Another low stake option. 5 of your friends each say that restaurant A is horrible and restaurant B was great. You have to pick a restaurant. Are you going to throw dice because these are just anecdotes and don't matter?

Carful, now you’re leaving random antidotes.

A specific restaurant is an actual place so if someone describes the decor and prices yesterday it’s not going to be wildly different when you show up tomorrow.

Is there a paper supporting that position of yours? I would like to see a study highlighting that restaurants are unlikely to change in time.

I'm not eating anything till I see a peer-reviewed study demonstrating that the verbal reports about restaurant decor made by my family members or the guys I ride bikes with on weekends have any actual correlation with actual restaurant decor. Where is the hard, non-anecdotal evidence?

It also needs evaluation beyond subjective reports, as food taste is known to be highly prone to placebo. Until an objective device for evaluating the taste is found I believe it would be completely unscientific to take a bite or even smell the food since that is also known to affect taste.