Yelp.com reviews use fancier words to describe expensive restaurants, compare unhealthy food to crack and describe poor customer service as a personal loss.
Researchers from Stanford University analysed almost 900,000 reviews for 6548 restaurants. They found that the language used in reviews reveal as much about the reviewer as the food. Patrons of fancy restaurant tend to use self-consciously fancy language – like “patrons” – and sensual terms like “orgasmic”. Sugary, salty or fatty food was often described in guilty terms: “addictive”, “like crack” and “new drug of choice”.
The most important factor seemed to be customer service, with bad treatment described as “heartbreak”.
Read more at Stanford University