Mind your Manners

 Incessant demands for consumer feedback  are the newest plague on our inboxes...Tripadvisor is still badgering me to review a restaurant I didn't actually attend, after looking it up last month; my new exercise mat came with a questionnaire; and when I bought a splurge item through a luxury fashion marketplace, I was invited separately to review the web portal, the individual brand, and the delivery company, each in turn. It's enough to drive one back to shopping in person, with cash - anything that doesn't require an email address.

So I was initially enthused to hear about Dorian, the Notting Hill [London] restaurant that is tearing up the rulebook on customer feedback... Any complaints left on Google or Tripadvisor will be roundly ignored; any customer who even mutters about leaving a review will be ejected on the spot. They certainly won't be emailing you to ask if there's room for improvement.

A Group of Cats Dressed as Gentry Dining in a restaurant
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]  

Instead, it is the customers who get reviewed. Buckle up, diners of London W11, and get ready for manners to be marked out of five. As the old joke used to go: "In Soviet Russia, television watches you." Nowadays, in Notting Hill, potato rosti reviews you.

These reviews aren't published, so you won't be exposed to public shame, although you'll get a sense of where you rate, based on whether you're blocked from repeat bookings, or added to an elite WhatsApp group with access to last-minute reservations...

Dorian's owner Chris D'Sylva told the Mail last week that he keeps a logbook of diners' behaviour. "It's a tiered system whereby we rank how much we like the customer and the value of the customer, or the destructiveness of the customer." Behaviours likely to get you marked as "destructive"? Turn up with a ring-light and demand help filming your dinner for Instagram. The worst crime, however, is to show any hint of offering your own feedback. The only critique that matters here is the one issued to the customer...

We do all understand why businesses have been reduced to begging customers for online reviews. These now define  how we spend our money...

Whether in retail or hospitality, we find ourselves in a culture of uber-reviewing: a world in which we're all reviewing each other, all the time, and positive reviews are currency. The most obvious form of low-level irritation this provokes is that of the hassled customer: the part of me that resents when a retailer expects me to make payment by giving up my time, as well as my cash....

(Kate Maltby, The Observer, 2025)

Where to begin?

Incessant demands for consumer feedback  are the newest plague on our inboxes.

Don't you have a little bin that enables you to delete any unwanted e-mail? 

Behaviours likely to get you marked as "destructive"? Turn up with a ring-light and demand help filming your dinner for Instagram. mails.

Are you not in a restaurant to eat, drink and have good conversation? Why should anyone film what they're eating and post it on social media? Good on the restaurant.

We do all understand why businesses have been reduced to begging customers for online reviews. These now define  how we spend our money...

Reviews define how we spend our money? Is that what you are saying? I don't think so.

Whether in retail or hospitality, we find ourselves in a culture of uber-reviewing: a world in which we're all reviewing each other, all the time,

We're all reviewing each other all the time? Are we both living on the same planet?

The most obvious form of low-level irritation this provokes is that of the hassled customer: the part of me that resents when a retailer expects me to make payment by giving up my time, as well as my cash....

Use delete!

Letters

I take no notice of the reviews posted by restaurant customers. Many are just feeding their own egos, but that isn't why I ignore their reviews. I check out the owner's response to a poor review. If it is robust and the restaurateur does not pander to the customer, I am happy to eat at this establishment.

(Paul Ticehurst, The Guardian, 2025)