A few years ago, when Zomato was still finding its feet, a handful of food reviewers were finding their voice. They had no experience in the culinary field, but they liked to eat. Slowly they discovered, they also liked to write. One of them, Dr Yatin Gadgil, a consultant in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, says, "What Zomato did pretty well at that time was that it created a nice enough platform, which incentivised people to write well and honestly. I realised that there weren't a million different reviews. Some [people] would write two to three lines; some would write really badly; and, there was a bunch of four to seven people who wrote really well."

Over time, they came to be known as Zomato Connoisseurs, with their own ratings such as 8, 9, 10 and so on, much like an Uber rating. So, the higher the rating, the more you can trust their word. A few of these were Palki Hatangadi, general manager at Tommy Hilfiger; Arpita Menon, EVP at a television channel; Karan Karayi, marketing manager at a media firm; Shravanika Govindarajan, a chartered accountant and manager with Pantaloons; an unnamed expat from Bandra who goes by the moniker of AA Connoisseur; and Dr Gadgil. "They are the kind of people, if they have experienced something and are writing about it, you know it's a genuine thing," says Menon. Of the thousands of reviewers on the platform, they stood out because of their way with words. They were the wheat, separated from the chaff.