Los Angeles, a city known for its diverse and inventive food scene, is no stranger — no, perhaps home — to the overhyped, overpriced restaurant. And, in the foodie world, one platform might be held accountable for centralizing the over-inflated food opinions of L.A. diners everywhere: Beli. 

Like Yelp, but with a cleaner user interface and a social feed, rising food social media app Beli assigns scores to restaurants based on rankings rather than individual ratings; Users are asked to place the restaurant they’ve just visited among others they’ve ranked before. The app then assigns a relative personal score from one to ten and compiles all user scores into an average number for each restaurant. 

There are, expectedly, flaws with this model. A Michelin-starred restaurant will very likely beat out the Figueroa Taco Bell, but a late-night excursion to the home of the Crunchwrap Supreme remains a 10/10 experience. 

When prompting users to rushedly choose their favorite of two restaurants, nuance is lost. It becomes difficult to account for price-to-value, how hungry they were, whether they are biased toward a certain cuisine or how limited their perception may have been by the few dishes they ordered. 

Yes, food is highly subjective, and arguing that there could be something “wrong” with other people’s rankings is fundamentally difficult. But what sets Beli apart from other food discovery apps is that the system behind its ratings is structurally flawed.

On every use, diners are asked to compare apples to oranges — restaurants that were never meant to compete in the same category. 

This works most unfairly for small, inexpensive restaurants. Unbacked by corporatized supply chains and viral nationwide buzz and, lacking the je ne sais quoi of artsier, high-ticket establishments, these eateries struggle to distinguish themselves within Beli’s landscape. Furthermore, Beli depends on large numbers of individual rankings to stabilize average scores, with lesser-known restaurants often penalized before they have the chance to gain visibility. 

City Tacos, the lone Mexican establishment at USC Village, boasts 4.2 stars, or an 8.4/10, on Google Reviews. On Beli, it achieves only a 6.7/10. On a typical day, you might pass by and see plenty of loyal customers dropping in for a reliable, inexpensive meal – there is nothing at all that is below average about City Tacos. What drags its score down is forced competition with higher-end dining experiences. 

Pot of Cha, a tapioca house on Figueroa, earns a 9.2/10 on Google but a mere 6.8/10 on Beli. 

The idea that one restaurant’s quality must necessitate the degradation of another becomes evident in some of Beli’s more puzzling consensus ratings, where strong but inexpensive spots routinely fall below trendier, high-end establishments. In creating a zero-sum game, restaurants must battle to the death for good ratings. Rather than flashy cars or designer bags, Beli encourages a subtler form of conspicuous consumption: restaurant ratings that serve as signals of wealth.

And these ratings don’t just affect perception — they shape discovery and visibility. Beli’s “Recs Nearby” feature maps-users’ local area, with restaurant pins popping up as their number score. Spots typically need an 8.0/10 rating or higher to even make it on the map. For users deciding where to eat next, inexpensive restaurants — penalized in Beli’s ratings — are easier to overlook entirely. 

The social element of Beli further promotes a bias toward less accessible restaurants. The app indicates how expensive restaurants are with markers ranging from $ to $$$$, and these symbols sit loudly, unavoidably, next to restaurant names on users’ rankings. 

It becomes a status symbol, a performance of refined taste, to have endless dollar signs adorning the top of one’s list of visited restaurants. If performing wealth is the sort of thing you care about — which, come on, we’re at USC — Beli incentivizes giving higher ratings to pricier restaurants. 

Yes, cost often finds itself correlated with quality. But there is no doubt that when you walk into a $$$$ restaurant with a 9.0/10 rating, you are already biased toward rating it higher. Expectation shapes the experience, and avoiding disappointment involves reinforcing the idea that expensive food is better food. 

Beli promises clarity through its streamlined system for tracking what is “good.” But in a city where you might eat street tacos one night and drop hundreds on omakase the next, the experience of food resists being condensed to a rigid hierarchy. If we want to truly enjoy Los Angeles’ exceptionally exciting food scene, we must take Beli — with all its glossy ratings and social signals — with a grain of salt.