Tripadvisor: Plan & Book Trips 4+

I’ve been smoking meats on an offset for a few years now so any chance I get, I’ll hit a bbq place to save me managing a fire for 12+ hours. I was in Christchurch for a few days for work and work mates were really talking up another joint (no I won’t say which one). Needless to say, it was very disappointing. Fatty brisket, dry chicken and sausages. Any-who, the following night I hit up Google and found this place. Praise Jesus! It’s the one.

Staff were friendly, place is funky, beers are good (and I’m not really a craft beer guy, more Jack Daniels) but plenty of choices. Food was quick. Serving size was decent. Best part though, the brisket held its form. Nice smoke rings. Fat beautiful rendered. No dumb rubs, just salt and pepper I’m picking. Pork belly was also excellent with a great sticky sauce. Side sauces were very nice. Nice great simple bbq where the meat shines.

Highly recommended. Next time I’m down I’ll try the other meats.

I have used Trip Advisor for several years and have contributed back many reviews. Recently I have become frustrated that the default search focuses on “best value”. It is increasingly complicated to find the options for accommodation or restaurants etc based on the highest rating, by the time you sift through the sponsored adverts and convert the search to ratings based. I much preferred the old system where the listings came up in a numeric order based on ratings. Also one often has to scan a long way down the listings to find the best restaurant etc because of the weighting given to other factors than the score in reviews. As I understand it the total number of reviews influences the position in the ratings. So a restaurant with only 40 reviews all of which are 5 star can appear way below a restaurant with 400 reviews which are only an average of 4-4 1/2 stars.
I have started using Google reviews as an alternative for restaurants.