Category: Food and Drink

Here’s a profile of Tyler and his wonderful ethnic dining guide. Even if you are not local take a look at the guide – aside from restaurant picks, Tyler also offers a theory of ethnic dining!

Cowen has become a sort of folk hero to an underground group of food adventurers, some of whom call themselves “chowhounds” who are loosely organized around an online message board. The chowhounds keep a close watch on Cowen’s list, said Marty Lederman, a chowhound from Montgomery County, Md. “We tend to discuss it whenever he comes out with a new [entry],” he said. “There’s usually a short discussion about it. … Some people don’t like the way he does things or disagree with his stuff, but almost everyone appreciates the amazing reference that he creates.”

Where oh where should we eat?

Perhaps the common social choice problem that any of us face in practice is when we find ourselves in a group that must choose one restaurant at which all of us will eat. We propose a method where, similar to the I-choose-you-cut rule for dividing a cake, individuals in the group take turns restricting the set of choices for the group. Specifically, under our method the first person restricts the set of restaurants to a certain number the second person restricts the set to a smaller number and so on until the last person in the group selects one restaurant. We derive a formula for choosing these numbers such that – under a natural assumption about individual preferences.the probability that the group will choose any individual’s favorite restaurant is equal for each individual.

That’s from an interesting recent working paper by Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo.

My recipe is simpler: “Go Where I Say,” though I am less likely to use it in repeated game settings. And I am willing to defer to Randall Kroszner and John Nye, among others.

I do wonder why collective choices are not made in more efficient ways. Overall there is not enough deference to expertise and too much interest in finding a “lowest common denominator” of taste within the group. The real problem is to allow those who know to exert their influence, but without appearing like bullies. Yes I know the group cares more about harmony but that is precisely the problem: outlier tastes in the group end up frustrated. Maybe we should sever food decisions from all others, if this is possible. Then people could cede to the food expert, but without fear of future bullying in all other areas. As is sometimes the case in politics, the question is not “what is the proper social welfare function?” but rather “how do we get the right thing done?”

Consider the value-added taxes that were “harmonized” all over Europe during the 1990s. They benefit fast-food chains, since the tax on takeaway is only 5.5 percent, while they penalize sit-down restaurants, whether humble bistros or haute cuisine, which pay 19.6 percent. When President Jacques Chirac ran for re-election in 2002, he promised to reduce the tax, but such is the nature of the new Europe that all 25 countries will have to approve the measure for it to take effect–in 2006.

That’s just the beginning, here is the full story. Thanks to Michael at the ever-excellent 2blowhards.com for the link.

On the brighter side, here is a video of a French chef serving cicadas.

Exercise while shopping for food? How ironic, how wry, how soooo post-modern. Surprisingly, it’s not a work of art – it’s a British shopping cart.

The Trim Trolley (yes, it’s really called that) is about to roll into the aisles of the Tesco supermarket in Kensington for a trial run.

The futuristic, £500 shopping cart has a large center wheel with 10 levels of resistance that make it increasingly harder to push. Handlebar sensors (just like the ones on gym equipment) rate heartbeat, time, distance, and calories and fat burned. German cart company Wanzl designed the trolleys expressly for the Tesco chain and says a 40-minute shopping spree can burn up to 280 calories. That’s pretty close to what you achieve on a machine at the gym.

Thanks to Marc Andreessen for the pointer.

At Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux quotes Sheldon Richman:

The most dangerous mind-altering subtance of all is: ink.

Shouldn’t that be electrons?

I very much enjoyed giving the keynote address to the International Association of Culinary Professionals. But this was not a crowd that wanted to hear about standard errors, or indeed numbers of any sort. They wanted raw predictions and proclamations. Here is an edited sample of what I offered up:

1. Fast food will get much better, and soon.

2. Look to eat in strip malls, not shopping malls. Low rents encourage culinary experimentation and attract immigrants.

3. America’s culinary profile is defined increasingly by ethnicity and demographics, not by geographic region.

4. French cooking, for all its virtues, is stagnating.

5. The UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are all up-and-coming culinary hotspots.

And what about investment advice?

That’s what economists are really good for, no? And no one wants to hear that you believe in the weak form of the efficient markets hypothesis.

Put on the spot, I offered the following principle. If sushi restaurants are new to a country, and are succeeding, buy shares in the stocks of that country. Raw fish, of course, can be toxic. Quality can be hard to monitor with the naked eye. Sushi consumption is a sign that people are starting to trust each other.

The Baltimore Sun interviews me on food, dining, and globalization. Here is my favorite bit:

Sociologist/food scholar Alice Julier of Smith College says she’s not sure if Foodland is characterized by more abundance or just the absence of clear authorities on how to make choices.

“There’s sort of a continual argument going on,” says Julier, who will not be attending the conference. “There’s a pastiche of voices speaking to what’s good and what’s not.”

In the din is the voice of Tyler Cowen. He knows the complexity of it all, yet a brief conversation with him suggests that on one level, at least, it’s simple: Try the China Star, order the Szechuan chili chicken.

Read the whole story, as they say. Just don’t put down your Szechuan chili chicken.

Addendum: Here is my on-line ethnic dining guide for the DC area, which includes a longer review of China Star.

The Michelin dining guide will upgrade three restaurants, all in France, to three-star status. One three-star restaurant will be demoted to two stars. The Michelin three-star designation is the highest a restaurant can obtain, right now there are only twenty-seven three-star restaurants in the world.

Perhaps it is no accident that only three stars are used for the world’s most rigorous restaurant system (Gault-Milleau, in contrast, has a scale up to twenty). The smaller the number of stars, the harder it is to inflate the standard. If the scale has one hundred steps, no one can really tell if a “73” restaurant is pushed up to a “75” rating by mistake. Ratings inflation can slip in over time. But everyone knows if a restaurant is elevated to three-star status by mistake.

Michelin precommits to quality rankings and takes great care to preserve its name as a restaurant “gold standard.” It is commonly believed that the number of three-star restaurants in France is capped, in fact it has remained close to twenty-one since the mid-1930s. Furthermore it is harder to get back a third star once you have lost it, than to win it in the first place, see the first link for more information.

French cooking may be suffering under excess taxes and labor market regulation, but French food criticism is alive and well, in this case under corporate auspices and subsidy. The Red Guide does not make money on its own terms, but rather serves to advertise the parent company and burnish its image. It is a classic instance of the private production of public goods.

So the next time that Roger Ebert gives a movie either a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down,” this is a signal that he is offering a truly important evaluation.

“A medical examiner’s report on the death of diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins suggests that he had a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension…at his death Dr. Atkins [a six-footer] weighed 258 pounds…”

From today’s Wall Street Journal. I’ll agree we can’t draw firm inferences here, but there is always Bayesian updating.

It turns out that much of the organic food in the U.K. has genetically modified components, usually soya:

Transgenic soya was found in ten of 25 organic or health food products tested by Mark Partridge and Denis Murphy, biotechnology researchers at the University of Glamorgan in Pontypridd, Wales. Eight of the ten were labelled either as ‘organic’, which should indicate the absence of transgenic ingredients under Soil Association rules, or explicitly as ‘GM-free’.

My take: Who cares? But the study does show just how arbitrary categories and labeling distinctions can be. “It’s all made out of matter,” I am fond of saying.