This system could always fall back to the more general populace review if there isn't enough data from your friends/acquaintances.

I agree a 5-star rating system tells you little. But it's at least some signal and combine that with also displaying how many people have contributed ratings (which would be trivial in these mockup examples) and you now have a pretty strong signal as to the quality of the place without ever touching the content of the reviews. This is a sample of one of course, but of the probably hundreds of restaurants I've been to with 4-star Yelp ratings that have over 20 reviews, I don't think I've been to even one where I wouldn't agree that yes - this deserves at least a 4-star rating.