Debbie’s Choice serves food recommendations with personality

Nov. 11, 2010, 12:04 a.m.

If you have ever logged on to Yelp and thought, “This is so overwhelming. All I want to do is find a random place to eat,” then it seems you are not the only one. The creators of becauseyelpsucks.com feel your pain. In fact, they feel so passionate about the issue that they wrote a whole rant, put it online and made a solution – debbieschoice.com.

The idea behind the site is pretty simple: enter your zip code and how far you’re willing to go for food and the website will recommend a random restaurant. Don’t like that one? Okay, they’ll just serve you up another and then another until you decide where you want to eat. Sounds like a unitasker but hey, sometimes all it takes is a name thrown out there to get the “Were are we going to eat?” discussion going in the right direction.

As if the recommendations weren’t enough, the site comes with a serving of humor. It is all written in the form of an argument between a couple trying to decide where to go on a date. Is this a plus or a minus? You be the judge.

But I digress. These sites seem like a funny gag to be seen and forgotten but they point out an intrinsic flaw in social networks like Yelp. In order to take full advantage of the site you have to spend enough time and effort on it to create your network. If you just want to get a recommendation once in a blue moon the site’s most powerful feature is useless to you and all of the options may be too much clutter to be work the effort.

In the end it all comes down to what you want. If you want to “refine [your] search by spice group” use Yelp. If you want a laugh and a completely random restaurant name, check out debbieschoice.com.

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