Here you’ll find quick answers to the most common questions about oChef.com. If you are curious how our scores work, where the data comes from, or how to find great restaurants near you, this is the right place to start.
1. How does oChef.com work?
oChef.com is a restaurant discovery platform enhanced by state-of-the-art AI and data. We collect real, publicly available customer reviews from multiple platforms, analyze them automatically, and turn them into clear, comparable scores for each restaurant.
Instead of relying on a handful of opinions, we look at patterns across many experiences. This helps you understand what a restaurant is consistently good at, and where it might fall short, without spending ages reading through comment threads.
2. What do the scores mean?
We calculate scores across the most important parts of the dining experience, so you can compare restaurants quickly and fairly:
Food: taste, quality, and presentation
Service: friendliness, attentiveness, speed, and professionalism
Atmosphere: ambiance, cleanliness, comfort, and overall vibe
Value for Money: how fair the pricing feels relative to quality, portion size, and the overall experience
In addition, we compute a Recommendation Score that summarizes how strongly a restaurant is recommended overall. It is designed as a quick indicator if you simply want to know whether a place is likely to be worth a visit.
3. Where do the reviews come from?
We use publicly accessible reviews from trusted review platforms such as Google Maps, Tripadvisor, and Yelp, and may include additional sources depending on availability and region. We only analyze content that is visible to the public.
We do not create or rewrite reviews, and we do not accept private review dumps from businesses. The goal is to work with real-world feedback that anyone could also find online.
4. How current is the data?
Our data is updated regularly, so new reviews are incorporated into the scoring model at short intervals. This means restaurant scores can change over time as fresh feedback comes in.
If a restaurant improves its service, changes its chef, renovates the interior, or adjusts pricing, those changes can be reflected gradually as new reviews appear. Likewise, if quality drops, the scores can also decrease over time.
5. Can restaurants influence their scores?
No. oChef.com is purely data-driven. Restaurants cannot pay to improve their rating, buy a better placement, or manually change scores.
We do not offer score boosting services, sponsored rating adjustments, or hidden weighting for advertising partners. If a restaurant’s score improves, it is because customer feedback improves. If it drops, it reflects the opposite.
6. Why doesn’t the score always match my personal experience?
A score reflects the overall pattern across many experiences, not a single visit. Sometimes you can catch a restaurant on an amazing day or a bad day. Staffing issues, busy evenings, seasonal menus, or even a different server can change the experience.
Our aim is to provide the most reliable big-picture view based on the combined feedback of many guests. Your individual experience can still differ, but the average trend is usually a strong indicator of what most people encounter.
7. How does your AI analysis help compared to reading star ratings?
Star ratings alone can be misleading because they mix different topics into one number. Someone might give five stars because the food was great even if the service was slow, while someone else gives two stars because of price despite loving the atmosphere.
Our AI-supported analysis helps by:
- spotting recurring themes in written feedback (for example slow service vs amazing staff)
- reducing the impact of extreme outliers and one-off rants
- separating the experience into clear categories (food, service, atmosphere, value)
- making restaurants easier to compare, even across different platforms
This way, you get more context than a single star rating, but without needing to read everything yourself.
8. What happens if a restaurant has only a few reviews?
If there is limited review data, the score is naturally less stable than for restaurants with hundreds of reviews. A single very positive or very negative experience can have a bigger impact when the sample size is small.
Whenever possible, we provide review volume and context so you can judge how confident the score is likely to be. Over time, as more reviews come in, the rating usually becomes more reliable and less sensitive to individual outliers.
9. Can I leave a review directly on oChef.com?
At the moment, we do not collect direct reviews on our site. We focus on analyzing existing public reviews from other platforms to keep results consistent and comparable.
This approach also helps avoid duplicate review ecosystems and keeps oChef.com focused on what we do best: turning broad public feedback into structured insights. In the future, we may add features that let users contribute in other ways, such as corrections or suggestions, without changing the core data-driven approach.
10. Is oChef.com free to use?
Yes. All restaurant pages, scores, and discovery features on oChef.com are free to access for users.
Our goal is to make restaurant discovery easier for everyone, whether you are searching for a quick lunch spot or planning a special dinner. If we ever introduce optional paid features in the future, the core restaurant scores and browsing experience will remain accessible.
11. How is the overall score calculated?
The overall view is based on a weighted combination of the category scores (Food, Service, Atmosphere, Value for Money) and the underlying review signals.
The Recommendation Score is designed as a simple should-I-go indicator. It reflects overall sentiment and consistency across categories, meaning a restaurant that is strong across the board usually scores higher than a place that is excellent in one area but weak in others.
12. How do I find restaurants near me?
You can discover restaurants by entering a location (city or area) and using filters such as:
- cuisine type
- category scores (for example great food plus high value)
- top Recommendation Scores
- specific preferences (for example cozy atmosphere or great service)
This makes it easy to find places that match what you care about, not just whatever happens to be most reviewed.
13. Do you remove fake or suspicious reviews?
We do not manually edit external reviews. Since we rely on public sources, we benefit from the review moderation systems and fraud detection of those platforms.
In addition, our analysis is designed to reduce the influence of extreme outliers and unusual patterns where possible. While no system can guarantee perfect filtering, the combination of platform moderation and aggregated analysis helps produce a more balanced overall picture than relying on a single review.
14. What if information about a restaurant is wrong?
We aim to keep listings accurate, but details can change, such as opening hours, addresses, phone numbers, menus, or pricing.
If something looks incorrect, it is always a good idea to cross-check the restaurant’s official channels. If oChef.com provides a report or feedback option on the restaurant page, you can use it to flag incorrect information so it can be reviewed and corrected.