Someone made their backyard shed into the No. 1 restaurant in London on TripAdvisor

Garden shed.
(Image credit: iStock)

For a brief moment in time, London's top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor was a fake restaurant in a backyard shed. Oobah Butler used to make money writing fake reviews for restaurant owners who wanted to give their business a shot in the arm, which gave him the idea to see if he could create a TripAdvisor page for a fake restaurant. Somehow, Butler's fake food-slinger was not only approved on TripAdvisor — it became one of the most sought-after restaurants in all of London.

Writing for Vice, Butler explains how after buying a burner phone and building a website for his fake restaurant, The Shed At Dulwich, he staged some mouth-watering food photos — except the plates were actually concocted with shaving cream, discs of bleach, hot chocolate tablets, and paint. He then skirted TripAdvisor's fact-checkers by listing only the road as the address and marking the restaurant as appointment-only.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales

Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.