Best Of MenuPages Reviews: You Wanna Fight About It?

We love it when reviewers disagree! This way, you don’t know what to think. Actually, that’s overstating the case: given two contradictory reviews, we’d tend toward the one that’s better argued and more recent. For these pairs of reviews for Santullo’s Eatery and Kuma’s Corner, where do you fall?

• Re: Santullo’s Eatery — is the staff actually chill?

On June 12, at 10:18PM, “cara” posted a review entitled “good tunes yummy food!”:


This place has great deals! Not to mention the 2.75 frosty mugs of beer YUM! Great music, and the staff is really chill!

Just about 21 hours later, “Anonymous” snarls, “New York Style Attitude… not pizza”:


They have a $2/slice special between 4-6. I get on line before 6 and didn’t get to order until afterwards because their credit card machine goes down. After paying $9+ for a cheese slice, a pepperoni slice and a soda, I state my case for a $2 slice. The cashier’s response was that the computer controls the price and, “well, that’s just too bad.” 5 minutes later, I find that my pizza wasn’t even in the oven yet! The only thing that kept me sane was knowing that I’ll never have to go back in there again.

On top of that, there was a poor lady who asked for the orange soda at the fountain to be fixed. I ate my pizza at the restaurant and didn’t see anyone go to look at it.

Miserable experience aside, the pizza wasn’t terrible. It doesn’t compare to the pizza in NY and it is pricey for a slice. If I wasn’t treated like crap, would have maybe considered going back.

Verdict: the staff is probably rather chill, except when confronted with angry, entitled New Yorkers. Also, we have a sudden, inexplicable craving for orange soda.

• Re: Kuma’s Corner

Back in the Stone Age (i.e. early 2007), “miggs” left a review entitled “Fine place”:


Does anyone suspect that these other reviews were written by people who own or work at Kuma’s? It’s a fine place, but it’s not the gourmet extravaganza that these other reviews are making out to be.

An excited response entitled “SO YOU THINK YOU’RE READY FOR THIS?!” was penned by “METALFOREVER” on June 15th:


Apparently the person that suggested that the reviews posted are the employees reads alot of conspiracy novels, lives in the basement of their grandparents house, doesn’t know value and eats McDonald’s for lunch every day. Kuma’s Burgers are REDICULOUS!!! I had the SLAYER burger and I have to say my arteries loved it but my cardiologist was super mad at me. I mean the menu tells us that the Slayer burger’s main ingredient is ANGER. My friends had the Iron Maiden and others but none of the plates were as angry as the one in front of me. Fresh ingredients right down to the avacado slices, resonable prices for each entree, the calamari was bitchin’ and the beer was delicious. The options were endless. Somebody needs a napkin that’s for sure. AWESOME- even though it’s usually packed full of people. Get a life if you don’t love this place.

Verdict: well, Kuma’s has definitely evolved over 18 months, so METALFOREVER is being unfair with the McDonald’s comparison (on the other hand, miggs may have too narrow a definition of “gourmet extravaganza”). As for the basement-dwelling conspiracy nut charge, there’s definitely occasional justification to believe that a review is a shill; as hard as we try to block them, shills occasionally get through. However, having reread the prior reviews for Kuma’s, we’ve determined that all of them are genuine. METALFOREVER loses points for spelling RIDICULOUS (among other things) incorrectly, but has done a reasonable job capturing the spirit of Kuma’s, for better or worse.

[Photo: IN YOUR FACE (Led Zeppelin burger with soggy fries at Kuma’s), via mbwa kahawa/flickr]

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Best Of MenuPages Reviews: You Wanna Fight About It?