tomorrow!

#6 | I don't care about beli

Welcome to post #6 of tomorrow!

Against optimization

I've spent so much of my life figuring out the 'best' way to do things, and in some areas, it feels appropriate - health, career, community. But I've decided I actually don't need to do this about food.

I would say I'm a foodie, to an extent. I like to find interesting, quality food at decent prices. My limit is when it becomes inconvenient, which comes in the form of waiting in long lines, but also when it takes me out of the mindset of enjoying the food. I absolutely hate it when my dining window is limited to 90 minutes or less. Are you shitting me?

I swear America is the only place where restaurants force high turnover for the sake of more money. I've learned that my favorite thing to do after eating a delicious meal is sit with your friends/family and continue chatting for hours.

After realizing that this is what I like in a restaurant, apart from the quality of the food itself, another problem emerged: in order to find restaurants like that, I can't always treat the internet as my tool, because the internet is obsessed with quantifying food experiences. I'm a Google Maps power user and even look at their curated and trending lists sometimes, but I reached a point where I was steering friends out of their way to eat at what I deemed the 'best' place, because I wanted to be a guide that knew 'objectively good' food, instead of just letting them figure it out, asking them what they're craving, evaluating energy levels and time, etc. There are some restaurants with fine food but good vibes. Maybe best doesn't really exist when it comes to enjoying a meal.

I still believe in a tool that allows you to document restaurants you've enjoyed, because there are times for giving people blanket recommendations or defaulting to a place you know when you're in a rush. What I don't believe in is beli, which forces you to rank every restaurant you've ever eaten at in one definitive numerical list. How can you possibly quantify food like that? It encourages constant comparison of experiences that simply shouldn't be compared. And all for the sake of generating a city-wide leaderboard and for the app to recommend restaurants to users/people I don't even know, which makes even less sense.

That's why I believe more than I ever have in doing things the old-fashioned way: looking at physical menus taped to windows and just going in. Maybe being a hater of all this food optimizing is making me hypocritical, and oh, I should just let people enjoy things, but the core of what I'm trying to say is that a lot of restaurants deserve at least one try, and being a foodie isn't about being picky; it's about appreciation.

Anyway. I'm rehashing a lot of what Pete Wells wrote when he retired from food criticism.

Media roundup

Movies I enjoyed

I'm relapsing on League of Legends, and my wrists and fingers hurt. On the bright side, I've learned a lot about ergonomics. Ha.

#posts #writing