Except here in Germany, at least the restaurants (but the art of cooking has declined too, favoring frozen pizza and similar foods). Especially since COVID. Our restaurant food is not good, and will still get five stars in the restaurant reviews all the time.
After COVID it got even worse. In my major city I saw food in well-known central restaurants become really bad, despite significant increases in price, and I mean "bad" and not just "it is not as tasty as I would like".
What is thriving are Döner (kebab shops) - often using questionable "meat", dirt-cheap Asian places (nowadays often with "Sushi", at very low prices), and burger shops. Italian restaurants focus on pizza and pasta - the cheapest-to-prepare easy-carbs-focused options.
I miss the Bay Area and its food options (I used to live there for quite a few years).
There's an aspect of "have to", as well, in many larger cities. I mean, I suppose if you were morally opposed to walking maybe you could spend a couple of hours a day in traffic and rent parking somewhere... Many offices, even offices in which very affluent people work, would not necessarily have parking, and if they did it would not be enough for everyone. I work for a big multinational in Dublin, in an office that has about 500 people and I think about 30 or 40 parking spaces. This is the first office I've worked in that had parking at all (mostly a consequence of it being from the 1970s), and Ireland is one of the _more_ car-oriented European countries.
And Dublin isn't exactly a huge city. If you take the likes of London or Paris, most affluent people are going to be commuting by public transport; driving just isn't really practical.
I'd be curious whether NYC, which has some aspects of this, has longer life expectancies than elsewhere in the US.
You more or less have to. If you're very wealthy I guess you could travel everywhere on a sedan chair or something, but the US thing where you drive to everything can't work in many parts of Europe.
In very high density areas they don't want private motor vehicles so they're just banned, there's maybe public transit but you'd really have to be unhurried to take public transit over a distance that's say a 10 minute walk.
In very low density areas nobody bothered adding a road. Why not just walk? I mean you could use a serious off road vehicle (no the fact your "truck" says it has AWD does not mean it will work) but even in places where that's legal why not just fucking walk?
nosianu|11 months ago
Except here in Germany, at least the restaurants (but the art of cooking has declined too, favoring frozen pizza and similar foods). Especially since COVID. Our restaurant food is not good, and will still get five stars in the restaurant reviews all the time.
After COVID it got even worse. In my major city I saw food in well-known central restaurants become really bad, despite significant increases in price, and I mean "bad" and not just "it is not as tasty as I would like".
What is thriving are Döner (kebab shops) - often using questionable "meat", dirt-cheap Asian places (nowadays often with "Sushi", at very low prices), and burger shops. Italian restaurants focus on pizza and pasta - the cheapest-to-prepare easy-carbs-focused options.
I miss the Bay Area and its food options (I used to live there for quite a few years).
OJFord|11 months ago
rsynnott|11 months ago
And Dublin isn't exactly a huge city. If you take the likes of London or Paris, most affluent people are going to be commuting by public transport; driving just isn't really practical.
I'd be curious whether NYC, which has some aspects of this, has longer life expectancies than elsewhere in the US.
tialaramex|11 months ago
In very high density areas they don't want private motor vehicles so they're just banned, there's maybe public transit but you'd really have to be unhurried to take public transit over a distance that's say a 10 minute walk.
In very low density areas nobody bothered adding a road. Why not just walk? I mean you could use a serious off road vehicle (no the fact your "truck" says it has AWD does not mean it will work) but even in places where that's legal why not just fucking walk?
kjkjadksj|11 months ago