Yesterday 
The closest place to us had bad reviews (2.7 stars across 105 google reviews).
You don't want to be a slave to your metrics (aka a "rankings bitch" in the fantasy sports world), but when it's low enough it starts to feel meaningful. My first instinct was to avoid it.
There was a Vietnamese place close by, but it was hard to find their menu. And their facebook page had a "typically responds instantly" on it, and when I messaged them to ask about the menu I got an auto-response. I felt angled. (They don't really respond instantly, they rig it!)
All things considered, we decided to keep it simple and take our chances on the Golden Dragon (the Chinese).
I was cautiously optimistic that it could be a combination of bad service and maybe old reviews and it's improved over time and who knows what. If it's in business, how bad could it be?
To my chagrin, the service was delightful. When I paid she basically took 55 cents off the total, like "oh, I'm not gonna make you break a bill". She was insisting not to worry about tipping her too, when I rummaged thru my bag of tricks looking for a single to give her. The service being on point meant that the food was now less likely to be.
Christopher's shrimp for some reason came with the shell still on it:
For $13.99 you only get 6 of them. So you'd think it could at least come peeled. Maybe they'd claim that peeling it yourself is part of how this dish works and people enjoy it or something like that, but then you notice they didn't actually clean the shrimp -- the bowels are still there.
(If you ever see that dark string on the back of the shrimp, it's their feces. And it was supposed to be removed.)
On top of that -- and I'm probably about the furthest thing from picky -- my tofu dish actually had a "urine" like flavor to it. It's one of those things where if I posted it on Yelp, it would sound like I was trying to be funny. But no, it literally had a flavor resembling urine. I don't remember the last time I haven't eaten something because it didn't taste good. I just eat whatever you throw at me (if it's vegan). But not this. I had to stop eating after 3 or 4 tries.
I'm on my way back there right now to try to get refunded for the shrimp. It hung out in the fridge over night so that I could bring it and show it to them.
If they don't refund, they'll be getting one of their more memorable negative reviews.
Really I should probably try to get refunded for the tofu too. But there's less of a specific issue with it -- "tastes terrible" is more subjective than "there's feces in this one".
I'm really comfortable returning the shrimp; the tofu seems more in the "don't expect me to ever come back" category of things.