Every Friday, Roots in Alpharetta features an article on food and dining in a series I like to call Foodie Friday.

I’ve come to rely on a few online restaurant review websites. As web 2.0 and social media continue to grow, the influence of the online review portals multiplies. Here is my take on those that have the biggest footprint in the Alpharetta area. Each of these places have their own uniqueness so try several and see what you like best.

urbanspoon.com

Growing very fast. As someone who writes reviews, I don’t care for them much. On the site you give a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. Such a binary opinion isn’t very granular. But what I’ve found is that after a restaurant gets dozens or hundreds of these binary reviews, urbanspoon tends to get it right. The truly outstanding joints percolate to the top.

Urbanspoon is very good at integrating external blog content into their site. There are not a great deal of food bloggers in the northern burbs, something I hinted at recently. But nevertheless, they can direct you to cool content elsewhere. I’ve also found that they are more likely to be the first site to have reviews of brand new restaurants.

yelp.com

By far my favorite. Yelp mixes social media with online reviews. I’d say the functionality leans more towards the reviews and less towards social media. But you can have friends and vote on your favorite reviews. Yelp tends to be bigger in the cities where they have a paid community manager on the ground (of which Atlanta is one of them). The average yelp users also tends to be younger, a Gen-Y type person.

Yelp’s presence in Alpharetta was pretty thin a few years ago. Today they are much larger. I find the reviews to be well written and funny. If you’re reading reviews of a restaurant, I suggest sorting by the “useful” tag and go from there.

Citysearch

Losing ground in my opinion. For a long time they were just about the only game in town for Alpharetta reviews. That all has changed. They still have a lot of local reviews but I find that they are not as deep and well written as yelp. Still worth looking at.

Others

I don’t know of any other sites that have a large presence here. Higher end review sites like Zagat and Gayot simply lack depth in Alpharetta. Yahoo and Google are a decent alternative, and of course they integrate well with other features on those sites. Google probably wins on the sheer number of reviews, but I find them to be almost complete devoid of detail. You’ll find reviews like “I like this restaurant. They kick ass.”

Things to look out for… Watch out for shill reviews from business owners or their acquaintances. In general you want to trust reviews from people who have reviewed a LOT of other local restaurants. If a reviewer isn’t active on the website, I wouldn’t rely on them much. Yelp does a great job here. They will simply hide reviews like this. This practice is getting them into some hot water, but it keeps the integrity of the review process in check. I appreciate that and I think general users of the site do too. Other websites are not as proactive so it is up to you to filter these shill reviews on your own.

Most of these sites have feature-rich apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Yelp and Urbanspoon have some very cool mobile apps, with neat location-aware technology.

Thanks for finding my blog, Roots in Alpharetta. If you’re interested in food and dining in and around Alpharetta, check out my weekly feature called Foodie Friday.

Contrived

Adjective – obviously planned, artificial

That’s our word of the day, and it was the first word I thought of after setting foot inside Cheeky. Taquerias are popping up everywhere, and most are not true taco shacks. To Cheeky’s credit, they are going for that taco shack feel. But you don’t take a brand spanking new strip mall space and pretend it is a shack. Ask anyone who’s been to Jim and Nicks if they thought it truly felt like a down home barbecue place. All the folksy pictures and faux farm implements on the wall don’t change the fact that you’re in a STRIP MALL! So the fake garage doors at Cheeky were not fooling me, nor were the menus printed on wood.

My other first impression was that management was over-training the staff. They opened on Monday. I was there on Tuesday. Two employees asked me if this was my first visit. Duh! If you’ve been to Chepes Mexican, it is kinda like that. The employees are almost too friendly, to the point of smothering you with their helpfulness.

But even with these annoyances, I kinda liked Cheeky’s. For lunch I tried the trio of tacos. They use fresh ingredients and combine them in creative ways. I found my tacos to be a good mix of spice, heat and sweetness from things like pineapple salsa. They also had contrasting textures. The sliced pork in one taco was soft, delicate and flavorful. The shrimp tacos were pretty good, but could use a few more of the critters. The crab croquette tacos (a signature item) were just fair, I wasn’t impressed. The beans (both refried and charro) left a lot to be desired.

I really liked Cheeky’s bar. They feature tables with self-serve beer taps. You’ll also find TVs in the bar that measure how much beer of each brand has been served that night. If you are competitive in nature, this might be dangerous. But it is a concept I’ve yet to see in the northern burbs. Their margaritas also looked pretty good.

All in all, I think Cheeky might be a winner. They are in a prime location at the Avenue, right across from Barnes and Noble. It is certainly not like your run-of-the-mill ubiquitous Mexican restaurant, pushing entrees called “Speedy Gonzales”. Is it in the same league as Pure Taqueria or CANS Taqueria? No way, Jose.

Every Friday, Roots in Alpharetta features an article on food and dining in a series I like to call Foodie Friday.

This place is cursed. No, not this particular restaurant, but this space. 3070 Windward Plaza Suite P, the back corner end unit on the double decker strip mall. As many as ten restaurants have operated in this strip mall, most of them successfully. But whoever opens up in suite P is doomed from the start. Maryland’s will be no different… mark my words.

First in suite P was Horseradish Grill. Next came Real Food, which was ‘real’ good in my opinion. A decent place to take clients. Then came the Loafing Leprechaun, an Irish pub that was mediocre at best. Now you’ll find Maryland’s Crab House.

I started seeing signs for Maryland’s about a month ago but found very little about them online. They are still thinly reviewed on the various online review websites. They also don’t have a website of their own. Very strange. I didn’t know what to expect in coming here for lunch yesterday. Real Food was a classy joint, so maybe Maryland’s will be too?

Well, not so much. The decor is that of a cheap fish house. They have fake crab traps and fishing nets on the walls. Just very tacky. Yet at the same time you’ll find white tablecloths and napkins. I don’t really know what they are trying to be, a fancy joint to entertain clients or something out of Myrtle Beach? The prices on the dinner menu suggest that of a fancy joint. The lunch options suggest deep fried tourist grub.

I ordered a pretty straightforward fried shrimp platter. On the lunch menu, this is about nine bucks. You’ll get about a dozen small to medium sized shrimp in a peppery batter. I was a little disappointed that cocktail sauce didn’t come with my meal, but they provided some upon request. The shrimp were decent but nothing to write home about. Most lunch items come with steak fries and two hush puppies. Drink prices are steep.

My wife ordered shrimp and grits. Strangely enough, the shrimp on this entree were also fried. The combination didn’t go well together.

I couldn’t get past the abundance of fried food on the lunch menu. That along with the decor made this place feel like a Myrtle Beach tourist trap. They should be serving this stuff on newspaper in a basket and not on white tablecloths. Maybe the dinner experience is different (it ought to be with the price tag).

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by predicting another restaurant failure in suite P. Maybe one day a restaurant will thrive here. Inside it is cool space for a restaurant… just not THIS restaurant.