Eating out

This evening we went to an Italian restaurant, to celebrate my wife's birthday. We've been to this restaurant several times before and always enjoyed it, but I made the mistake of reading online reviews today.

There is a whole world of grumpy people out there, all desperate to go on the internet and moan about anything they can think of. I didn't find anything with the almost surreal rage of "this place is racist ... They told us that we needed to make a reservation!" - rather, a series of quotidian complaints that the service wasn't absolutely perfect, or the pizza didn't taste the same as one the reviewer ate 7 years ago in another country, or ... It's just too much. Reading reviews on websites is much like putting your head in a toilet and asking somebody else to flush it for you.

Suffice it to say, I didn't arrive at the restaurant soaking wet with scraps of Andrex stuck in my hair. Service was fine (a little distracted, but given the place was rammed to the rafters and it's only a Wednesday night, it's not something to be upset by). The pizza was just as terrific as we remembered, and when it came to bring the cake to the table, they played Happy Birthday over the stereo for maximum embarassment of my wife in front of the other diners.

None of the reviews said that I'd be horribly bloated after eating half my own body weight in pizza, which goes to show that reviews really are an utter waste, either vindictively criticising restauranteurs or failing to warn me about the effects of gluttony. Except the reviews I write, of course.