However, the positive reviews praised the food and the posters seemed to enjoy the 'scene' the restaurant offered. To gain a useful perception of an establishment via Yelp, in other words, requires a great deal of care in terms of how one reads the reviews. There are other controversial aspects to the way Yelp manages its reviews as a business. "the company uses an undisclosed algorithm to filter out about 20% of the reviews -- with the goal, it says, of enforcing guidelines such as no hate speech, and eliminating fake reviews" (Somers 2012). When I decided to review a restaurant I had eaten at when I was visiting New York City and I noticed that my review was deleted, I did some research and found that Yelp often deletes first-time positive reviews, assuming that they are 'shills' until the reviewer submits more content to the website. I did note that overall, despite my obvious displeasure with the 'delete,' that most of the reviews for the restaurant were...

They were, however, posted by commentators with many other posts. There is thus an incentive to post negative reviews as a first-time poster on Yelp, to ensure that one is 'believed' and one's comments are retained by the site.
Some reviewers on Yelp have many posts and their posturing on the site has an almost rock star quality, in their detail and the reviewer's attitude about their significance. Overall, based upon my experience, I would consult Yelp for ideas about where to dine, but I would read the reviews with great caution, particularly the negative ones.