Time for a new project?

It’s been a while since I had a writing project. And I miss writing. So, after a year of dreaming about it, I’m trialing a new side-project which balances my curiosities with some writing.

Many people write reviews of exceptional restaurants, chic bars and hipster cafes. People make careers out of eating at amazing restaurants and critiquing them. But I think there’s a gap in the market. I think someone should do the exact opposite.

The world of Google Maps reviews has always interested me. Those places which somehow manage to keep a 4.9 or even 5 star business year after year. Some of which have thousands of individual reviews. But occasionally, there are 3.5’s, 2.9’s and even 1.5’s. Since moving to Barcelona, I’ve often wondered what made these places get such consistently bad feedback. But I’ve never dared to find out why.

What if someone made a list of all the lowest-rated cafes, bars and restaurants in their city, visited them and then told the story?

The Google Maps algorithm makes it hard to find low-rated places, and I can understand why. But they are there, hiding, and they make me wonder. Is it really the case that “bad” people are running these places? Or, were they unlucky? Were the customers in a particularly shitty mood that day? What if the expectations were too high? Or the place is owned by a foreigner and cultural norms were different?
Are these places just behind the times, and didn’t keep up with society’s demand for plant-based milk, contactless payments and digital nomads. Or, are they really just there to make as much money as possible in the short term?

I’d like to find out.

There is another reason I think this is a cool project. I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere of old, local, rundown bars and cafes. I call them “crappy”. But I don’t mean crappy in a negative way. I mean, the type of place you can find decent food and drink, friendly(ish) faces, fair prices, and an old-style decor which clearly hasn’t been renovated for over 30 years. Places that age well, where locals go to read the newspaper or chance a few euros on the slot machine. I love these places. And for some bizarre reason I’ve always been attracted to them. They relax me and make great places for a favourite hobby of mine, people-watching.

Lastly, I think as humans we often overlook how much we’re impacted by recency bias or our moods. The idea that our current or recent experiences feel more important and impactful in the moment, than they will a few hours, days or weeks later. I think this is one of the reasons so many people either give a 1 star or a 5 star review on Google Maps. This seems especially the case with low reviews. When reading some 1 star reviews, it’s easy to read through the words and feel the aggression and emotion of people in the moment.

When you put these curiosities and human behaviour traits together, you have the basis for a different type of project. One involving risk, surprise and probably some bad food. A project which one can write about. I expect to find places which aren’t as bad as people say, and places which really are. I’m just hoping there won’t be any trips to the doctors.

In the next few weeks, I’ll visit three low reviewed bars and cafes on Google Maps in Barcelona. I’ll go, order something to drink, grab some food, check out the atmosphere, the friendliness of the staff, the fairness of the prices, and the cleanliness of my cutlery. I’ll take some notes, maybe even a few photos. Then I’ll write it all up and share it with the world.

If, after the first three, I have fun and don’t get ill or beaten up for my crappy Spanish and oat-milk tendencies, I may even visit the full list of worst-reviewed places I found in Barcelona so far. Wish me luck.