HOAX CUISINE!
Prankster who claimed his shed was a trendy restaurant tops TripAdvisor with fake reviews
WOOD you believe it? The hippest inner-city dining spots can crop up in the most unlikely of spaces.
So when a restaurant based in a garden shed promised gastronomic heaven on a plate, it quickly became the hottest place to eat in the capital.
Helped by a string of glowing commendations, it shot straight to the top of the rankings on TripAdvisor – even leapfrogging venues with Michelin stars.
The only problem was the reviews were all fake – and the restaurant nothing but the invention of a mischievous writer.
Oobah Butler set up a phoney website for the outhouse in his garden in south- east London, calling it The Shed at Dulwich – and fooled hundreds of potential customers into trying to book a table.
To add authenticity, the 26-year-old took artistic shots of the ‘food’ – created with household items including shaving foam, bleach tablets, paint and even the author’s foot. His menu, served outside to diners on trendy wooden tables, consists of meals defined by ‘moods’ such as ‘contemplation’, ‘empathetic’ and ‘comfort’.
The comfort dish consists of Yorkshire blue macaroni and cheese seasoned with bacon shavings and served in an Egyptian cotton bowl. Mr Butler bought a cheap mobile to register phone bookings and said it rang ‘incessantly’ for months with potential customers keen to bag a table.
It took six months – and 83 fake reviews – to make the phoney venue London’s best restaurant, leap-frogging fine-dining favourites such as Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.
Writing on the news website Vice, Mr Butler said the idea came after he used to write fake reviews for other restaurants for £10 a time. He said: ‘This convinced me that TripAdvisor was a false reality.’
The restaurant profile was set up in April, with a description on the website saying it was an ‘appointment-only’ restaurant that had been ‘operating privately for years’. Mr Butler asked friends to post five- star reviews, and within four months the restaurant rose in rank from 18,149 to 156.
‘A restaurant that doesn’t exist is currently the highest ranked in one of the world’s biggest cities, on perhaps the internet’s most trusted reviews site,’ he boasted. One fake review, posted in May, read: ‘The whole experience was fantastic. The earthy taste and freshness of the food was something else. Will certainly be back.’
On November 1, the Shed in Dulwich was ranked best restaurant in London on TripAdvisor. At one point it was receiving 90,000 search results a day. Its apparent success websites to organise by led and a a public to celebrity Mr listings Butler relations night. on was other contacted firm
Even Guardian restaurant critic Jay Rayner was taken in, tweeting: ‘Of all the shed-based eating experiences out there this one sounds like the best.’
Mr Butler had to fob off callers by saying the venue was fully booked six months’ in advance. Eventually, ‘disappointing open he for the became a restaurant table’ people fed and up for literally decided continually one day begging to in November. the US – were Ten served guests microwaveable – two from meals from Iceland spruced-up with edible flowers. Mr Butler told the London Evening Standard: ‘We opened it up for one night only and tried to recreate the experience that people had said in their reviews. It was really just a collection of chairs in a garden shed but all of them left saying how nice it was.’ After Mr Butler contacted TripAdvisor it removed the profile, but the prank will fuel concerns the website’s rankings are not a true reflection of a restaurant’s quality. A spokesman said it uses technology to identify suspicious review patterns.