[HN Gopher] "The closer to the train station, the worse the keba...
___________________________________________________________________
"The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab" - a "study"
Author : TeMPOraL
Score : 547 points
Date : 2025-02-24 21:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jmspae.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jmspae.se)
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Anecdotally, it's the same for coffee. Office lobby coffee shops
| are invariably terrible. The decent ones are always at least a
| 5-10 minute walk away.
| thwarted wrote:
| Sometimes in another office building's lobby.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| The coffee from the machine _in_ the office is even worse.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Visit us. You'll be surprised. :D
| dylan604 wrote:
| Now find the correlation to the quality of coffee to how
| recent the latest funding round was.
| bayindirh wrote:
| We buy our own coffee and equipment. The quality is
| constant. The only variable is our mood, which might
| affect the measurement from jug to jug, resulting in
| slight taste variations.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The last office I worked in not only had terrible coffee, but
| the machine had a touch screen and required network
| connectivity and regularly crashed, prohibiting all
| dispensation of coffee. It also reportedly came with a 5
| figure monthly operating cost.
|
| The coffee in the lobby was only slightly better, but at
| least the baristas didn't crash during their OTA updates.
|
| A 10 minute walk away and you'd find the best coffee for at
| least a couple miles around.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| energy123 wrote:
| OP failed to reject the null hypothesis of no correlation at
| the given power level.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| This makes intuitive sense.
|
| High mass-transit corridor real-estate (rail, air, road) leases
| come at a premium so those higher fixed-costs and must be
| balanced against a higher-volume of less-breadth of service with
| the same fixed (or even slightly higher) labor costs.
|
| In food service, high-volume is (mostly) inversely correlated
| with quality.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Reviews probably have too much noise. It's not only the food
| that gets rated and people taking the time to rate a place
| might be doing so because of a particularly good or bad
| experience they just had. It's not really a day to day thing.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Reviews have a lot of noise, but it feels like it's still
| the best source, unless anyone can recommend a better
| alternative.
|
| Reviews are the worse way to test this hypothesis except
| all the others.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not true -- restaurant reviews have a lot of signal.
| Generally an average score is quite reliable once you hit
| 100 or so reviews. Even 50 reviews is a pretty decent
| signal.
| arccy wrote:
| not always... the data is skewed by non natives, e.g. a
| high concentration of americans will typically result in
| junk food scoring too high, high scoring asian food in
| the west tastes nothing like what it should, for
| authentic tastes the scores will be quite mid
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _the data is skewed by non natives_
|
| That's not skew. That accurately reflects "non-native"
| clients, who are people too.
|
| > _a high concentration of americans will typically
| result in junk food scoring too high_
|
| You do realize that America has the highest number of
| Michelin-starred restaurants per capita? Way to
| stereotype
|
| > _high scoring asian food in the west tastes nothing
| like what it should_
|
| Are you also going to criticize Japan for not making
| American BBQ like "what it should"?
|
| You're showing yourself to be extremely prejudiced
| against all sorts of other nationalities, and against the
| creative outcomes when nationalities mix. But people have
| different tastes from whatever you think is "right", _and
| that 's OK_.
| csrse wrote:
| >You do realize that America has the highest number of
| Michelin-starred restaurants per capita? Way to
| stereotype
|
| How did you find this data? A quick google says that
| France has about 630 Michelin restaurants and the US
| about 230 (and obviously fewer people live in France). It
| looks like Switzerland has the highest per capita with
| 143 for about 9 million people. The US has a lot of good
| eating places, but let's stick to facts.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Then OP shouldn't have used that title. My reasoning still
| stands.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| Looking at their actual results (https://preview.redd.it/znmnejga
| b5je1.png?width=1000&format=...), I don't see any positive or
| negative correlation. Although I can subjectively confirm the
| hypothesis.
| bitwize wrote:
| I've observed the following:
|
| 1) An alarming number of regions in the world have a pizza joint
| called "New York Pizza", "Manhattan Pizza", or similar.
|
| 2) The similarity of the pizza therein to the actual thin, greasy
| slices served up in pizza joints from actual New York is
| inversely proportional to the location's distance from New York.
|
| So, the New York Pizza in Boston -- pretty close. The New York
| Pizza in Brisbane, QLD is alien by comparison and I think they
| consider "pepperoni" and "salami" interchangeable down there.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| While the work provides some additional data, it does little
| more than re-propose an already-common hypothesis -- that pizza
| which is closer in distance is also closer in flavor. The
| author is searching for the minimum publishable unit, and
| misses even that mark. I advise against publishing.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| > I think they consider "pepperoni" and "salami"
|
| Mate, spicy snags are spicy snags
|
| Edit: Used the actual aussie word for sausages...
