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After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

nytimes.com

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Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#41

Post by analog31 »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #6

Great article. If you ask a real chef, "What do home chefs do wrong the most?" They will often say, "Not enough butter, not enough salt."

Since my mom moved to town, we've been eating at her place frequently. She uses a lot of recipes from the NY Times. They are heavy. Lots of butter, cheese, coconut milk, etc. We've asked my mom to cut those things in half.

She's a very good cook, and the things she improvises or makes from memory are much lighter fare. I learned to cook from her, so my meals tend to be fairly light too.

Sure, the fat and salt (and don't forget sugar) are yummy, but they'll kill you. There needs to be a compromise.

An amusing aside, Julia Child said that it's perfectly honorable to be a home cook and not a chef. Making stuff that's good but healthy is an art unto itself, especially if you're feeding vegetarians.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#42

Post by hoten »

quirino wrote: post #35
BariumBlue wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of what made it so enthralling to read was this grand act of human perversity that a single woman would endure This is part of why I enjoy watching a couple of RuneScape YouTubers. The sheer time commitments they put in for seemingly minor gains is like gore but for amputating off their own time effort & energy and throwing it into a bottomless maw.

Can you suggest a couple of channels? I've never played RuneScape but those videos sound right up my alley.

Start with Settled's swampletics.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWiMc19-qaA3u1ZawZQIKAh0B...

The other good one from the same channel is Tileman, where he is limited to only using tiles that have been "unlocked"

His current feature is Lowlife, where if he takes a single point of damage his account gets deleted.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#43

Post by UIUC_06 »

fuzztester wrote: post #25
matwood wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If we're talking about restaurants and not fast food, it's portion size that's typically the issue in the US. Oddly enough, the higher end restaurants start to move in the other direction and shrink portion sizes.

>I disagree. If we're talking about restaurants and not fast food, it's portion size that's typically the issue in the US. i think you are right. i have always seen big portion sizes in restaurants when i have gone to the US. also, very recently, i saw a youtube video in which a french person says the same thing. they said that even though the French eat a lot of fat, their overall portion sizes are smaller than thos…

My own impression from a week in Paris is that you're right: if you get the "menu" at most restaurants (appetizer, entree, dessert), you walk out full but not stuffed.

The weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, supposedly make you feel like that. I haven't taken them myself. It's like you don't really want any more.

Americans seem to feel entitled to two meals for the price of one, and they may or may not eat them both in the restaurant. (If they don't finish, they take the rest home with them)

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#44

Post by UIUC_06 »

paulpauper wrote: post #10
cm2012 wrote: post #9

Just start on semaglutides, and eat in smaller portions like the women critics he describes in the article do. I think quitting a good critic job for your health is pretty silly when there are modern workarounds that mostly solve the issue.

how would that work? the job is to eat the food

No, the job is to rate the restaurant for the readers. A reasonable portion can be enough for that.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#45

Post by EGreg »

paxys wrote: post #39
EGreg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to joke that if you go to the movies or restaurants etc. you could open pass-through tax LLCs (which are “disregarded entities” at the IRS) and write those off as a business expense, as long as you had a website as a food or movie critic / reviewer, and even had a way to subscribe for some paid memberships (eg Patreon) and also advertising with affiliate sales (eg Amazon) for recipes, movie rentals etc. You kn…

> Much of your personal lifestyle could then be deducted as a business expense on your schedule C, being “necessary and ordinary” for your various LLCs That's not how it works. You can maybe deduct the price of your movie ticket and mileage to drive to the theater. Anything beyond that and the IRS will be up your ass in an instant.

Well that’s what I’m talking about. The price of all your movie tickets and mileage to drive to the theater, perhaps even your netflix subscription etc.

Or if you’re a travel blogger, the plane rides and hotel stays become a business expense if you’re doing it for profit as part of an LLC. You have to have an actual business plan with memberships, advertisements, etc.

You could be making money with it. But even if you aren’t yet, as long as you’re trying, the business expenses made by an LLC that you are investing into, are deductible on your personal Schedule C! Are they not?

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#46

Post by stvltvs »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #20

Couldn’t the negative effects of 4 rich meals a week be countered by eating healthier the rest of the time and having a consistent exercise routine?

One big cheat meal per week can undo a lot of work. It's easy to blow through a entire day's worth of calories and macros at one sitting let alone four!

