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I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

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Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#161

Post by moate »

pj_mukh wrote: post #36

Sorry, my engineering my mind craves a solution. Wouldn't forcing people into an asynchronous online/mobile queue be the best solution? You can favour verified locals if you want there, control exactly how many orders you take in, and nip any potential disappointments (leading to bad Yelp reviews) right in the bud. I've trekked to enough "Best in " places and been the "outsider" grumbling waiting outside in a giant l…

You're trying to engineer a solution to the problem of "how do you make everyone happy" (albeit in a specific scenario). If you change things, someone will be upset by this. At best you can hope to optimize this to make the MOST people happy and the LEAST people unhappy, but you can't get a perfect score here.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#162

Post by wallflower »

gerbilly wrote: post #148
peterwwillis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a week there, and it's on the list of things to do, why wouldn't you go do it? Are you going to go all the way out there and not do the things? Then you'd be missing out! We all want a magical experience in a drive-thru window, and we fear missing out. If you live on the east coast, you could go to the Caribbean cheaper and quicker, but it's not Hawaii! . The Caribbean is beautiful, but Hawaii is magical!…

> If you have a week there, and it's on the list of things to do, why wouldn't you go do it? Maybe one day. I guess I'd rather pack in as much surfing as I can. I don't feel I've missed out on the Haleakalā sunrise thing, I just think it's funny that that is always the first thing people ask. Some of them seem to almost discount my trip when they found out I didn't go.

Due to the weather, you can miss out even if you had gone.

I went to Haleakalā after being recommended to go after a visit to the big island. The early morning that I went via a local outfitter, it was raining cats and dogs, visibility nada, so it was wet and uncomfortable. I had opted for the ride down the mountain on bikes option which seemed adventurous at the time. Riding down fearfully slick roads and switchbacks with limited visibility and having the bike ride leaders joke about having to pull guests out of ravines with ropes did not help. But that was my personal Haleakalā experience.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#163

Post by dcow »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #129
geofft wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some things in a capitalist society that are the domain of philanthropy, and some things that are not. A school or library might be a suitable target of philanthropy, but a burger place or pub or barber shop isn't; there's no way to fund it and have it end up the same sort of place it would be on its own. At best, it can be a target of a GoFundMe or something - but that's just to pay operating costs. The st…

Can't you buy a burger place, reduce the price to give zero profit, adjust the price on the fly to ensure zero profit. Sure you won't necessarily meet demand, but there's no inherent reason quality need suffer(?). Or, have a coop where staff wages soak up all excess revenue, giving zero profit. You'd want a contingency, and a savings account if you seek to expand the business, but they're not profit. We could do that…

I love this idea: zero profit capitalism. Sure some people would abuse savings accounts more than others, but taxing standing profits on a gradually increasing scale the longer they stand (sure the market already does this at a minute level, but it's not enough to deter wealth hoarding) seems like an effective way to solve the wealth extraction problem corporations introduce.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#165

Post by monksy »

tptacek wrote: post #135

It's hard to blame Kevin Alexander for this, because Steve Stanich played ball with the review, like most restaurants would. If he wanted to, he could have asked not to be featured in the list, and Alexander probably would have complied; otherwise, he could have done other things to make it clear to his customers that he wasn't interested in fulfilling the role the ranking carved out for him. We see this effect in Ch…

Right now I would say that Bad Apple is about the best burger place. Kumas stretched themselves too thin with expansion and ignoring service quality in their original restaurant.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#166

Post by elvinyung »

moate wrote: post #158
elvinyung wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, have you had great noodles? A crash course on Japanese culture: kodawari . It's a singular, artisanal obsession with making a single thing perfect. In Japan, there are restaurants dedicated to making only one thing, only yakitori or tempura or soba or a myriad other things or, of course, ramen. With such dedication, you elevate such trivial things, even such an extremely unremarkable thing like ramen, into a hi…

Counterpoint: there is no objectively perfect opinion (except this one :D). When it comes to anything, there will always be people who care at 100%, and people who care at 0%, and when it comes to art or cuisine or web design best practices there's going to be disagreements on it. And that's fine. It's not dismissive in a morally bad way. It's just food (full disclosure: I was a chef for over 10 years, I have a LOT o…

That's fair; I think I'm slightly more-pissed-than-usual about this just because it's very easy to dismissive of ramen, especially in North America, because all people remember are those deep-fried dehydrated brick fixtures of every college dorm. It is precisely that it doesn't look like traditional fine dining, or even New American cuisine, that I think a lot of people think it's nothing worth looking at. It's really, really easy to say "this is what it is to me, how could you ever do anything interesting with it?"

I just kind of wish more people (including me) would try more things, you know? :P

(I guess I'm channeling my inner David Chang right now.)

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#167

Post by monksy »

paulie_a wrote: post #140
tptacek wrote: post #135

It's hard to blame Kevin Alexander for this, because Steve Stanich played ball with the review, like most restaurants would. If he wanted to, he could have asked not to be featured in the list, and Alexander probably would have complied; otherwise, he could have done other things to make it clear to his customers that he wasn't interested in fulfilling the role the ranking carved out for him. We see this effect in Ch…

It's umami. Au cheval is overrated with the pretentious staff.

I'm not a fan of Small Chauval (too expensive for what you get), and I'm not going to wait 2-3hrs for a burger.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#168

Post by wycy »

craftyguy wrote: post #155
stickfigure wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...but it would invite a secondary market for these cards. The logistics of fabricating them would suck, and you have to look at an ID to judge if a card should offered anyway. Plus having special cards feels corporate, not homey. Looking at an ID for locals discount is pretty well trodden ground.

> but it would invite a secondary market for these cards There are already markets for fake IDs, so unless you're suggesting that small local restaurants purchase scanners to confirm the authenticity of each ID, it would be relatively easy to circumvent this check too. (Some states require IDs to be scanned for selling alcohol, but many, e.g. in Oregon, do not, and the only check is some employee looking at a card in…

The high prices would be to ward off these one-time customers who are only there for the single instagram photo. If someone is invested enough to make a fake ID just for cheaper burgers, presumably they're going to be repeat customers that develop a relationship with the restaurant, which is what he wants.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#169

Post by wallflower »

elvinyung wrote: post #126
nradov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right I've seen hipsters in the Bay Area lined up for hours just to eat ramen noodles ! What's wrong with these people? Even great noodles aren't much better than average noodles. I really can't understand it.

Well, have you had great noodles? A crash course on Japanese culture: kodawari . It's a singular, artisanal obsession with making a single thing perfect. In Japan, there are restaurants dedicated to making only one thing, only yakitori or tempura or soba or a myriad other things or, of course, ramen. With such dedication, you elevate such trivial things, even such an extremely unremarkable thing like ramen, into a hi…

Thanks for bringing up _kodawari_.

I assume you have seen Tampopo. In case you have not and for others, it is a VHS-era film comedy about two truck drivers who help a struggling roadside chef learn how to really make noodles.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampopo

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#170

Post by [deleted] »

mr_ndrsn wrote: post #39
JPKab wrote: post #19

People are lemmings. Franklin's BBQ in Austin has hours long lines. It's very good brisket. The hill country of Texas is FILLED with equally good brisket joints that don't have lines. People who wait in line for 4 hours won't admit this. Cognitive dissonance kicks in, and Franklin's is unique and better than everyone else in their minds. Try telling a person that their Bose headphones are overpriced and overrated, an…

Holy crap, Salt Lick BBQ was a let down when I was in Austin. We would have been better served going anywhere else, and will be sure to do so the next time I'm down there!

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