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“The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

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Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#171

Post by stevage »

robocat wrote: post #61
myhf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may not be a correlation, but you can clearly see that the bottom-right quadrant of the plot is basically empty, which is an important insight. A more accurate aphorism would be "You can sell good kebabs anywhere, but you can only sell bad kebabs near a train station." And if you look at the "minimum viable quality" instead of the overall quality, there does seem to be a linear correlation with the distance. Yo…

> "You can sell good kebabs anywhere, but you can only sell bad kebabs near a train station." Insightful! 97.38% of bad studies measure the wrong variable. Do drunk french people buy kebabs? In my city one central late night kebab place has great kebabs. Anecdotally I remember one great kebab cart serving at least one drunken customer in Nice (France) - not near a station and a long way from the Paris metro! I think…

>Do drunk french people buy kebabs?

Yes, very much.

Source: lived in France for two years. Bought a lot of kebabs. Drank with French people a lot.

Also, I really miss French kebabs. They use the thick pide bread, and harissa sauce is always available. Also, if you order an "American" one, they put fries in it.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#172

Post by stevage »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #169
stevage wrote: post #166

>There are many aspects of the dining experience that could hypothetically impact a review score. The staff, cleanliness, the surrounding environment, etc. Not to mention online skulduggery and review manipulation. Don't Google Maps reviews separately measure food, "ambience" and service? Is it not possible to access the food component directly?

> Don't Google Maps reviews separately measure food, "ambience" and service? Is it not possible to access the food component directly? It's debatable whether these components can actually be segregated that way. In practice, no, every review system is plagued with reviews in the form of 'delicious food, lovely staff, but another table was too loud one star.'

True. Everyone has the one thing they care about. I care about ambience. I barely notice the food.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#173

Post by JumpCrisscross »

btilly wrote: post #42

Many years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Restaurants have three basic strategies, be a known quantity (chain), have a good location, or be actually good. I've found some gems by looking for the third category. Given that "near the train" is a good location, that would support this theory.

On location, consider discriminating by repeating versus non-repeating flow. Repeat flow tends to encourage good food. If you fuck up the food, you go out of business. Non-repeating flow encourages tourist traps.

I'd be curious about the article's study being re-run with a dummy variable for predominantly commuter versus tourist train stations.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#174

Post by detourdog »

ghaff wrote: post #89
asah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not mutually exclusive. Counter examples: - Katz's deli in NYC is incredibly famous, in a great location, and actually has kickass pastrami. The trade-off are relatively high prices and lines down the block - restaurants with exclusive relationships. - restaurants that make money another way, e.g. gambling. - family owned restaurants with legacy rent deals. - restaurants that cater to niche audiences e.g. sm…

Is Katz's actually a great location? It is for some--well, many/most places in Manhattan are a great location for some given the density--but it's hell and gone from Midtown, UES, etc. As someone who has visited Manhattan semi-regularly over the years (and even lived there for a summer) I think I've been to Katz's once and would never have described it as convenient. ADDED: These days, sure, close to Lower East Side…

Katz's is great because it is one of the last "old school Delicatessens". There used to be more convenient deli's all over Manhattan.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#175

Post by dr_kiszonka »

JmsPae wrote: post #86

Hi there, "OP" here. First off, it's been fun to see this post spread across the interwebs since I first wrote it one caffeine-fueled day just over a week ago (first Menéame, now here) and for the heck of it, I thought I would clarify a few things; This post was (sortof) a meme. Sure, I "understood the assignment" and performed the quick "study" ("analysis" might be more fitting) for the sake of the original post ove…

Try fitting something non-linear or simply plot a mean (or median) rating over distance with some smoothing.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#176

Post by hattmall »

asah wrote: post #52
btilly wrote: post #42

Many years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Restaurants have three basic strategies, be a known quantity (chain), have a good location, or be actually good. I've found some gems by looking for the third category. Given that "near the train" is a good location, that would support this theory.

They are not mutually exclusive. Counter examples: - Katz's deli in NYC is incredibly famous, in a great location, and actually has kickass pastrami. The trade-off are relatively high prices and lines down the block - restaurants with exclusive relationships. - restaurants that make money another way, e.g. gambling. - family owned restaurants with legacy rent deals. - restaurants that cater to niche audiences e.g. sm…

I think it's probably even more close to being the opposite. Well known Restaurants in great locations tend to actually be very good. I think being good and in a good location leads to restaurants being well known. But I also think people claim Chick-fil-a and McDonald's aren't good are lying to themselves. Those restaurants routinely focus-group their food and make sure that it's ranked very high for taste and not just among their fast food counterparts. It an acquired distaste for people not to like it.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#177

Post by btown »

daotoad wrote: post #96
macrael wrote: post #14

LOL we may need to update the title of this post, half the top level comments right now are assuming the study confirmed the hypothesis. > With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data indicates that this could > be true! If you ignore the fact that the correlation is so weak that calling it 'statistically > insignificant' would be quite generous.

Would it help if I were to chime in with a response about the benefits of kebab case over train case?

Hi there, inventor of the kebab plugin for traindeck here. I'm afraid I was the one who introduced the concept of kebab case, way back in the early 1990s. Back then, trains didn't have enough processing power to handle full cuts of meat, so I thought I'd introduce kebabs as a hack, and it ended up taking off! Didn't expect anyone to still be using it. It's always fun to share stories on HN - you never know who you'll meat here.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#178

Post by ghaff »

detourdog wrote: post #174
ghaff wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Katz's actually a great location? It is for some--well, many/most places in Manhattan are a great location for some given the density--but it's hell and gone from Midtown, UES, etc. As someone who has visited Manhattan semi-regularly over the years (and even lived there for a summer) I think I've been to Katz's once and would never have described it as convenient. ADDED: These days, sure, close to Lower East Side…

Katz's is great because it is one of the last "old school Delicatessens". There used to be more convenient deli's all over Manhattan.

A number have gone out of business to be sure. There's still a (couple?) 2nd Ave deli. Not sure what else there is at this point.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#179

Post by JumpCrisscross »

morsecodist wrote: post #158
MichaelDickens wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the empirical evidence from OP, this seems correct. But there's a theoretical argument for why "good location" and "actually good" should be positively correlated: 1. Good locations are more expensive. 2. People are willing to pay more for better food. 3. Therefore (all else equal), better restaurants earn more revenue. 4. Therefore, better restaurants have a higher willingness-to-pay on rent. 5. Therefore,…

This falls apart a bit if providing better food costs more. Restaurants with better food may earn more revenue all else being equal but their costs may be higher. People are willing to pay more for the same quality of food in a better location. It makes sense for a the restaurant with worse food to outbid a restaurant with better food because the location is more important to them and they are allocating more money t…

> People are willing to pay more for the same quality of food in a better location

If they know. West Coast bagels have been almost consistently garbage until very, very recently because the people willing to pay up for a great bagel weren't able to pick out those that were freshly boiled. Combine that with the economics of bagels prohibiting boiling and baking to order (hmm...) and you wind up with the necessity of toasting old (but not stale) bagels.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#180

Post by hot_gril »

btilly wrote: post #42

Many years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Restaurants have three basic strategies, be a known quantity (chain), have a good location, or be actually good. I've found some gems by looking for the third category. Given that "near the train" is a good location, that would support this theory.

I used to try random restaurants that don't look good, then I realized that they usually are in fact not good.
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