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How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

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Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#81

Post by tptacek »

istorical wrote: post #78
tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Chicago nor San Francisco have takedown restaurant cultures, and both have relatively spectacular restaurant scenes. Some of this gets to what you're looking for from a restaurant. If you're looking at food as an art form, and only want to spend time getting exposure to the very best of it, NYC may indeed be a better filter for you. If what you want is a Great Neighborhood Restaurant, which is perhaps Great i…

I think you could almost describe this in the context of only positive-reinforcement cultures vs positive-reinforcement and negative-reinforcement cultures. Both approaches seem to work well in the long-term, but the city which also has negative-reinforcement might have 'failures' more often, which could be seen as a positive from the POV of looking at the health of the whole system, but on the other hand could be se…

But it's also a question of whether you want the culture to optimize for peak artistic quality, or whether you want the median restaurant to be really good. There are some kinds of food for which the NYC median is higher than everyone else's, but for a lot of it, I wonder whether the Chicago median is better even when the NYC maximum is better.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#82

Post by TillE »

tptacek wrote: post #65
Animats wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The rap on NYC and LA is that they have competitive, take-down cultures (NYC more so than LA)." That's why they're better in the arts. In NYC, they tell you if you suck. In LA, they don't call you back if you suck. In SF nobody says anything and you can suck forever. Go to little theater or art openings and this is quite obvious.

Neither Chicago nor San Francisco have takedown restaurant cultures, and both have relatively spectacular restaurant scenes. Some of this gets to what you're looking for from a restaurant. If you're looking at food as an art form, and only want to spend time getting exposure to the very best of it, NYC may indeed be a better filter for you. If what you want is a Great Neighborhood Restaurant, which is perhaps Great i…

New York has a level of diversity and quality (for $25/meal or less) which I've never seen anywhere else. It also has a ton of tourist trap ripoffs, but those are easy to avoid in the internet age.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#83

Post by tptacek »

TillE wrote: post #82
tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Chicago nor San Francisco have takedown restaurant cultures, and both have relatively spectacular restaurant scenes. Some of this gets to what you're looking for from a restaurant. If you're looking at food as an art form, and only want to spend time getting exposure to the very best of it, NYC may indeed be a better filter for you. If what you want is a Great Neighborhood Restaurant, which is perhaps Great i…

New York has a level of diversity and quality (for $25/meal or less) which I've never seen anywhere else. It also has a ton of tourist trap ripoffs, but those are easy to avoid in the internet age.

I may also be ~8 years out of date; maybe NYC's culture has improved.

Also, look, let's be clear: NOBODY is arguing that there's a more important restaurant scene in the US than NYC's.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#84

Post by icebraining »

zappo2938 wrote: post #74
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Star Wars is for children and always have been. That's objectively false, though. Star Wars marketing quite clearly targets both children and adults; much more so than, say, Pixar films, which are marketed solely at children despite arguably being more mature (in the "thoughtful and intelligent" sense, not the "sex and violence" sense) than Star Wars. You're actually trying to say that adults who like Star Wars are…

I absolutely enjoy Pixar and Star Wars films, along with many Dr. Seuss books which have messages not only directed towards children but also their parents reading it to their children on subjects like nuclear nonproliferation, anti-Semitism, dictatorial leadership, environmentalism, and in the case of Horton Hatches and Egg, not being a dead beat parent. I considered Star Wars just entertainment until my early 20s w…

I think the problem is that you're talking past the critics you claim are missing the point. The usual criticism of SW isn't about the main storyline (particularly of the first trilogy, which you summarized here), as the people who find that plot thin and uninteresting were never SW fans in the first place.

