alt Hacker NewsYes, Google just removes them as a first step because this is the least amount of work for them. Theoretically there is an Google appeals process. After that it needs to go to court.
My guess is that often reviews are generalizing (easy mistake to make). E.g. they say "service is slow", when they should say: "When I was there on Thursday at noon service was slow for my table".
When reading a review, it should always be assumed that it is based off of one "visit". A negative review will probably never have more than a few visits and if they do they'd normally say "I used to come here a lot but after new ownership service sucks!"