A newly opened San Diego brunch restaurant is drawing attention not only for its pancakes and Benedicts, but for an increasingly bizarre and confrontational battle with online reviewers that has now escalated into a full-blown anti-Yelp protest complete with accusations of fake reviews public customer callouts, and even a temporary apparent renaming of the business itself to “DO NOT FOLLOW YELP – WE DON’T.”
Heat Bistro, which opened earlier this year at 10155 Paseo Montril in Rancho Peñasquitos inside the former IHOP space across from McDonald’s, has quickly become one of the stranger restaurant-review controversies currently unfolding in San Diego dining culture. While many restaurant owners quietly absorb criticism or issue polished corporate responses to unhappy customers, Heat Bistro appears to be taking a dramatically different approach: aggressively fighting back in public.
The restaurant’s Yelp page currently appears under the modified name “DO NOT FOLLOW YELP – WE DON’T,” a statement that many online observers interpret as a direct rebuke of Yelp reviewers and review culture itself. The unusual move appears to have coincided with a growing pattern of lengthy owner responses to negative reviews on both Yelp and Google…