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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2800 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 13, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just a fun anecdote about petty perfectionism.

I have a completely insignificant personal instagram where I only post photos of food I cook. I post my high-effort food as posts, and low-effort food as stories.

I am on my 98th post now, and have decided to have a post with my face in it for the 100th. I am not anonymous or faceless or anything. Just that I'd gotten used to not having my face in my posts and 100 seemed like a nice landmark.

But that makes my 99th post kinda significant. The last of an old era. So for a good 2 months, I have been cooking like a madman, and everything goes into a story, because it isn't good enough.

So here I am, agonizing about something completely stupid.

Have a good laugh at my expense.

What is compelling you to post all your food on instagram? Are you hoping to turn it into a career or do you just like doing it?

It is my primary hobby and I genuinely love it.

The restaurant business is horrible and I have a flourishing career I love. So, not swapping careers anytime soon.

I have been the type of person who loves anything and everything, so half commits to 10 different things at once at all times.

Cooking & food in general have been remarkably stable within this chaos and my Instagram is a sort of proof for myself. It is immensely gratifying to have portfolio of food you've cooked, while scrolling through the posts narrates your entire journey.

I kind of know what I am waiting for. I move to a new city (one where all my friends live) in 2 months, and am planning a huge house warming potluck. So I am sort of waiting for it happen.

If my present career bet pays off, I should reach FIRE comfortably.

At that point, I'd like to try a few food business ideas:

  • Granny cafe. Street food pop-up where a granny serves as head-chef 1 season at a time. Granny only need to work the first couple of month or so, the line cooks take over for the rest of the year. Once you reach sustenance, flip it over to some catering service. The goal is make hyper-authentic food and sell it to elite white people in hipster towns. Hard part is establishing supply chains for sourcing hyper authentic ingredients.

  • Write a food science book about regional Indian cuisines. Honestly, the entire area of non-punjabi Indian cuisines is not well understood. Think an Indian Fuchsia Dunlop. If the book sells, launch an associated Indian fine-dining restaurant. I recently visited a bunch of Indian fine dining restaurants when I was back home. The quality is terrible and the demand is there. It should not be that hard to displace them. (assuming the quality doesn't change for a decade or so). Think Indian Nathan Myhrvold

  • I have an idea around mixing education and the trades, with the restaurant business being one such trade. It involves finding loopholes for getting around labor laws and exploiting those to underpay teenagers to be economically sustainable. Teens learn the entire process, not just being line cooks, but their reduced productivity is made up for with the exploitative wages. I am strongly of the opinion that an altruistic setup for such a thing can be found, but the optics sound so bad, that I'll probably want to keep it under wraps until the first few teens come out visibly benefiting from it.

so too is Indian food best from middle-tier establishments where the money is there to acquire quality ingredients without recipe pretension, at least in my opinion.

Frankly, I would rate a good mom and pop shop ahead of some Michelin-star restaurant any day of the week. My observation of the high end food world is that it's basically people who are bored trying to keep it interesting for themselves, while losing sight of the fact that for anyone who isn't immersed in the culinary world all this going to be unbearably pretentious.

I don't even necessarily get mad at the chefs who do this stuff or the critics who eat it up. I would probably be bored with classic dishes too if I was in that line of work. But for me personally, I don't want creativity or "elevating" a dish. I just want normal dishes that are prepared with skill and care.

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