You may find it interesting that Yelp encourages the story telling. At http://www.yelp.com/elite, they say: "the more people can relate to you, the more your reviews and opinions start to matter."

I think the idea is that as you use the site, if you find someone whose tastes seem to match yours and you can relate to the stories/backgrounds that they include on the site, then you can better trust their reviews for places you haven't been, similar to how you might trust a friend's recommendations over that of a random person; it also gives you a guide on how to filter their recommendations.

In this case, the personal information can be helpful to you in that you know you can place less emphasis on the review.