Nothing groundshattering, but an enjoyable read:

[www.theatlantic.com]

Quote
Tyler Cowen, writing for The Atlantic
In the Fanciest Restaurants, Order What Sounds Least Appetizing

At fancy and expensive restaurants (say, $50 and up for a dinner), you can follow a simple procedure to choose the best meal. Look at the menu and ask yourself: Which of these items do I least want to order? Or: Which one sounds the least appetizing? Then order that item.

The logic is simple. At a fancy restaurant, the menu is well thought-out. The kitchen’s time and attention are scarce. An item won’t be on the menu unless there is a good reason for its presence. If it sounds bad, it probably tastes especially good...

I'm a cheap food eatin' fool, so I'd say the article is spot on. I do lots of trucks, eat pho (I wouldn't think of slurping however which I CAN'T STAND!), falafels. Now I'm hungry.

I still miss the $0.45 Pho in a stall in Hanoi.

We eat a lot of pho here in Philly!

My wife and 9 year old daughter are addicted!

Apparently, it's not pronounced "foe" but "fuh".

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[www.zeemaps.com]

Yup. Fuh.

Try the Banh Mi (american sandwich). Yum.
Banh Xao are tasty too (vietnamese pancakes).

I wish a Vietnamese place would open up in Northampton. I have to go all the way to Amherst if I want Vietnamese food.
We're lucky to have two excellent Indian restaurants in this area.

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And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Western Massachusetts

Z,

I found the article laughable. "If it sounds bad, it probably tastes especially good"? Seriously? For example, fried fish heads doesn't sound appetizing to me at all. I've seen it on menus and believe you me, I won't order it. Good or not, the likelihood that I'd be able to eat it let alone keep it down is minimal at best. The rest of the article wasn't much of an improvement as far as I'm concerned. Although there are some great food trucks in NYC, most really don't live up to the expectation presented by the author based on my experiences.

Robert



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2012 08:57AM by Robert M.

That was pretty good. I've traveled a lot in the past, and I always sought out the hole in the wall restaurants.

Sacramento has a bunch of cheap Vietnamese restaurants in the Lemon Hill area. When I eat there, I'm usually the only person in the restaurant who isn't Vietnamese. There are Vietnamese restaurants in other places throughout Sacramento, but none of them come close to the cheap dives in the Lemon Hill area. It's also interesting to visit the Vietnamese supermarkets in that area. They're as big as any other grocery store, but you feel like you're in Vietnam when you're in one of them. It's not just that everyone else there is Vietnamese, or that what they're selling is what Vietnamese want, it's just different. I really don't know how to explain it.

Robert - I don't know if you'll win every time, but I can understand the logic to it. Probably safer to say that it's either somewhere close to the owner's heart or else it is odd, but it pulls its own weight, what with the limited dish space on a menu.

I'd say that his 'rule' only applies in more expensive restaurants, though, because ordering off the weird end of the menu in an inexpensive or 'unusual' ethnic restaurant, well, you're taking more of a gamble.

Z,

Nah. It's just a ridiculous assertion. It doesn't matter what kind of restaurant. A joint that produces great tasting food is going to going to offer a great dish be it something common or unusual.

Robert

Quote

Thai food in the United States is becoming bad. It’s getting sweeter—with excessive use of refined sugar—and the other flavors are growing weaker and less reliable.

This a million times, yes! I've been ranting about this for the past few years and even a couple of weeks ago! I don't order pad thai in restaurants anymore because now it's so freaking sweet. It was never that sweet 12 years ago when I first started eating it. It's tooth-achingly sweet.

I was having dinner with some friends at a Pan-Asian but mostly Thai restaurant on 13th St and University Place in Manhattan a couple weeks ago. I was only going to order the curry puffs and skip dinner because I didn't trust anything to be good enough. But, I succombed to ordering pad thai out of some combination of Stockholm Syndrome and wanting to test a theory. The curry puffs were horribly sweet, so much that I could only eat one. The beef pad thai came along and I seriously couldn't eat more than a quarter of it. I finally told the waitress to send it back because it was too sweet.

She didn't believe me and shouted, "It's supposed to be sweet!". The other three people at my table were taken aback. I hate correcting specific ethnicities on their own food or culture but I finally said, "no, it's not supposed to be this sweet. It's inedible, I can't eat this." She asked one of my other companions who ordered the chicken pad thai about what he thought and he replied, "My palate is different than hers. It doesn't matter what I think."

It was a horrible experience all around and totally confirmed what I've thought for the past few years. Ugh, so gross. I was especially feeling the sweetness because I'm diabetic. That much sugar would have crashed me within an hour or so. I can't ever order pad thai again in the US or I would have to go to a specific Thai or Chinatown-type neighbourhood in NYC or elsewhere to do so.

That said, I have a favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown that serves amazing large bowls of pho for $5 that always gives me leftovers the next day. It's an amazing bone broth that feels like it heals me. When I first started going there five years ago, my boyfriend and I at the time were the only Americans in there half the time. Everyone else was Vietnamese or Chinese families having their once a week dinner out. Now, it's been discovered and written up in Time Out New York and roughly 40% of the diners are Americans. Feh, it's still great food though.

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trisho.
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Official Card-Carrying Mother Earthin' Sl*t.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2012 06:23PM by trisho..