I'm not saying reviews are not useful or that I necessarily want to find places by myself. I just think reviews are sometimes overrated. People like to think that some restaurants are so much better than others, when in fact, many are of very comparable quality. For instance, I remember people queueing for 30 minutes at Shake shack because of the good reviews, when you could find comparable burgers everywhere.

In NYC, people go to restaurants all the time, it's part of the experience. If one restaurant isn't good, you'll go to an other one the next day.