Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star • Hacker News Board

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#141

Post by beachstartup » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 3:29 PM UTC

mattkevan wrote: post #137

beisner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how tongue in cheek you're being, but for those for whom English isn't a first language, calling a large city like DC or NYC a 'town' is pretty common, and is a more colloquial way to describe a region rather than to indicate the size of the named region. Often it is used interchangeably with 'place', for instance: "I've lived in New York City all my life, I've got to get out of that town."

London is often called a town, e.g. London Town. If you said "I'm going into town" or "I got it in town" most people would know where you meant.

also uptown, downtown, cross-town, going out of town... town has no connotation of size in English. in fact you have to use modifiers like 'little town', 'big town', etc.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#142

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 3:30 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #135

r00fus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must respectfully disagree. China is the worlds manufacturing center. The power it projects globally cannot be understated.

Let's be realistic here, the only reason China is the worlds manufacturing center, is because Western companies are exploiting their cheap labor. Beyond that, they crank out everyone's cheap knockoffs.

[deleted]

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#143

Post by yeukhon » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #89

yeukhon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wild guess, however, is that many of these three-star places are in some ancient / traditional / cultural towns.

Not at all. When you have the requisite density of Michelin reviewers, you can be in the arse-end of nowhere and still get your stars if your food, service and venue are up to scratch.

I am not saying it can't, but I am saying many could turn out to be cultural towns rather than big cities like NYC or London.

And to the person who downvoted me: just so you know, I rarely care about this, but if you downvote on a wild guess, you need to double check your interpretation of "wild guess."

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#144

Post by agentgt » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

I feel ambiance and decor of a restaurant is highly underrated. It is one of the reasons I do not like food trucks (I assume a street food stall is analogous but perhaps I'm wrong). There is a difference between dining and just eating something good. Reviewers seem to harp on taste and service but honestly I can put up with both (with taste there is always alcohol and with service ... you can just be patient).

Of course there are exceptions to this if the food truck is positioned in a great place (some Hawaii food trucks come to mind).

I'm not saying I can make better food than a Michelin star chef but one of the reasons I go out to eat is for an experience and that experience for me has to be more than it tastes really good. I feel like many review sites, magazines, etc are ignoring this.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#145

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

agentgt wrote: post #144

I feel ambiance and decor of a restaurant is highly underrated. It is one of the reasons I do not like food trucks (I assume a street food stall is analogous but perhaps I'm wrong). There is a difference between dining and just eating something good. Reviewers seem to harp on taste and service but honestly I can put up with both (with taste there is always alcohol and with service ... you can just be patient). Of cou…

I'm the opposite, I only care about atmosphere as long as there's a mostly clean and comfortable place to sit. One of my favorite Indian "restaurants" in college was a just a guy that converted a camper into a kitchen and parked it in an empty parking lot.

It took forever to get your food, since it was just one guy, and there was no place to sit. But I was happy enough to walk down the street to a park and enjoy my delicious food on a picnic table under an oak tree.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#146

Post by novembermike » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #95

dak1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being classified as a "superpower" is a term in political science that means the country has the ability to project unparalleled influence on a global scale. Don't let the prominence of discussions of China's "rise" fool you though, it is most certainly not a superpower. It certainly has the capacity to be one some day, but its power projection capability is fairly restricted to its immediate vicinity in East Asia st…

And China couldn't? Well beside them making everything, they own or underwrite a vast amount of global infrastructure too. They can buy a lot more influence than the US could.

When faced with economic warfare, a country can simply nationalize all of the enemy country's assets. Who cares if you own every oil well in California, if you try to exploit that we just move troops in and take control. How does China defend the infrastructure they own?

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#147

Post by snark42 » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

Loic wrote: post #104

nether wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michelin critics are also trained to evaluate restaurants on specific Michelin criteria and to not just give their personal take on the food. So "good enough" is very specific here to what Michelin considers important.

This is true, you need a scale and criteria which can be used by all the reviewers. This is really what matters for the consistency of the grades. Note that the Michelin is also reviewing hot-dog stands in the US and in Asia a couple of small Sushi shops have a star or I think even two.

