Daniel Neman reviews Tyler Cowen’s An Economist Get’s Lunch
Don’t go into a restaurant with many beautiful women in it, says economist Tyler Cowen. Those places attract a lot of men, and although they may be popular for a few months the quality inevitably will soon diminish.
. . .
What these and other statements from the esteemed economist should teach us is that, in general, we shouldn’t listen to what economists have to say about restaurants. They don’t look at life the same way as you and I. And they certainly don’t consider situations that do not fit into their preconceived theories.
For instance, what if you are yourself a beautiful woman? What if you are a beautiful woman who wants to dine out with a number of your beautiful friends? According to Mr. Cowen, you shouldn’t go to whatever restaurant you happen to go to.
Perhaps what it teaches us is that we shouldn’t listen to esteemed Food Critics when it comes to deduction reasoning.
Having accompanied many such diners facing this apparent dilemma, the solution is obvious. Travel in small groups. Find a place first. Don’t tell anyone about it. And, if they do find out move on to another place while relentlessly bad mouthing the first place, until it losses it social status. Rinse and Repeat.
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Tuesday ~ April 24th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
michael hollander (@babarganesh)
except that if you do badmouth it in public, word may get back to the owner / chef, and you may not be treated so well in the future.
Tuesday ~ April 24th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
dumdedumdum
Who cuts the barber’s hair? Who eats the beautiful woman’s lunch, if she can’t go there to eat it herself?
Tuesday ~ April 24th, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Mike H
Important distinction: Tyler says don’t go to a restaurant full of beautiful women if all you care about is the food. The presence of beautiful women certainly confers benefits, which you must weigh against the quality of the food.
Tuesday ~ April 24th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
engineer27 (@engineer27)
“Travel in small groups. Find a place first. Don’t tell anyone about it. And, if they do find out move on to another place while relentlessly bad mouthing the first place, until it losses it social status.”
Apparently, this works with hotels also:
http://xkcd.com/958/
Wednesday ~ April 25th, 2012 at 9:05 am
Gary Hewitt
How on God’s green earth did an apostrophe sneak into the word “gets”?
Sunday ~ April 29th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Douglas
Here’s an easier method. Good restaurants don’t make quality food. Good cooks do. Restaurants have multiple cooks, and cooks are known to change jobs from time to time. A room full of hot women won’t make a good cook a bad cook. It will, however, necessitate the use of more cooks and may degrade the quality of the finished product (as in, “Too many cooks in the kitchen.”)
So, the way to get good food at restaurants is to learn who the cooks are and don’t dine there when the place is swamped. Call ahead and ask if your preferred cook is working (if they’ll tell you). If he/she quits working there then stop dining there for a while.
Sunday ~ April 29th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
jiee
Hmm, it seems like his approach is to start with a popular place, and then figure out reasons for why it is popular. If there’s no visible reason for it to be popular, then it is likely because the food is good.
This reasoning doesn’t work if we start with an unpopular place, which means it’s not a good apriori test for a snob, who is only interested in unpopular places. The approach could be tweaked in order to justify the unpopularity of a place, but I think the results are much weaker.