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A writer has told how he tricked TripAdvisor into making his Dulwich shed the number one ranked restaurant in London.

Oobah Butler said he came up with the idea to create a restaurant – complete with professional-looking website and exotic-sounding menu – earlier this year.

He wrote in Vice that photos of meals were created using household items such bleach, shaving foam and paint, and even Mr Oobah’s own foot.

Despite the fact the eatery was actually just a shed, he managed to get verification from TripAdvisor within weeks, before it climbed up the rankings as he and his friends wrote fake reviews.

The 26-year-old, who claims he used to make money writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor for £10 a post, told the Standard: “I am quite obsessed with TripAdvisor.

"It’s just a weird part of the internet, I’m fascinated with the whole thing. Just how you can manipulate it but everyone trusts it.

“So I thought why don’t I just make a fake restaurant. This is just me on my own, I had no idea it was going to get to number one.

“Then I realised how easy it was to climb the rankings. Getting all these reviews, some from people I didn’t even know.”

'The Shed' is described on its website as: "An appointment-only restaurant located in South London, The Shed has been operating privately for years.

“In 2017, it decided to open its doors. As of November that year, it was TripAdvisor's top-rated restaurant in London."

Meanwhile the menu is made up of meals defined by “moods” such as “contemplation”, “empathetic” and “comfort”.

“Comfort” consists of “Yorkshire blue Macaroni and Cheese seasoned with bacon shavings and served in a 600TC Egyptian cotton bowl.”

After Mr Butler, originally from the village of Feckenham in Worcestershire, bought a cheap mobile phone to register the restaurant to, he was inundated with calls.

He said: “We got to number one and it was the funniest thing that has ever happened to me, I think it was a Friday night, I was eating a pot noodle, I was tearing up with laughter.

“The power of that website is insane. I was getting 10 phone calls a day, it was ruining my life. Imagine waking up, hung over, and getting all these calls about your fake restaurant.

“I left my phone with a mate for a weekend and got 116 missed calls.

“People were trying to apply for jobs, PR agencies were calling, the council was trying to relocate the restaurant to a site it was developing in Bromley.”

Even Guardian restaurant critic Jay Rayner was taken in, tweeting: "At last: a restaurant that recognises food is all about mood.

“Of all the shed-based eating experiences out there this one sounds like the best. Or at least second best. (I have my own shed, hence). Personally I'm keen to try 'contemplation'."

Mr Butler added: “Eventually I thought, ‘I need to do something now’. My life had just been disappointing people, people literally begging for a table.

“I had people trying to guilt trip me saying, 'it’s my first night out having a child', I had celebrities calling, a couple of people wanted to travel from Canterbury.”

The journalist decided to open the restaurant for one day, two weeks after it had risen to the number one spot in early November.

Ten guests – two of them visiting the capital all the way from California – were served fancy-looking microwavable meals.

Mr Butler said: “We opened it up for one night only and tried to recreate the experience that people had said in their reviews.

“We served people ready meals dressed up as fancy meals. We used edible flowers. We had a DJ for ambiance.

“We had chickens there that people could theoretically select for their meal – like some restaurants have lobsters in a tank.

“It was really just a collection of chairs in a garden shed but all of them left saying how nice it was.”

TripAdvisor said in a statement: "Generally, the only people who create fake restaurant listings are journalists in misguided attempts to test us.

“As there is no incentive for anyone in the real world to create a fake restaurant it is not a problem we experience with our regular community – therefore this ‘test’ is not a real world example."