> Note that the Michelin is also reviewing hot-dog stands in the US and in Asia a couple of small Sushi shops have a star or I think even two.

They're also doing Michelin Bib Gourmands for "quality food at a reasonable price" which is what most hot-dog stand type places have gotten (I'm sure some got stars too.)

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#148

Post by nicolas_t » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #108

princeb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considers-self-Chinese, can't-even-properly-speak-Mandarin i don't think true ethnic chinese speak mandarin. that language is something that was only recently (in the grand span of chinese history) imposed upon the rest of china by a bunch of mandarins in Peking. in fact if you look at the chinese diaspora in overseas chinatowns, the predominant language might be something like cantonese. these people have avoided…

Yes, what you say is true, which is the point: these people are multi-generational isolates. Therefore, from a mainland Chinese perspective, they are considered less Chinese, and their tastes (culinary or otherwise) unrepresentative. It's like, if you had an Italian grandfather you never met, never having visited Italy and literally unable to speak any Italian, you visit Sicily once on holiday, pick up a few words, r…

Ok, so if I go to Sichuan and eat Sichuanese food which is widely different from the food in Beijing or Shanghai which one is the correct "mainland Chinese" food? It's rather difficult to call any food traditional mainland Chinese food when there's so much differences between regions even.

And on your comment on language, go to Sichuan and then tell me if the chef in a food stall speaks decent Mandarin? What about people in Xinjiang? or people in Wenzhou?

Of course, educated professionals tend to speak relatively good Mandarin (they have to) but don't tell me that the Mandarin of people working in food stalls in the country side is any better than the Mandarin of people working in food stalls in Singapore.

People in Singapore are mostly Hokkien, Teo Chew and Cantonese, they claim to be oversea Chinese but definitely do not claim to be Mainland Chinese but, they've kept a big part of the Chinese culture and customs from their regions (and yes, the food in Chaozhou is much more similar to Teo Chew food in Singapore than to food in Shanghai or most regions in China).

I think you're just unfairly biased against Singapore for various reasons and don't want to admit it...

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#149

Post by r00fus » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

billskills wrote: post #110

philovivero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not right. If you discount China as a superpower, then you discount a country that could single-handedly throw the entire world into a state of political, economic, and military chaos overnight. Defining power as military-only is as naîve as defining it as male-only or violence-only or sword-only. You are right. One should take care defining a word so narrowly that it can only apply to one thing. If "superpower"…

Look, you eggheads can whine about China's economy all you want, fact is, "power projection"/"force projection" is a _military term_ for the ability to assert military force in a given part of the world in a short period of time. You can argue about _that_ being US-centric if you want, and maybe you should, because most accountings of that metric have the US far ahead of the rest of the world.

> you eggheads

Your point is diminished, not enhanced, by your pejoratives.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#150

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

fpgaminer wrote: post #34

yomly wrote: post #12

Really fantastic achievement and a really down to earth take on food - good to see Michelin not adopting a stuffy elitist stance on their awards. I shudder, however, when I think of the queues to try this tasty goodness. For reference, queues can easily top 90 mins if a hawker stall is locally well reviewed! And just over the sea, the queues for Tim Ho Wan (Michelin star dim sum in Hong Kong) are also already oppress…

Queues like that always make me wonder if the restaurant is charging enough. If demand is outstripping supply, perhaps they should raise the prices until they have _just_ enough customers. Otherwise it seems like they're throwing money away and not capitalizing on success. It's the Pulp Fiction $5 shake; if your food is good enough people will certainly pay more for it, even if the price seems absurd at first. Note:…

I agree that it is an American perspective, but not everyone shares it. Case in point: my wife offers horseback riding lessons and is very good at it. She is recommended enough that new clients have said "you got such good recommendations that I wasn't sure I could afford you."

Yet she charges under $40/hour even though I remind her that she could easily get north of $60/hour based on what I've seen people will pay. Her response: "I want to make it accessible to people." Great motivation, but poor profit.

I should add, though, that part of it is what another poster mentioned below: beyond a certain price point you tend to get a class of customer that's simply annoying to deal with.