As we started our trip to Virginia yesterday, we listened to various tunes appropriate for a pre-rapture road trip. First up was Freebird, “If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me.” At various points along the trip, we listened to other songs that fit the trip. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, we pulled over to switch drivers so Kim could search on the cellphone for restaurants while I drove. The restaurants we had chosen before we left didn’t seem as promising as we had thought. One was about fifteen minutes of the interstate and had mixed reviews. The other was in the middle of a college town that is having graduation today.

Kim spent some time using Yelp’s app, and we finally got off the road in Grantville, PA. There were three choices. One was a hotel restaurant that got good reviews. However, the hotel had some crowd in it and the idea of eating in a hotel restaurant didn’t really fit the bill. The second choice was a dive bar that sounded promising, but perhaps not with Fiona. We ended up using the GPS to find our way to ShakeDown BBQ. It was really good, with a nice smoker and pile of wood out back. We need to go out and give it some good reviews, especially for people heading down I-81. Afterwards, Kim asked what the implications of location based restaurant review sites for national food chains might be.

Why do people stop at McDonald’s or Waffle House? They know what they are going to get. Stopping at The Farmer’s Wife’s Country Kitchen could provide something really good, or something really disappointing. As more people start using location based restaurant reviews, we could see a return to the local mom and pop restaurants that serve up great food the way we used to see before the branding and malling of America.

Of course, a lot of people don’t use location based restaurant reviews on their smartphones yet, so we may not see it as a disrupting technology all that soon, but in my mind, the sooner the better. Oh, and if you’re ever traveling on I-81 around Grantville, PA and looking for some really good food, be sure to checkout ShakeDown BBQ, but check in on your smartphone so you can find it and be sure that they’re open when you are passing by. And yes, they take plastic.