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 restaurant office wall in NYC), serving extra dishes to the tables around him (so that he got a look at things he didn’t order but should have), and calling friends to fill an empty dining room when he sat down for example. It was always an awkward interaction, he knew I knew, I knew he knew I knew. I generally think Sifton was a better writer, I appreciate that he reviewed restaurants that weren’t your typical white male chef joints, and I’m happy to see Tejal still doing well out west. I’m particularly excited to read some Mellissa Clark reviews in the meantime.
Right when FiveThirtyEight launched, they did a brilliant piece of content strategy in that one of their very first pieces was a quest to find the best burrito in America [1]. Anna Maria Barry-Jester self reportedly "traveled more than 20,000 miles around the United States and eaten 84 burritos in two rounds (to say nothing of the dozens of extracurricular burritos I polished off)."
I was glued to the series as it plodded on week by week and it still sticks in my mind today as simultaneously the best and worst job in the world I could imagine. Part of what made it so enthralling to read was this grand act of human perversity that a single woman would endure such a gruelling quest for such a trivial question and she made you feel that perversity along every step of the journey.
> Part of what made it so enthralling to read was this grand act of human perversity that a single woman would endure
This is part of why I enjoy watching a couple of RuneScape YouTubers. The sheer time commitments they put in for seemingly minor gains is like gore but for amputating off their own time effort & energy and throwing it into a bottomless maw.
I used to joke that if you go to the movies or restaurants etc. you could open pass-through tax LLCs (which are “disregarded entities” at the IRS) and write those off as a business expense, as long as you had a website as a food or movie critic / reviewer, and even had a way to subscribe for some paid memberships (eg Patreon) and also advertising with affiliate sales (eg Amazon) for recipes, movie rentals etc.
You know, running a business kind of like that guy who writes about inside Apple news very rarely but effectively (what’s his name, Gruber? Daring Fireball?)
The business doesn’t actually have to make money in the first few years, as long as you are making bona-fide attempts to grow it. No one requires you to watch every movie or eat every burrito. But who is the government to say you’re not trying to run a business as a food or movie critic?
Much of your personal lifestyle could then be deducted as a business expense on your schedule C, being “necessary and ordinary” for your various LLCs. Perhaps even your travel expenses if you are a travel blogger staying at hotels etc.
But maybe it’s not a joke. Any lawyers or accountants on HN see any problems with this? Again, I’m talking about doing the minimum to make this an actual business — it may become profitable through the monetization but even if it isn’t, that’s 30% additional you’re saving on what would otherwise be your personal entertainment expenses!
The main issue I see is that if your LLC has debts that it defaults on, a court might see you as “commingling” personal funds with the business, even if you keep the accounts separate, and pierce the corporate veil. But, this is a separate issue of limiting liability for debts, which your LLC doesn’t have to even take on. Even if that were the case, from a tax point of view the question is only whether the expenses are necessary for the business, and ordinary, both of which they are.
Barry-Jester kept her cool on her burrito quest, where Jim Haggerty drove his RV into the depths of madness searching for our greatest barbecue, in Porkin' Across America.
You'd love the brilliant parody from The Onion "Porkin' Across America" on his journey to taste pork across the country and destroy his life on camera.
If a local or federal government attempted to do this type of survey, they would end up having to pay McKinsey seven figures just to plan the whole operation..
The following year The New Yorker wrote a profile of him which features some of the backstory. "Is it possible to say with a straight face that Señor Frog’s is a better restaurant than Per Se? Can you get those words out without collapsing under your own idiocy?"
This is also why I don't like eating out much anymore. Every restaurant just leans so hard on heavily salting fats to make their food taste good.
I'd rather cook myself now where I can actually taste flavors and feel good, rather than just having the primal "mmm good food" button bashed in my lizard brain and feeling like garbage afterwards.
Eating in restaurants is terrible for your health. Here's a study that finds a 49% increase in all-cause mortality risk for those who frequently eat meals prepared away from home. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33775622/
I have stopped eating out completely as I always feel gross and tired after a restaurant meal vs energized after home-cooked food. I think it's mostly due to cheap oils in quantities you would never dream of using at home.
Since my mom moved to town, we've been eating at her place frequently. She uses a lot of recipes from the NY Times. They are heavy. Lots of butter, cheese, coconut milk, etc. We've asked my mom to cut those things in half.
