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?
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…
> You won't achieve wok hei on your stove This is simple untrue. There is many, many YouTube videos explaining how to achieve wok hei (鑊氣) at home with a non-commercial gas-fired stove and a cheap wok. For any readers unfamiliar with the stir frying technique called wok hei, read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wok#Cooking
I know very little about Asian cooking of any kind, but I seem to remember being told that wok hei produces enough smoke to be extremely unpleasant to have inside a residential building - to the point that even when people do want to use wok hei at home they would choose to have a setup in the garden rather than the kitchen.
If my memory/understanding is not wrong, then that adds to the idea that people won't achieve wok hei on their stove even if the reason is not wanting its side effects rather than being technically impossible.
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 mea…
Whatever the exact number, it's probably safe to say that directionally way more "meals out" are grabbing some variety of fast food than some variety of upscale/fine dining. Not all that fast-ish food is unhealthy/bad but a lot is as a steady diet. Which just reinforces the point that drawing a broad brush eating out will kill you doesn't have a lot of support. Eating at a nice restaurant once a month is almost certainly not a killer.
It is a generalization but maybe I know it's because there's often a lot of relative filler in entrees and I often gravitate towards one or two starters/apps. That said I mostly don't find portions in Europe (including France) to be especially small.
Interesting ... I guess it varies between restaurants, and everyone is talking based on their own experience. apps?
Appetizers. In my experience the term is fairly common in the US.
I think some of it is that many restaurants have a lot of fairly inexpensive filler (potatoes, rice, etc.) with entrees that I probably sort of tune out and don't really try to finish a lot of the time. This is probably less true of some countries/cuisines than others.
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?
It was an amazing experience, it made me who I am. I cooked through university, and then studied wine to become a sommelier after graduation. After a few years in a Relais and Chateau hotel in Colorado I moved to NYC for 10 years. I’ve since moved on to marketing in SaaS. I firmly believe that it gave me a big leg up in understanding consumer behavior and a unique ability to empathize with the end user. It was definitely stressful, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world. That being said, my quality of life has improved beyond measure since changing careers.
running multiple restaurants in NYC must be quite an adventure. are you still in the business? what brought you to hn?
Yes, I'd love to hear some stories!
There are plenty, but my favorite celebrity encounter had to be this one. Dan and Eugene Levy dining with Paul Shaffer, they were the last ones in the restaurant, and paid with a gift card signed “Love Dave.” It was mid winter, in Gramercy and they thoroughly enjoyed their evening, including wine. While I was fetching their coats, they were singing show tunes outside of the coat check (restaurant management isn’t always glamorous). Apparently when I got Paul’s jacket his yellow beanie fell out. I remember this because while I was getting Eugene’s jacket, Paul stormed through the curtain yelling “Where is my hat?! It was a yellow hat! It was a very good hat! Find my hat you son of a bitch!” There were a couple of times in my career when in the moment I thought “Given all the possible outcomes for my life, how did I end up in this one?” This was one of them. In the end, I found his hat and they were off into a cold and rainy winter night. They were all absolutely lovely guests. Funny, charming, and they tipped the staff well.
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.
Sticks of butter are also labeled in tablespoons here. One stick is 1/2c, and the paper it is wrapped in also has markings for 1-8 tbsp. So it's pretty common to see that in US recipes as well. As far as flour goes, it's incredibly common to have both cups and measuring spoons in a US kitchen. So if a recipe says "1 cup and 2 tablespoons" or something, it's really easy to measure that. By contrast, I hate recipes whi…
For similar accuracy to what you have with cups and spoons, you don't need to bother making the measurement exactly 300g.
A relative was a professional cook. Butter wrappers are also marked with measurements here, at 25g intervals. That would be accepted for some recipes, but the butter would be measured more carefully when making certain pastries or cakes.
> She uses a lot of recipes from the NY Times. They are heavy. There’s a good chocolate chip cookie recipe from the NYT that I’ve used several times. Not only is it heavy, I’ve had to halve the ingredients and even then it still produces enough to satiate the Cookie Monster for probably at least a month. As a Brit, I also had to convert all of the measurements (patent absurdities like ‘cups of butter’, ‘tablespoons o…
Some of the measurements are aided by how the ingredients are packaged. For instance, butter is sold by the pound, in boxes of 4 "sticks" that are marked as being 1/4 cup each, which ignores the density variation but is familiar to every home cook. Chocolate comes in "squares" that are some predictable amount. In fact some recipes call for squares. "A pint's a pound the world around" is a workable rule of thumb for a…
Since you're replying to a Brit, I'll point out the irony that
> "A pint's a pound the world around"
only applies to the American meaning of "world", i.e. the USA and maybe Canada.
"A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter," when it's an Imperial pint.
I hear this "cheap oil" thing a lot in food pseudo-science Internet writing. What exactly is "cheap oil"? And, is there any peer reviewed evidence for your claims about how you feel after eating "cheap oil"? If this effect is so drastic, then, surely, it must affect others, and would be an interesting and worthy research topic.
I guess it's generic vegetable oil as opposed to Canola oil or Peanut oil? I'd actually suspect that a mindset of buy whatever oil is cheapest from Sysco would pursue cheapness in other areas as well including kitchen supervision/skills.
I wouldn’t suspect that at all—some recipes (like certain kinds of “street food” from different countries actually call for the use of cheaper oils :)
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.)
Thanks, you know, I think the brick oven pizza IS better. Yes, you probably could taste the difference. Whether the 5 min is dryer: maybe, could be. My decision to sell my Ooni, after about 6 tries, was because my actual results were nowhere close to a pizzeria's, and way more trouble than my kitchen oven's. Since you can't just open the door as you can with the kitchen oven, you have much less tolerance for error. I…
Which model did you own? I haven't bought one but had been considering buying an almost unitasker because the reviews from trusted sources seemed very good. Serious Eats in particular seems to love the brand.