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Food

10th Dec 2017

An actual garden SHED has been ranked among top-rated restaurants

The Tripadvisor reviews are UNREAL

Olivia Hayes

It’s all booked up.

An actual garden shed has been rated as a top restaurant in London.

But all is not as it seems.

Oobah Butler made a website and took pictures of dishes he made up – which were created by household items, including shaving foam, paint and sponges.

Yes, the entire thing was a hoax, or an online experiment, and we have to say, Oobah pulled it off.

When he created the TripAdvisor page for the ‘restaurant’, he and his friends left positive reviews, which piqued the interest of the public.

Soon after, he was receiving calls for booking and inquiries on opening times.

But Oobah didn’t stop there, he also made a Facebook page to make his restaurant seem more realistic.

He told Vice that he used to be employed by a restaurant to leave good TripAdvisor reviews on its page, even though he never ate there before.

“This convinced me that TripAdvisor was a false reality – that the meals never took place; that the reviews were all written by other people like me.

“However, they’re not, of course – they’re almost all completely genuine.”

He continued “One day, sitting in the shed I live in, I had a revelation: within the current climate of misinformation… maybe a fake restuarant is possible? Maybe it’s exactly the kind of place that could be a hit?”.

And it was.