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#47

Post by EGreg »

ebiester wrote: post #37
EGreg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to joke that if you go to the movies or restaurants etc. you could open pass-through tax LLCs (which are “disregarded entities” at the IRS) and write those off as a business expense, as long as you had a website as a food or movie critic / reviewer, and even had a way to subscribe for some paid memberships (eg Patreon) and also advertising with affiliate sales (eg Amazon) for recipes, movie rentals etc. You kn…

You’d have to get revenue against it.

Well, as many on HN know, lots of startups fail. Investors write that off as a capital loss.

Maybe one day, long term capital gains tax will be on the same level as income tax, and then people will stop trying to use things like 83b elections.

But regardless of that, if you invest into your own startup by buying equity or lending it money, that is NOT currently a taxable event. And then that LLC’s losses are passed through to your Schedule C.

It may be strange to have you buying shares in your company if you already have 100% of shares. But if you do a Limited Partnership with a few people, then all of you could be competing to buy shares in it and dilute the others. Those are non-taxable events. And the members of the LLC are also its staff, who go watch movies and review them. Then the tax deductions are claimed on Schedule K instead, by each partner.

I am only talking about a bona fide business. You don’t have to go all-out for each business you start, working 40 hours a week for each one. You could even go to the movies and restaurants once a week and save 30% by turning it into an actual business. Can’t you?

Do travel bloggers deduct their travel expenses as necessary and ordinary?

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#48

Post by slv77 »

EGreg wrote: post #33
shalmanese wrote: post #3

Right when FiveThirtyEight launched, they did a brilliant piece of content strategy in that one of their very first pieces was a quest to find the best burrito in America [1]. Anna Maria Barry-Jester self reportedly "traveled more than 20,000 miles around the United States and eaten 84 burritos in two rounds (to say nothing of the dozens of extracurricular burritos I polished off)." I was glued to the series as it pl…

I used to joke that if you go to the movies or restaurants etc. you could open pass-through tax LLCs (which are “disregarded entities” at the IRS) and write those off as a business expense, as long as you had a website as a food or movie critic / reviewer, and even had a way to subscribe for some paid memberships (eg Patreon) and also advertising with affiliate sales (eg Amazon) for recipes, movie rentals etc. You kn…

Others have tried and the IRS has even provided a helpful guide on if your endeavor is a hobby or a business (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/fs-08-23.pdf).

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#49

Post by carlosjobim »

Larrikin wrote: post #27
polar8 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating in restaurants is terrible for your health. Here's a study that finds a 49% increase in all-cause mortality risk for those who frequently eat meals prepared away from home. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33775622/ I have stopped eating out completely as I always feel gross and tired after a restaurant meal vs energized after home-cooked food. I think it's mostly due to cheap oils in quantities you would never…

There are certain foods that you can not reasonably make at home or are just extremely fussy and a huge waste of time to make at home. You won't achieve wok hei on your stove, your oven will not be ablr to achieve the high temperatures required for the best versions of certain foods, restaurants in your area will get priority from suppliers over what you find in the grocery store and even most farmers markets, and th…

Paradoxically, it's the fast food staples that are most difficult to do at home – because you need a fryer. Haute cuisine is no problem making at home, because fine dining is not based on using fryers. It can't be made with restaurant speed nor quantity, but you can get the same quality at home.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#50

Post by EGreg »

slv77 wrote: post #48
EGreg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to joke that if you go to the movies or restaurants etc. you could open pass-through tax LLCs (which are “disregarded entities” at the IRS) and write those off as a business expense, as long as you had a website as a food or movie critic / reviewer, and even had a way to subscribe for some paid memberships (eg Patreon) and also advertising with affiliate sales (eg Amazon) for recipes, movie rentals etc. You kn…

Others have tried and the IRS has even provided a helpful guide on if your endeavor is a hobby or a business ( https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/fs-08-23.pdf ).

Thanks for this! I didn’t know the guidelines were published. This is like FINCEN’s 2013 and 2019 guidances for cryptocurrencies.

“The limit on not-for-profit losses… does not apply to corporations except S Corporations”.

It doesn’t seem to mention LLCs. These are “disregarded entities” at the IRS level, so what does that mean? For tax purposes they are treated as sole proprietorships?

It seems to me there is some “minimum” level of bona-fide for-profit business that might be helpful to reach if you are a prolific traveler or movie goer or eat out in restaurants a lot. That’s my main point. A little bit of effort and you can write off thousands of dollars a year in business expenses while you also stand a chance of making money on top of it.

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