Even Google ratings are sometimes gamed nowadays. This wasn't always the case, they used to be reliable. Tripadvisor ratings on the other hand were always garbage.

I recently had some really bad experiences with some fast food places in my corner of the world, at a train station as well.

They all had 4.9 stars but lots of 1 star reviews matching my experience. But also tons and tons of eerily similar 5 star reviews with a generic photo of the counter (no faces, no food) and a random name and glowing review of who "served" them. Which is impossible at those places.

I'm never going to look at ratings. The only use there is photos of menus, food, and the restaurant itself.

I sort ratings by worst but look at the reason. If the 1 stars are "the waitress was rude", then that's fine. I'm there to eat. I don't need them to flatter me. If the 1 stars are "the food smelled foul and I saw them mixing leftover soup back into the pot", I know to avoid it. I've seen both of these types a lot.

And I also do a quick sort by newest. If all the newest reviews are tourists, I know to steer clear. Tourists will give a convenience store egg sandwich 6 stars out of five. They'll write a full-on essay about the fine experience they had at a restaurant and saying it's obvious the chef put lots of care into the meal, not realizing it's a local chain restaurant that just pops things in the microwave. Then they'll take off 2 stars at a good place because the chef couldn't make them a gluten-free, rice-free, beef-free, soybean-free chicken burger (also, they have deadly poultry allergies so they can only eat chicken substitutes). I also see loads of these types of reviews.

I've seen this too, a lot of 1-star reviews from customers who wanted some substitution and didn't get it. Seems designed to be abused by unreasonable customers, cause one of those equates to ~3 honest customers saying "meh" with a 3-star review. I'd prefer the restaurant that doesn't have to charge extra to absorb the costs of avoiding that.