Pizzeria Delfina's Genius Anti-Yelp T-Shirts

Posted by Adam Kuban, March 4, 2009 at 11:45 PM

San Francisco's Pizzeria Delfina has come up with a brilliant way of countering negative reviews from less-than-literate Yelpers—it simply prints the nasty reviews on its employees' T-shirts.

7x7, which first reported on the shirts, makes a great analogy—it's sort of like taking back the night.

Or, perhaps a better comparison would be in the way that minority groups attempt to reclaim certain derogatory terms—queer, nigga, bitch—from the dominant culture, thereby mitigating the sting of those words.

With messages such as "The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming this was in part due to the pig fat" (natalie t.) and "This place sucks" (Hoan T.), Pizzeria Delfina aims to turn the idea of Yelp as a source for intelligent food criticism on its head. [via Consumerist]

17 Comments

Tags: Bay Area, California, funny, pizza awesomeness, Pizzeria Delfina, San Francisco, T-shirts

17 Comments:

That is SO awesome! I love this idea.

bearsilber at 12:45AM on 03/05/09

Brilliant!

bwbollom at 12:54AM on 03/05/09

That's soooooo freakin great! To my blog with u!

foodiebuddha at 1:47AM on 03/05/09

Wonderful idea that can't be pulled off at any resto, but the ones who can-should!

DesperateChefsWives at 6:30AM on 03/05/09

that's awesome. it's like what I tell my kids to do when someone teases them about something...they should agree with them heartily..."Yeah, I am skinny and have large ears!" -- totally disarms your persecutors.

juliebugsmama at 9:52AM on 03/05/09

i think they are being overly sensitive. they have over 600 reviews and have a solid 4 star rating. that being said, it's a funny idea, but i think people will start making bogus negative reviews to get their 15 seconds of t-shirt fame. it might actually backfire if they really care that much about their status on yelp.

mikeismora at 10:57AM on 03/05/09

juliebugsmama - that's awesome advice. i used to do the same thing when i was a kid. it was good for my self-confidence as well. besides, everybody has something odd about them.

mikeismora at 11:02AM on 03/05/09

it is cute, but it's not like Take Back the Night at all. Better to scrap that analogy, it's pretty inappropriate.

eleeb at 11:12AM on 03/05/09

This seems wierdly passive aggresive to me.

JudgeFudge at 12:31PM on 03/05/09

I agree with eleeb. The comparison to Take Back the Night is wildly inappropriate. Do Serious Eaters need sensitivity training?

MollieBeth at 12:49PM on 03/05/09

@eleeb and MollieBeth: Though I described it as a "great" analogy, yeah, perhaps it's not. Though I was not the one who came up with the original analogy to taking back the night—that would be 7x7.

Adam Kuban at 1:17PM on 03/05/09

I am totally stealing this idea.

extramsg at 7:44PM on 03/05/09

Kinda funny, but I hardly ever look at Yelp and certainly wouldn't consider it to be some kind of tastemaking clearinghouse.

chanterelle at 11:29PM on 03/05/09

watch out for my SENSITIVITY TRAINING t-shirt!

Luther at 10:45PM on 03/06/09

Oh yeah, wearing t-shirts with crappy reviews is totally like women organizing to proclaim their right to walk freely through their neighborhoods at night without fear of being raped! In fact, I'd say that being given a crappy review is like being raped!
/angry snark

Lalaroo at 11:59PM on 03/07/09

Oh, bah. PC-rallying sensitivity training aside, the shirts are funny, and were they purchasable merch I'd get one right now.

Yrmencyn at 9:54PM on 03/09/09

When it comes to decisions about good eats, do people take yelp all that seriously anyways? I thought yelp was more for fun, just to have a laugh reading people's comments and personal experiences. Anywho, that shirt idea is funny kool, Hope it works out Delfina.

ilikegrind at 5:36AM on 03/10/09

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