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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

#121

Post by bigstrat2003 »

analog31 wrote: post #94
xanderlewis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was at least all in cups, it’d be somewhat more forgivable. I’ve even seen recipes using amounts of flour measured in a combination of cups and tablespoons! Actually, maybe that doesn’t sound as mad to everyone as it does to me… Anyway, it makes more sense hearing that sticks of butter are labelled in cups. I didn’t know that! In the UK, butter comes in 250g blocks.

Yeah, especially since the density of flour varies. All the home bakers I know either weigh their flour, or eyeball it like I do and live with the imprecision. I'd just let the flour mound over the top of the cup by a bit to make up for the tablespoons. ;-)

Agreed - eyeballing it (or volume measurement for that matter) is good enough for the vast majority of baking recipes. I have made some finicky recipes in my day, but generally you will not need the precision of measuring by weight. For some reason people online hype up how exact you "need" to be when baking, but it's just not true. Hilariously, people also act like you can just completely wing it with no precision at all when cooking on the stove, and that also isn't true. Both forms of cooking benefit from some measurements and consistency, but you don't have to go too crazy with it.

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

#123

Post by treme »

Johnsorc wrote: post #107

He had reviewed some of the restaurants that I previously opened/ran. He was generally a nice enough, but standoffish guy. I’ll never forget the feeling of realizing he was seated. One of those moments that you train for, and now it was game time . There are all sorts of tricks that people employ, cheat sheets with reviewers photos (there is one unfortunate photo of him that everyone has, it must be on every restaura…

running multiple restaurants in NYC must be quite an adventure. are you still in the business? what brought you to hn?

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

#124

Post by UIUC_06 »

analog31 wrote: post #94
xanderlewis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was at least all in cups, it’d be somewhat more forgivable. I’ve even seen recipes using amounts of flour measured in a combination of cups and tablespoons! Actually, maybe that doesn’t sound as mad to everyone as it does to me… Anyway, it makes more sense hearing that sticks of butter are labelled in cups. I didn’t know that! In the UK, butter comes in 250g blocks.

Yeah, especially since the density of flour varies. All the home bakers I know either weigh their flour, or eyeball it like I do and live with the imprecision. I'd just let the flour mound over the top of the cup by a bit to make up for the tablespoons. ;-)

> live with the imprecision

Exactly that. In a restaurant, you're really pressured to make it the same each time.

At home: Who cares? It's good that it's different every time.

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

#125

Post by xarope »

fuzztester wrote: post #111
UIUC_06 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>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) yes, when my parents used to go to the US, a few decades ago, they told us kids about this practice called using doggie bags. apparently people used to ask for the uneaten part of their restaurant orders to be packed in what was called a…

If my trips to the cheesecake factory are any indication, then yes, too much food, and let's doggy bag the rest of the yummy.

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

#126

Post by dredmorbius »

ghaff wrote: post #96
dredmorbius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that control at all for type of restaurant, both by market segment (e.g., fast food vs. sit-down fine dining), and by cuisine (e.g., "American" or "steakhouse" vs. various ethnic or vegetarian menus)? Because I could see a lot of variability amongst those. And without controls, the study will default strongly toward fast-food, doughnut shops, pizza, burger / franks stands, and the like. Several of which have pro…

I also suspect that a lot of the people who are eating out in restaurants all the time are on planes a lot and at late business dinners, many of which are determined by "safe" customer choices like steakhouses. (Though, without further info, I also suspect to it defaulting to fast food on an absolute basis.)

Also: truckers (largest single occupational category in many classifications), cabbies, trades workers, etc., etc. If you're in a captive market, whether that's airports, convention centres, motorway service areas, lunch wagon, lunchroom, etc., your choices are going to be limited.

On business travellers vs. truckers, I'm finding ~ 3.5 million truckers in the US, who all but certainly eat on the road at least one meal per day (local) and more likely 3+ (long-haul). https://schneiderjobs.com/blog/truck-drivers-in-usa>.

For corporate travel: there are ~400 million long-distance business trips annually https://www.trondent.com/business-travel-statistics/>. Trips-per-person is harder to find, though one source gives 6.8 trips/year, which gives 60 million travellers/year. So that's more than truckers ... but it's a lot fewer trips (and meals). I'd put money on there being more trucker meals-out than business travelers'.

Fleshing out further: we really want trips per year, for each classification. I'm going to assume truckers are on the road 250 days/year (roughly 5 days/week) ... we'll do variance after in case I'm wrong. That gives 3.5 million * 250 or 875 million trucker trips/year, more than double the business air travel number. We could cut trucker travel in half and still be somewhat above the business air travel trips figure.

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

#127

Post by bigstrat2003 »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #124
analog31 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, especially since the density of flour varies. All the home bakers I know either weigh their flour, or eyeball it like I do and live with the imprecision. I'd just let the flour mound over the top of the cup by a bit to make up for the tablespoons. ;-)

> live with the imprecision Exactly that. In a restaurant, you're really pressured to make it the same each time. At home: Who cares? It's good that it's different every time.

I hate it when my cooking comes out different every time. Reproducible results are super important even at home, imo.

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

#128

Post by imp0cat »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #88
AlbertCory wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually pointed an IR thermometer at it? On mine (which I sold), it was 900 at the back and 600 at the front. It was just too much trouble. A pizza steel in a kitchen oven, preheated, works very well; maybe not as good as a 700F oven but WAY easier. And 5 minutes instead of 1 minute is not a big sacrifice.

Hey, this is a great post. I have read similar complaints about Ooni pizza ovens, where it is very difficult to achieve the 900F temp and impossible in the front. Great point about 5 mins vs 1 min. Can you share: Do you think normie home cooks can taste the difference between a 5min and 1min pizza? I am unsure. For example, is the 5min pizza much drier? (I assume no.)

Yeah the taste difference is there, but you can get quite close even with a regular 500°F (~250°C) household oven and a longer time (4 with fan/grill + 4 minutes without in my case, YMMV). The basic tricks are to use a pizza stone, prepare your pizza dough a few days before (let it rest in a fridge) and do not go crazy with the toppings (less is more, too much stuff on top of pizza usually means soggy pizza - the top grill element can sometimes fix this, but not always).

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

#129

Post by imp0cat »

analog31 wrote: post #41
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 d…

Halving is a neat trick. In my experience you can usually safely halve the amount of sugar in most cake recipes and still get a great cake that is sweet enough.

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

#130

Post by glinkot »

m463 wrote: post #21
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…

...but you could just get a suana and use it 4-7 days a week for 20 min > 174 F, which reduces risk of all-cause mortality 66% and come out 17% ahead! :) I suspect portion size and number of dishes with homecooked food. In a restaurant, adding appetizers, side dishes and desserts can be done with a nod. At home, it will take a lot of work to add each dish. But yeah, if you do apples:apples I think restaurants are pai…

Your side comment about saunas got me searching. It's quite amazing (though based on small populations) - I'll be giving this a try, thanks for pointing it out!

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(18)...

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