She's a very good cook, and the things she improvises or makes from memory are much lighter fare. I learned to cook from her, so my meals tend to be fairly light too.
Sure, the fat and salt (and don't forget sugar) are yummy, but they'll kill you. There needs to be a compromise.
An amusing aside, Julia Child said that it's perfectly honorable to be a home cook and not a chef. Making stuff that's good but healthy is an art unto itself, especially if you're feeding vegetarians.
Last spring, I was at my friends new at the time restaurant, when he let me know that Pete Wells was at the table behind us (and how important this night was for my friend) -- I noticed the sheer amount of food - pretty much the entire menu - that was coming and going from that table. I didn't even put it in to perspective how demanding that was on the body, since all I could think of was how I wish I had his job tasting amazing food all the time. The review came out a few weeks later, and it was a pretty nice review - took quite some time before reservations were obtainable again.
Wells has said he often dines with multiple people in order to be able to try multiple things on the menu. of course The Times is picking up the tab. I guess being a restaurant reviewer is like owning a boat - it’s tough on you but your friends love it.
I'd also comment that, in general, even though I've had jobs with tenures that many HN readers would consider ridiculously long, I mostly settled into the decade +/- space outside of a couple (of short) "events" outliers. Even with making some changes along the way sometimes, that ended up my been-there/done-that range.
Obviously people are different but that has been my experience.
Yeah, I think anyone who travels a lot for work very quickly realizes that restaurant food eaten everyday, if you're not careful, will very rapidly put pounds on you. Now with Wells' article we know how much worse it becomes if that's your job too.
As Anthony Bourdain wrote... "In a good restaurant, what this all adds up to is that you could be putting away almost a stick of butter with every meal." He's not exaggerating!
When eating out a lot is your job (including eating out at places you wouldn't naturally have gravitated towards), like many things it becomes work.
I eat out when on vacation and business trips and really don't want to cook even if the hotel has a kitchenette. I also rarely go out at home to eat unless it's to attend an event or to socialize.
When I was an analyst I definitely gained weight until I developed the discipline to not eat the three meals a day (plus also snack breaks) just because they were there and often good.
I am up to the challenge of trying to be a food critic, but without gaining weight. I would review food once every 3 days and do a lot of cardio and eat les on the off days.
That would be a rough ride for your health. I remember back when Adam Richman was doing the original run of Man vs Food and he was looking like death towards the end.
I mean, that wasn't a show about "food" or "restaurants" it was about gluttonous, over-the top food "challenges". Unless you were doing an equally extreme amount of work to counteract those meals, a season would absolutely destroy someone.
I see all the pearl clutching comments about how bad eating at restaurants is (former restaurant chef, I'm extremely biased and refused to be moved), but an over the top entree coming in at 1500 calories isn't even close to a 7 pound burrito IMO.
One big cheat meal per week can undo a lot of work. It's easy to blow through a entire day's worth of calories and macros at one sitting let alone four!
Just start on semaglutides, and eat in smaller portions like the women critics he describes in the article do. I think quitting a good critic job for your health is pretty silly when there are modern workarounds that mostly solve the issue.
This is the guy that trashed Guy Fieri's restaurant, right? Guy Fieri (and his restaurants') style might not be for everyone, but he's such a sweetheart and does so much for small businesses, not to mention firefighters etc., that you have to be pretty cold to do that. Still makes me mad.
[+] [-] jprd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Johnsorc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] treme|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shalmanese|1 year ago|reply
I was glued to the series as it plodded on week by week and it still sticks in my mind today as simultaneously the best and worst job in the world I could imagine. Part of what made it so enthralling to read was this grand act of human perversity that a single woman would endure such a gruelling quest for such a trivial question and she made you feel that perversity along every step of the journey.
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americas-best-burrito/
[+] [-] BariumBlue|1 year ago|reply
This is part of why I enjoy watching a couple of RuneScape YouTubers. The sheer time commitments they put in for seemingly minor gains is like gore but for amputating off their own time effort & energy and throwing it into a bottomless maw.
[+] [-] EGreg|1 year ago|reply
You know, running a business kind of like that guy who writes about inside Apple news very rarely but effectively (what’s his name, Gruber? Daring Fireball?)
The business doesn’t actually have to make money in the first few years, as long as you are making bona-fide attempts to grow it. No one requires you to watch every movie or eat every burrito. But who is the government to say you’re not trying to run a business as a food or movie critic?