| crazygringo wrote:
| To be fair, pepperoni is literally just spicy salami. Salami
| with hot peppers added. Hence the "pepper" in the name.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Hence the "pepper" in the name.
|
| Pepperomi doesn't quite have the same ring to it
| immibis wrote:
| I've heard that the farther you go from Italy, the more
| adventurous ingredients you can find on a pizza.
|
| I used to live in New Zealand.
| arccy wrote:
| we must invade italy and show them the true enlightenment
| that is pineapple on pizza
| protocolture wrote:
| >The New York Pizza in Brisbane, QLD is alien by comparison and
| I think they consider "pepperoni" and "salami" interchangeable
| down there.
|
| It gets even worse south of brisbane in Logan.
|
| We have like, one wholesale supplier of "Halal Beef Pepperoni"
| and all the non chain pizza shops down here seem to have
| standardised on it, to appeal to the local religious
| sensibilities.
|
| Its like eating a damp meat flavoured rag. It has no spice to
| it.
|
| We have a "Brooklyn Slice" opening up, and they seem to be
| advertising _normal_ salami. If its spicy at all, it will
| change the game.
| janwillemb wrote:
| He didn't find a correlation, or rather found that there is no
| correlation, between proximity to a railway station and how the
| kebab is reviewed. It's a nice study for a statistics class!
| SamBam wrote:
| As far as I can tell, his study is looking for a correlation
| with the distance to _Metro_ stations.
|
| This is a big difference. There are hundreds of Metro stations
| in Paris. Everywhere is close to one.
|
| I think the original intent was distance to a train station. If
| Paris is anything like Rome, close to the railway station is
| cheap hostels and recent immigrants accommodations.
| emaro wrote:
| At the end of article it's shown that only considering train
| stations didn't really change the result.
| HanayamaTriplet wrote:
| The original data includes "train and metro stations", but
| figure 9 filtered the data to only include train stations and
| arrived at the same conclusion.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| That saying in France is usually understood to be for cities
| outside of Paris and only referring to "Gares" (that word is
| used for train stations, not for subway stations).
| Anecdotally, I'd say it holds true in general in most cities
| I've visited (with Paris being an exception)
| myhf wrote:
| There may not be a correlation, but you can clearly see that
| the bottom-right quadrant of the plot is basically empty, which
| is an important insight.
|
| A more accurate aphorism would be "You can sell good kebabs
| anywhere, but you can only sell bad kebabs near a train
| station."
|
| And if you look at the "minimum viable quality" instead of the
| overall quality, there does seem to be a linear correlation
| with the distance. You can use a 5% quantile regressor to
| easily find the lower edge of the distribution.
| robocat wrote:
| > "You can sell good kebabs anywhere, but you can only sell
| bad kebabs near a train station."
|
| Insightful!
|
| 97.38% of bad studies measure the wrong variable.
|
| Do drunk french people buy kebabs? In my city one central
| late night kebab place has great kebabs. Anecdotally I
| remember one great kebab cart serving at least one drunken
| customer in Nice (France) - not near a station and a long way
| from the Paris metro!
|
| I think there's some population selection flaws. Drunk people
| don't leave reviews. In foreign countries it is difficult to
| know the correct search term.
|
| I suggest an alternative study: how much lager does it need
| to make a train station kebab taste great?
| stevage wrote:
| >Do drunk french people buy kebabs?
|
| Yes, very much.
|
| Source: lived in France for two years. Bought a lot of
| kebabs. Drank with French people a lot.
|
| Also, I really miss French kebabs. They use the thick pide
| bread, and harissa sauce is always available. Also, if you
| order an "American" one, they put fries in it.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > but you can clearly see that the bottom-right quadrant of
| the plot is basically empty, which is an important insight.
|
| I don't think so? It's mostly a result of the fact that
| (obviously) the best place to sell food is where there are
| people, which is also the best place to put a metro station.
| So on average the kebabs are pretty good and on average
| they're near a station. In Figure 9 one of the worst reviewed
| restaurants is over 3km from a metro.
|
| You're likely seeing a pattern where there isn't one, which
| is normal for humans.
|
| There's one obvious place to go around here for a good kebab,
| it's a few minutes walk to the station, but the way you can
| tell it's the best place for a kebab is how late it's open
| every night. Long after other kebab places are dark they're
| still doing enough business to justify remaining open.
