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Notes -
It's just about all I care about, assuming the low bars of "won't get food poisoning" and "don't have to wait 2 hours for a meal" are cleared. When reading Yelp or Google reviews for restaurants I find it incredibly frustrating to wade through paragraphs of descriptions of the service, atmosphere, or other things I couldn't give less of a shit about, and prefer those written by Asian immigrants, who typically get right to the point and focus exclusively on the quality of the food. Of course, I'm far from normal, and the fact that I have this problem is evidence that your typical restaurant-goer does in fact care more about ambiance than me.
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