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Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

luxeat.com

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Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#61

Post by tracerbulletx »

cameronh90 wrote: post #46
tracerbulletx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez Cheesecake Factory must have really wronged you or something.

As a non-American, I found The Cheesecake Factory baffling. Far more baffling than any other restaurant I've been to in the USA. The restaurants appear to be trying to look fancy, with their extravagant yet tastelessly cheesy interior design. I wasn't sure if it was some kind of ironic inside joke that everyone from the USA is in on? Despite the OTT design, the food was unremarkable. Not too surprising given that the…

Oh it is bizarre, I just thought it was funny he singled it out to put below mcdonalds with a place that barely has food, and so far below Olive Garden which is roughly the same tier for most people.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#62

Post by tayo42 »

blunte wrote: post #44

Michelin Star restaurants, in my 6 or 7 different experiences, are as much about the title as the food. Indeed the service is more formal, to the point of being a bit ridiculous in some cases. But the food itself was not so much more special than a really good unknown restaurant. It's really a bit silly, a status symbol that allows pomp and circumstance to satisfy people who need something "special" to talk about. I…

> have had food from street vendors and family restaurants that blew my mind

Do you have some examples to share?

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#63

Post by kragen »

OJFord wrote: post #37
kragen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you mean "the former"? Sandwiches are the principal dish served at McDonalds, but Starbucks has some sandwiches too.

Err, no? We may have an unexpected (to me) dialect barrier. To the best of my knowledge, McDonalds serves primarily burgers (is a burger what you're calling a sandwich?), Starbucks serves (coffee aside) mostly sandwiches, and also salads and stuff. (It is about ten and three years since I've been to one, respectively, but I doubt that much has changed!)

Apparently there's significant dialectal variation on whether the "hamburger" is a sandwich, including the bread, or just the meat often used to form the filling of a sandwich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger

In my usage, you can eat just a hamburger, but McDonalds won't sell you one; they'll insist on putting it between slices of bread, thus making a hamburger sandwich of it. If you want to eat just the hamburger, you'll have to peel off the bread and throw it away. They also sell fried-fish sandwiches and, in an absurd attempt to seem "healthy", chicken sandwiches.

Around here Starbucks serves mostly desserts, but that might be a regional thing.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#64

Post by ohashi »

refurb wrote: post #48

This just seems like someone sharing their own subjective take on food? I mean there is no right answer , it’s personal preference? It reminds me of audiophiles who can hear the difference in oxygen free speaker cables or prefer the “warmth” of vinyl. I’m like “ok? seems like that works for you so keep doing it?”

I mean there are some less subjective parts like service and cooking properly. Going to random places and getting food poisoning, or finding plastic from the wrapper in your food I expect would never happen at a michelin star restaurant. Whereas, random hole in the wall places I've eaten at have multiple times given me these experiences. Undercooked meat is a simple one too. A lot of higher rated/fancier places I've found consistently deliver better food. That's not personal preference, it's absence of basic cooking mistakes.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#65

Post by kragen »

ska wrote: post #52
kragen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a significant question about the linearity of the scale. Is this quadratic, linear, logarithmic, exponential? If quadratic, then the Cheesecake Factory experience gives you 9 "utils" and Poppy gives you 100 utils. You'd rather eat at Poppy once a month than Cheesecake Factory 11 times a month, but you'd rather eat at Cheesecake factory 12 times a month than either. (If 12 times a month is too much, sw…

> So, how does that 1-10 scale map to your preferences? Why does your analysis assume fixed utility for sites? I expect it is strongly conditioned on recent days, at minimum?

Presumably so, yes, and it wouldn't be hard to imagine cases where the numbers shift around a lot, but the post I was replying to assigned a fixed 1-10 number to each site.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#66

Post by OJFord »

zarzavat wrote: post #43
OJFord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no? We may have an unexpected (to me) dialect barrier. To the best of my knowledge, McDonalds serves primarily burgers (is a burger what you're calling a sandwich?), Starbucks serves (coffee aside) mostly sandwiches, and also salads and stuff. (It is about ten and three years since I've been to one, respectively, but I doubt that much has changed!)

To be fair, McDonalds does call their burgers "sandwiches", I suspect some marketing person thought that "sandwich" sounded healthier than "burger".

I'm pretty sure that they don't here, (though as I said it's been quite a while since I've been to one) since nobody in the UK would call a burger a sandwich.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#67

Post by pseudo0 »

tomcam wrote: post #24
pseudo0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheap, fairly consistent, and won't give you food poisoning on a road trip. Rating it on the same scale as fine dining is just silly though.

Why is it silly?

They're aiming for different things. Fine dining is intended to be an experience, while fast-food is an anti-experience where the point is to get fed as quickly and easily as possible.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#68

Post by OJFord »

kragen wrote: post #63
OJFord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no? We may have an unexpected (to me) dialect barrier. To the best of my knowledge, McDonalds serves primarily burgers (is a burger what you're calling a sandwich?), Starbucks serves (coffee aside) mostly sandwiches, and also salads and stuff. (It is about ten and three years since I've been to one, respectively, but I doubt that much has changed!)

Apparently there's significant dialectal variation on whether the "hamburger" is a sandwich, including the bread, or just the meat often used to form the filling of a sandwich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger In my usage, you can eat just a hamburger, but McDonalds won't sell you one; they'll insist on putting it between slices of bread, thus making a hamburger sandwich of it. If you want to eat just the hamb…

Ok, definitely a dialect thing. A burger (~ patty if you insist) in a bun is just a burger, I don't think anybody here (UK) would call that a sandwich.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#69

Post by kragen »

blunte wrote: post #47
kragen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a significant question about the linearity of the scale. Is this quadratic, linear, logarithmic, exponential? If quadratic, then the Cheesecake Factory experience gives you 9 "utils" and Poppy gives you 100 utils. You'd rather eat at Poppy once a month than Cheesecake Factory 11 times a month, but you'd rather eat at Cheesecake factory 12 times a month than either. (If 12 times a month is too much, sw…

Wow. I'd just rather never eat at Cheesecake Factory. Please let me take you to some good restaurants :).

I don't think I've been, but I did gather that it's not a very good restaurant due to the grandparent rating it below McDonalds :)

If you make it to Buenos Aires I'll take you up on that!

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#70

Post by SilasX »

Ansil849 wrote: post #42
SilasX wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the Michelin Inspectors are discovering measureable, objectively bad things about the food/restaurant, just as you would be able to identify objectively bad things about the good-enough app? What are those things and what is the objective measurement?

Curiously, what is your opinion of UX/UI researchers? Or of design in general? Is the pretense of 'objectivity' something which denotes more value to you, generally?

You're the one that compared Michelin food inspectors to developers finding demonstrable deficiencies in a good-enough app; I'm asking if you can actually back that up or it was just a bad analogy.

If you don't actually think a food inspector can find objective flaws in good-tasting food, you probably shouldn't have made the analogy, nor depended on objective, not-obvious-to-users flaws as part of your argument.

In any case, don't criticize me for agreeing with your premise!

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