|
| The best place for pizza in my city is very close to a train
| station but that's a total accident, they park (it's a van,
| no really, best pizza in the city but they hated owning a
| restaurant so they put their oven in a van instead) in the
| car park of a railway station's pub about five minutes walk
| from me.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Long after other kebab places are dark they 're still
| doing enough business to justify remaining open._
|
| Is that a quality signal, or just a sign they don't mind
| selling to people going back from parties, in various
| stages of being drunk? I always assumed the latter. Few
| restaurants (McDonald's and KFC aside) want to work those
| hours, so whichever does is almost guaranteed a steady
| trickle of customers who literally have nowhere else to eat
| (other than home). There isn't much pressure for quality in
| this situation.
| tialaramex wrote:
| The KFC next to them shuts long before they do. The
| nearest McDonalds (a drive through) is 24/7 but I've been
| there late at night and it's extremely quiet. Moreover
| neither sells kebabs, whereas plenty of places which _do_
| sell kebabs in this part of the city close earlier.
|
| However, thinking about it more carefully, while I've
| never bought a kebab from them technically the Chaiiwala
| which is 24/7 does sell kebabs. They're a bit fancier
| (and of course, more Indian) than the kebab you'd get
| from the kebab shop but that's definitely a chicken
| kebab. Their clientele in the middle of the night are a
| mix of "gig workers" and people either going to or coming
| back from prayers (for whichever of the religions is into
| praying when other people are in bed - Islam and maybe
| others?). I have never seen drunk young people in there,
| but it is open 24/7 so that must happen once in a while.
| gamedever wrote:
| > but the way you can tell it's the best place for a kebab
| is how late it's open every night
|
| That logic definitely does not apply to SF Bay Area. Most
| of the places that stay open are all pretty meh. A few
| pizza by the slice places, Dennys, Grubstake, Orphan
| Andy's, Mel's. Oakland and LA (SoCal) are no better.
|
| AFAIK most places have no interest in staying open late.
| Maybe they don't want to stay up. Maybe they don't want to
| deal with drunks. So, given there are so few, the few that
| are open have no competition.
|
| I been to / lived in cities that actually have good late
| night options. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore.
| California has a curfew which doesn't help.
| bluGill wrote:
| Late is a tradeoff. On resteraunt can make a killing
| serving anyone out but there are not many so two staying
| open late both go bankrupt from lack of business. Or
| maybe the area can support two (3? 10?) I don't know the
| real number but not as many as the daytime lunch crowd.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I miss Sparky's.
| FabHK wrote:
| Wonder whether that's an instance of Berkson's paradox.
|
| Basically nobody bothering to report about Kebab shops that
| are neither good nor conveniently located. Probably not, but
| "one quadrant empty" is a handy red flag that you might
| encounter Berkson's.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
| wjholden wrote:
| Pedantic nitpick: he didn't find a _linear_ correlation.
|
| Let x=[-5..+5] and y=[25,16,9,4,1,0,1,4,9,16,25] (that is, x2).
| The Pearson correlation coefficient, R2, will be zero. We know
| that y is _dependent_ on x, but isn 't _linearly_ dependent.
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| The only place this isn't true is Japan.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Thinking about Turkey, that might not hold true either. Some of
| the best shops are both small and very close to mass transit in
| where I live.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I mean, it's not true in general if you actually read the
| article.
|
| > Whilst there are some minor indications that the hypothesis
| could be correct (eg. many of the absolute worst restaurants
| being some of the closest) the correlation is simply too weak.
| oceliker wrote:
| > it's not true in general if you actually read the article.
|
| Only if you agree with the article's methodology :)
| drchickensalad wrote:
| Honestly NYC has a lot of its best restaurants by train
| stations, throughout every borough.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Always like reading the Best Kebab reviews on trip advisor. It's
| right next to Queen Street railway station so fits with the
| study.
|
| https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186534-d125...
|
| > Not only was my food uncooked but I also discovered a pubic
| hair in my chips and cheese, then when I proceeded to report the
| problem, I was chased with a knife. Down Dundas Street.Absolutely
| scandalous
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| For context: "Knifey Chaseies" is an historic pastime in
| Glasgow where this shop is located. An immigrant flare to a
| local tradition!
| Glawen wrote:
| Haa so many memories passing this kebab at the end of the
| night. I confirm it is the worst I ever tasted, but chips were
| Ok
| macrael wrote:
| LOL we may need to update the title of this post, half the top
| level comments right now are assuming the study confirmed the
| hypothesis.
