Do you trust ratings?

What is a rating? The official definition is “a classification or ranking of someone or something based on a comparative assessment of their quality, standard, or performance”. But in the world of bars and restaurants how do you compare one place to another solely based on a 1–5 star rating? We treat ratings on review site like the cardinals choose the next Pope, as if a billion people are waiting for your vote. We endlessly scroll through review…