By the way, I was 10 when the Phatom Menace came out, and I can tell you that I found it very disappointing. For a film supposedly targeted at children, it has a lot of scenes involving politics, both at the Senate and at the Jedi Council. And no, Jar Jar wasn't funny, not even then.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#85

Post by zappo2938 »

icebraining wrote: post #84
zappo2938 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely enjoy Pixar and Star Wars films, along with many Dr. Seuss books which have messages not only directed towards children but also their parents reading it to their children on subjects like nuclear nonproliferation, anti-Semitism, dictatorial leadership, environmentalism, and in the case of Horton Hatches and Egg, not being a dead beat parent. I considered Star Wars just entertainment until my early 20s w…

I think the problem is that you're talking past the critics you claim are missing the point. The usual criticism of SW isn't about the main storyline (particularly of the first trilogy, which you summarized here), as the people who find that plot thin and uninteresting were never SW fans in the first place. By the way, I was 10 when the Phatom Menace came out, and I can tell you that I found it very disappointing. Fo…

Too bad you felt that way. All the little kids in my life at the time it was released completely loved it and were obsessed with it the way I was with the first three.

At no point did I say the movie was good or bad, only that it was for children and most of the children I know loved it. So I think it was on target.

My original comment was about handling criticism. I think that George Lucas will continue to make movies not caring about what people think about them. I'll let him speak for himself on the subject. [1]

[1] https://thescene.com/watch/vanityfair/george-lucas-on-why-he...

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#86

Post by foobarian »

avemg wrote: post #44
flexie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop ripping people off with Eastern European wine? Really? That's what they did?

Eastern European wine that didn't pair with the food . Agree or disagree on the value of that criticism (never been there, wouldn't know a wine that didn't pair even if I had been), but don't turn the parent's comment into some kind of prejudiced statement about all Eastern European wine.

All this complaining about wine from this place or that not pairing with the food to me just proves the point that the expectations of the restaurant are too high because of the press. It was not supposed to be a world class restaurant, it was supposed to be a Denny's. You don't expect a similar experience in a Denny's or Olive Garden.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#87

Post by dang »

golergka wrote: post #21

> Who is he, Stalin? (I'm giving Hitler the day off.) On a completely unrelated note, I'm so glad that western public opinion views this guys on the same level of evil. If only russian public opinion was like that.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10767524 and marked it off-topic.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#89

Post by ufmace »

downandout wrote: post #73
stormbrew wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please have some perspective here? The business owner's livelihood was not "destroyed". His business failed. That is a risk every business owner takes when they start a business, and even that failure generally leaves them more equipped for their next effort. The article even explicitly talks about what he's doing next, which will almost certainly do well by him. He's going to be fine, and the OP of this threa…

Bad Yelp ratings routinely destroy businesses (which usually function as the livelihood of the owner(s)). When OP said "good riddance," he was saying that he was happy to see the demise of this restaurant because he disliked the part of Europe his wine was from. IMO, that is the kind of "extreme overreaction" you are referring to.

I'm gonna go with stormbrew on this one. You say "destroy business" and destroy livelihood as if this guy is going to be kicked out on the streets because his business didn't work out. Give me a break - yeah, it's sad for him that his business failed, but I'm sure he'll find another upper-middle class job soon. Being a special snowflake founder doesn't excuse him from being criticized about running a fine-dining establishment badly.

We would all do better to break out of this 1950s idea that losing a job or closing a business is cataclysmically bad. It's disappointing for the founders, but everyone involved will most likely find something else just as good very soon.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#90

Post by ufmace »

foobarian wrote: post #86
avemg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eastern European wine that didn't pair with the food . Agree or disagree on the value of that criticism (never been there, wouldn't know a wine that didn't pair even if I had been), but don't turn the parent's comment into some kind of prejudiced statement about all Eastern European wine.

All this complaining about wine from this place or that not pairing with the food to me just proves the point that the expectations of the restaurant are too high because of the press. It was not supposed to be a world class restaurant, it was supposed to be a Denny's. You don't expect a similar experience in a Denny's or Olive Garden.

I'm sympathetic to the idea of them being a Denny's instead of a Michelin 5-star place, but then, you don't typically have wine tasting menus pairing dishes with selected wines at Denny's. If anything, it's more of a make up your mind about what kind of place you are thing. It's fine to be a Denny's, but you're going to have trouble if you try to court foodie attention and don't live up to the standards that that crowd expects.
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