|
| > With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data
| indicates that this could
|
| > be true! If you ignore the fact that the correlation is so weak
| that calling it 'statistically
|
| > insignificant' would be quite generous.
| lostdog wrote:
| The more generally interesting a topic is the more likely a HN
| user is to read the article. A study.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I am definitely guilty of sometimes clicking "reply" and
| _then_ reading the linked article to check that I 'm not
| about to essentially tell you what you'd have read or worse,
| tell you something the article actually debunks.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I only read articles with headlines that describe informative
| content, not with headlines that sound funny or thought-
| provoking.
| daotoad wrote:
| Would it help if I were to chime in with a response about the
| benefits of kebab case over train case?
| btown wrote:
| Hi there, inventor of the kebab plugin for traindeck here.
| I'm afraid I was the one who introduced the concept of kebab
| case, way back in the early 1990s. Back then, trains didn't
| have enough processing power to handle full cuts of meat, so
| I thought I'd introduce kebabs as a hack, and it ended up
| taking off! Didn't expect anyone to still be using it. It's
| always fun to share stories on HN - you never know who you'll
| meat here.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Easy fix: just add a ? to the end.
| Buldak wrote:
| "study" is already in scare quotes
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Ha ha I had my coding eyes on. I removed the quotes
| mentally as the entire title starts with one.
| gwerbret wrote:
| Heh. You've just captured the reason why (the better) clinical
| journals explicitly and specifically forbid having a statement
| of results in the title of a paper.
| cloudbonsai wrote:
| > be true! If you ignore the fact that the correlation is so
| weak that calling it 'statistically insignificant' would be
| quite generous.
|
| I actually came to a different conclusion than the author. Here
| is the way I'm thinking about the presented statistics:
|
| 1. There is 17 Kebab shops (out of 400 samples) with a google
| review lower than 3 stars. Let's call them "bad kebabs".
|
| 2. All those "bad kebabs" actually located within 500m from the
| nearest station. No kebab located in further than >500m is bad.
|
| 3. So if you've ever gotten a bad donor kebab, we can safely
| assume that you have purchased it from a kebab shop near a
| train station.
|
| Maybe there are so many kebab eaters near a train station that
| a mediocre kebab offering becomes profitable?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > with a google review lower than 3 stars
|
| At least here, the majority of 1-2 star reviews are actually
| complaining about third-party delivery services like
| Foodora[1].
|
| Of course the fries will be soggy and the burger luke warm
| when you got a guy who had to pedal a bike for half an hour
| to deliver it for you. Like what did you expect?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodora
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I expect this guy to keep it fresh for me.
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't know if you're joking or not but in case you're
| not, you can't really keep fries "fresh". Regardless, the
| point remains that the quality of third party food
| delivery services shouldn't be considered when studying
| the quality of restaurants.
| ant6n wrote:
| Bad kebab shops may survive if located near a train station.
| Galanwe wrote:
| > 2. All those "bad kebabs" actually located within 500m from
| the nearest station. No kebab located in further than >500m
| is bad.
|
| Right, but this is selection bias. There will always exist a
| distance D from which all bad kebabs are located.
|
| Unless D is provenly chosen _before_ looking at the data,
| this has no meaning.
|
| One also has to take the kebab density into account.
| estsauver wrote:
| This "you have to choose D" ahead of time nonsense is why
| people distrust and dislike statisticians! Humans have
| priors on what is "close" that are independent of this
| particular article. If they had said "See, everything
| within 5000m" or "everything within 5m" you might have a
| point but "500m" being a rough definition of "close to a
| train station" is pretty reasonable.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If they had said "See, everything within 5000m" or
| "everything within 5m" you might have a point
|
| On the contrary, if everything was within five meters,
| that would make the finding much more impressive.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Ongoing discussion (due to the SCP) (58 points, 7 hours/4 days
| ago, 17 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43123810
| woodruffw wrote:
| Running the analysis while adjusting for station size/passenger
| volume would be interesting: Paris's transit network is very
| dense and remarkably uniform, so you'd expect a somewhat uniform
| distribution of quality around train station entrances/exits as a
| whole. Meanwhile, anecdotally, some of the worst doner I've had
| in my life was in large/intercity train terminals.
