I just checked this out. Near where I live in the suburbs I got mostly recommendations for chains which I expected since that's really all there is around here

I just checked this out. Near where I live in the suburbs I got mostly recommendations for chains which I expected since that's really all there is around here. When I get closer to the city where there are fewer chains the restaurants I consider legit that I would recommend show up. Just for kicks I tried San Francisco since Yelp did such a terrible job with recommendations when I was there last time. Sure enough I got a host recommendations that I would consider trying next time I'm out there. I think for this to be better you could tweak the relevancy based on different psychographic profiles. For example maybe show different results for a foodie, family, and maybe a "safe mode" for out-of-towners which would display a mix of results from the prior two.