then endure the awkwardness of watching my friends or family eat—or, worse, not eat—while I’m waiting for a replacement entrée or something. I don’t mind minor inconveniences like having to flag down the waiter or busboy for more water, but if too many things add up it can be a drag.

The counter person at Cozmic was friendly, but seemed a bit hapless. Given that she was 50% of the total staff there, I might have expected trouble. As it turned out, our dining experience was a laundry list of issues. Two entrees came out, then we waited ten minutes for the others. We were sharing food, but didn’t get any extra plates. Or napkins. Or flatware. Nor did we get any water. Each time one of us got up from the table to go ask for something, it took them forever to provide it. It was more like running errands than dining. My younger daughter seemed to get overwhelmed with the futility of it all, and tried to hide under the table. Cozmic Café’s methods, you could say, are unsound (to borrow from “Apocolypse Now”). “Are my methods unsound?” / “I don’t see any method at all, sir.”

Is it okay to abort?

I wish this were a simple “yes.” It’s no problem if you’ve peeked in and/or looked at a menu. But when you’ve ordered? When you’ve paid? When your party is seated? Or when somebody important in the party, such as a chief in your family, really grooves on the place, perhaps due to some strange fetish or from having luckily ordered the only good thing on the menu? It can be tricky.

But remember, this isn’t just like a bad movie or boring lecture. You are taking foodstuffs into your body! This is serious stuff! If the operation is run really poorly, you can be poisoned. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether or not I was technically poisoned at Cozmic Café. Here are the facts. After eating their lousy food, including most of my mom’s and my daughters’ (these are not finicky people but are perhaps wiser than I), I really didn’t feel so well. Each hour after the meal my flatulence increased, in quantity and heinousness, to the point where my wife had to go sleep in another room. That’s never happened before. (Frankly, I didn’t have that much sympathy for her, since she’d dragged me to that hellhole in the first place.) The next day, well into the afternoon, I was running to the bathroom with shocking frequency. I wasn’t throwing up, at least, but then I’ve got a pretty strong stomach. I’ve managed to eat some spoiled food in my day just by dousing it in hot sauce, and I used to scandalize my college roommates by routinely eating stuff they’d thrown away. I’m no prima donna, but Cozmic Café was a hard hit.

So, yeah, choose your restaurants carefully, and don’t be afraid to pull out if you’ve made a mistake!

dana albert blog