Much of your personal lifestyle could then be deducted as a business expense on your schedule C, being “necessary and ordinary” for your various LLCs. Perhaps even your travel expenses if you are a travel blogger staying at hotels etc.
But maybe it’s not a joke. Any lawyers or accountants on HN see any problems with this? Again, I’m talking about doing the minimum to make this an actual business — it may become profitable through the monetization but even if it isn’t, that’s 30% additional you’re saving on what would otherwise be your personal entertainment expenses!
The main issue I see is that if your LLC has debts that it defaults on, a court might see you as “commingling” personal funds with the business, even if you keep the accounts separate, and pierce the corporate veil. But, this is a separate issue of limiting liability for debts, which your LLC doesn’t have to even take on. Even if that were the case, from a tax point of view the question is only whether the expenses are necessary for the business, and ordinary, both of which they are.
[+] [-] tomjakubowski|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|1 year ago|reply
I felt the same way about Eddy Burback's "I ate at every Rainforest Cafe in the Country" [and Canada]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-bjpKvIw8
[+] [-] jjmarr|1 year ago|reply
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4NL9i-Fu15jdlr2KQf_lyhXl...
[+] [-] greggsy|1 year ago|reply
How does this even work?
If a local or federal government attempted to do this type of survey, they would end up having to pay McKinsey seven figures just to plan the whole operation..
[+] [-] Modified3019|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mythrwy|1 year ago|reply
Very few things in life are as important as burritos in my view.
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fooker|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rgovostes|1 year ago|reply
The following year The New Yorker wrote a profile of him which features some of the backstory. "Is it possible to say with a straight face that Señor Frog’s is a better restaurant than Per Se? Can you get those words out without collapsing under your own idiocy?"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/pete-wells-the...
[+] [-] nullhole|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] UIUC_06|1 year ago|reply
If you ask a real chef, "What do home chefs do wrong the most?"
They will often say, "Not enough butter, not enough salt."
[+] [-] Workaccount2|1 year ago|reply
I'd rather cook myself now where I can actually taste flavors and feel good, rather than just having the primal "mmm good food" button bashed in my lizard brain and feeling like garbage afterwards.
[+] [-] polar8|1 year ago|reply
I have stopped eating out completely as I always feel gross and tired after a restaurant meal vs energized after home-cooked food. I think it's mostly due to cheap oils in quantities you would never dream of using at home.
[+] [-] analog31|1 year ago|reply
She's a very good cook, and the things she improvises or makes from memory are much lighter fare. I learned to cook from her, so my meals tend to be fairly light too.
Sure, the fat and salt (and don't forget sugar) are yummy, but they'll kill you. There needs to be a compromise.
An amusing aside, Julia Child said that it's perfectly honorable to be a home cook and not a chef. Making stuff that's good but healthy is an art unto itself, especially if you're feeding vegetarians.
[+] [-] Johnsorc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] elliottcarlson|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] spyspy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AstroJetson|1 year ago|reply
https://www.gawkerarchives.com/the-best-restaurant-in-new-yo...
Here in the Philly area we have a guy doing cheesesteaks.
https://www.philadelphiacheesesteakadventure.com/
[+] [-] ghaff|1 year ago|reply
Obviously people are different but that has been my experience.
[+] [-] rwmj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyambulance|1 year ago|reply
As Anthony Bourdain wrote... "In a good restaurant, what this all adds up to is that you could be putting away almost a stick of butter with every meal." He's not exaggerating!
[+] [-] ghaff|1 year ago|reply
I eat out when on vacation and business trips and really don't want to cook even if the hotel has a kitchenette. I also rarely go out at home to eat unless it's to attend an event or to socialize.
When I was an analyst I definitely gained weight until I developed the discipline to not eat the three meals a day (plus also snack breaks) just because they were there and often good.
[+] [-] paulpauper|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vander_elst|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] S_Bear|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] moate|1 year ago|reply
I see all the pearl clutching comments about how bad eating at restaurants is (former restaurant chef, I'm extremely biased and refused to be moved), but an over the top entree coming in at 1500 calories isn't even close to a 7 pound burrito IMO.
[+] [-] blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] stvltvs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] omoikane|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pixl97|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] paulpauper|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] otterley|1 year ago|reply