The restaurant rated best in all of Montreal on TripAdvisor has been revealed to be a scam.
A security expert interviewed by CBC says five-star reviews alone are a sign that something might be wrong. Adobe Stock/AOP
Le Nouveau Duluth, ranked as Montreal’s number one restaurant on TripAdvisor travel site, has turned out to be a hoax. The restaurant does not actually exist, says the Canadian news channel CBC.
CBC set out to find out how a restaurant that no one seemed to have ever even heard of managed to get rave reviews on a travel website and claim the top spot out of more than 3,600 restaurants in Montreal. The truth was quickly revealed when there was no restaurant at all at the address entered on TripAdvisor, and none of the neighboring businesses had ever even heard of the restaurant in question.
A TripAdvisor representative commented to CBC that publicity stunts like this are rare and that the non-existent restaurant stayed on the lists longer than it should have due to human error.
The story doesn’t say how many tourists have walked the streets of Montreal in frustration in search of a top restaurant that doesn’t exist, but the site plans to improve its surveillance even further to prevent similar scams from happening.
Yard shed as London’s number one
Montreal’s restaurant scam is not the only one of its kind. In 2017, journalist and filmmaker Oobah Butler decided to try and see if he could get his yard shed to be the best restaurant in London on TripAdvisor. He harnessed his circle of friends to write fake reviews on the site about a restaurant that didn’t really exist.
The scam was successful, and in half a year The Shed became the restaurant with the best ratings in London on the site, even though Butler had never served food to anyone in his “restaurant”.
The scam got out of hand over the months as The Shed started to climb higher and higher in the charts. Companies sent free samples to the address, and Butler’s phone rang non-stop with people wanting to make reservations for the restaurant. Various cooperation offers rained down from all over the world and Butler received contacts from people who wanted to work at the restaurant.
Butler finally topped off his scam by actually opening the doors of his “restaurant”. He hired actors, rented chickens, bought cheap micro-foods and finally hosted real customers in his yard for one evening.
People were seated in worn garden chairs in front of the courtyard building and the dishwasher played music that covered the hum of the microwave coming from inside. Instead of everyone realizing that everything was just a big scam, some of the customers left the “restaurant” satisfied, announcing that they wanted to make another table reservation soon.
TripAdvisor is an international travel website where registered users can write reviews of hotels and restaurants around the world. You can read the site’s reviews without registering.