This downtown Boise restaurant’s Yelp page got locked. You can probably guess why.

Even as a busy chef, Kris Komori was aware that there’s a Yelp page for his downtown Boise restaurant, Kin.

What he was blissfully unaware of? The page has been disabled.

“As a rule,” Komori said with a chuckle, “I don’t look at Yelp.”

Last week, that was probably a wise decision for the three-time James Beard Award nominee.

On Aug. 15, Kin (stylized as “KIN”) informed customers that it would require proof of vaccination when its tasting room debuted. Kin also accepts a negative COVID-19 test. Although Komori and fellow Kin co-owner Remi McManus received support on social media, the policy also got blasted. Atrociously, it was even compared to Nazism.

On Aug. 17, I wrote an article about Kin’s health and safety rules.

Twenty-four hours later — the day the tasting room officially opened — Yelp locked its Kin page. Near the top, there’s now a prominent “Unusual Activity Alert.”

“I had heard that there were one-star reviews coming in,” Komori said, “but that’s kind of out of our hands.”

Komori and McManus already have their hands full. Kin, 999 W. Main St., serves creative, prix-fixe meals in a communal setting. There’s nothing like it in Idaho.

Yelp moderation

Moderating pages and deleting off-topic, so-called reviews is a way for Yelp to protect businesses. To strive for accurate content. Consumer trust is the crowd-sourced website’s top priority, a Yelp spokesperson said via email.

Komori and McManus had never “claimed” the Yelp page. But after my article ran, McManus signed into Yelp, created a new, official Kin page and claimed it. Of three reviews left so far — all in the past three days — two are obviously garbage. One doesn’t even try to hide its ridiculous political agenda: “Yelp shows that they require vaccine proof. This is Idaho, you might want to consider changing that or moving to a liberal state.”

Plagued by such one-star uselessness, Kin’s new page might be heading for the same short-term fate as its previous, unclaimed ruin. Frozen in time, the original includes this message: “This business recently received increased public attention, which often means people come to this page to post their views on the news. While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to this incident, we’ve temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page as we work to investigate the content you see here reflects actual consumer experiences rather than the recent events. ... If you’re here to leave a review based on a first-hand experience with the business, please check back at a later date.”

Slamming a restaurant without ever having set foot in the place? That’s pathetic. It’s also predictable in a nation dragged down by a boneheaded minority hellbent on keeping the coronavirus around forever.

Give Yelp credit. Using algorithms to detect idiocy, it slaps Unusual Activity Alerts on pages that receive a barrage of attention regarded to COVID stances. “This includes incidents where someone refused to comply with COVID safety measures, disclosed either a pro-mask or anti-mask stance, denied the existence of COVID and more,” the spokesperson said.

“In fact, since January 2021, we’ve placed more than 150 Unusual Activity Alerts on Yelp pages related to these incidents, which has resulted in the removal of more than 5,500 reviews for violating our content policies.”

Since the start of the pandemic, Yelp has removed more than 13,000 reported reviews for violating COVID content guidelines, he added.

That’s insane, people. Don’t restaurants already have it difficult enough?

Until Kin opened its tasting room, the restaurant survived the pandemic through 18 months of home-delivery meals, outdoor nights on the patio, “PiKINic” events in a grassy amphitheater and a cocktail bar.

COVID effect

In real life, the new tasting room is going well. It’s hard to quantify whether the COVID policies have helped or hurt business, Komori said. “But we’ve received great support, and it’s shown in the reservations.”

“We could always use more support,” he added.

About 75 percent of Kin’s customers were new during the first week or so. But that’s typical for a new restaurant, Komori explained. They made the COVID decision because a significant number of longtime customers — from their prior restaurant, State and Lemp — were not comfortable dining at their latest venture, he said.

Kin’s pandemic policy is a rarity in Idaho. But it is not the focal point of the restaurant.

“Most people say nothing,” Komori said. “And we’ve had some people say that they felt comfortable knowing the decisions we’ve made.

“We do have people that still say they are not comfortable coming in. That is still a large number for us,” he added. “We applaud their decision, just like everyone else’s decisions. We’re OK with it.”

This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 4:50 PM.