LA Times Drops Stars in Restaurant Reviews

The Los Angeles Times decided to drop star ratings from their restaurant reviews. The newspaper posted their explanation online:

“Starting this week, The Times will no longer run star ratings with our restaurant reviews. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, star ratings are increasingly difficult to align with the reality of dining in Southern California — where your dinner choices might include a food truck, a neighborhood ethnic restaurant, a one-time-only pop-up run by a famous chef, and a palace of fine dining. Clearly, you can’t fairly assess all these using the same rating system. Furthermore, the stars have never been popular with critics because they reduce a thoughtful and nuanced critique to a simple score. In its place, we’ll offer a short summary of the review.”

I give that decision 5 stars. Leave the ratings to Yelp.