| bombcar wrote:
| My expectation would be it's the passenger _type_ - if 80% of
| the people pass through the station never to return, you 're
| going to get quite a different setup than if 80% are daily
| commuters.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Yeah, good phrasing -- I was treating volume as a proxy for
| visiting passengers vs. regulars, but that's not correct in
| all cases.
|
| Or intuitively: who _doesn 't_ lower their standards when
| they buy a meal at an airport or major train terminal? We all
| do!
| lupusreal wrote:
| Kebabs are like cheese steaks; the best one is whichever is
| closest to wherever I am.
| gambiting wrote:
| What's a cheese steak? Just a steak but with melted cheese on
| top? Doesn't that ruin the steak?
| bdangubic wrote:
| it would if it was actually a steak. for the type of meat you
| get on cheeesteaks - trust me - you _want_ the cheese :)
| lupusreal wrote:
| Technically they're not allowed to call it cheese. ;)
| bdangubic wrote:
| lol
| awad wrote:
| The steak is sliced very thin and cooked (often with cheese
| incorporated), so think of it as more of a beef sandwich than
| a steak on bread.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I got sick off of train station sushi in Sydney. Never again
| billfor wrote:
| Well you would be fine in Japan.
| mxfh wrote:
| Duh, commuters are just less picky with their food choices,
| reliably fast service trumps food quality here for obvious
| reasons. Tourists as mentioned in the article are not that many.
|
| Anecdotally the worst McDonalds Burger I had was with a cold
| slice of cheese at the Berlin Main Station, while the Doner there
| was always above par.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Not just commuters but tourists, people you can scam once and
| who will never be back.
|
| When your falafelshop is in the neighborhood you can't be
| scamming people because you'll quickly become abandoned.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| I have a hypothesis that "popular" restaurants in tourist
| heavy cities like Paris, London, Tokyo have google reviews
| are heavily skewed by these tourists. Basically any place
| that has over 1-2k reviews and 4.5+ becomes a self-fulfilling
| cycle. Sometimes you go into a supposedly local place and
| everyone seated around you is American. I tend avoid places
| with thousands of reviews therefore or when there are barely
| any reviews in the local language
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| mxfh wrote:
| The point is, that _quality_ is not the metric here; the
| metric is _google ratings_. I would take a place with a solid
| 4.6 but hundreds of ratings over a low double digit 4.9 any
| time.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I'm never going to look at ratings. The only use there is
| photos of menus, food, and the restaurant itself.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| I sort ratings by worst but look at the reason. If the 1
| stars are "the waitress was rude", then that's fine. I'm
| there to eat. I don't need them to flatter me. If the 1
| stars are "the food smelled foul and I saw them mixing
| leftover soup back into the pot", I know to avoid it.
| I've seen both of these types a lot.
|
| And I also do a quick sort by newest. If all the newest
| reviews are tourists, I know to steer clear. Tourists
| will give a convenience store egg sandwich 6 stars out of
| five. They'll write a full-on essay about the fine
| experience they had at a restaurant and saying it's
| obvious the chef put lots of care into the meal, not
| realizing it's a local chain restaurant that just pops
| things in the microwave. Then they'll take off 2 stars at
| a good place because the chef couldn't make them a
| gluten-free, rice-free, beef-free, soybean-free chicken
| burger (also, they have deadly poultry allergies so they
| can only eat chicken substitutes). I also see loads of
| these types of reviews.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I've seen this too, a lot of 1-star reviews from
| customers who wanted some substitution and didn't get it.
| Seems designed to be abused by unreasonable customers,
| cause one of those equates to ~3 honest customers saying
| "meh" with a 3-star review. I'd prefer the restaurant
| that doesn't have to charge extra to absorb the costs of
| avoiding that.
| jval43 wrote:
| Even Google ratings are sometimes gamed nowadays. This
| wasn't always the case, they used to be reliable.
| Tripadvisor ratings on the other hand were always garbage.
|
| I recently had some really bad experiences with some fast
| food places in my corner of the world, at a train station
| as well.
|
| They all had 4.9 stars but lots of 1 star reviews matching
| my experience. But also tons and tons of eerily similar 5
| star reviews with a generic photo of the counter (no faces,
| no food) and a random name and glowing review of who
| "served" them. Which is impossible at those places.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Doner in Berlin is like ramen in Tokyo: the competition is so
| furious that objectively bad places go out of business quickly.
| mxfh wrote:
| There are a few that are obviously some sort of front
| business. It can't be the Doner.
| btilly wrote:
| Many years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Restaurants have
| three basic strategies, be a known quantity (chain), have a good
| location, or be actually good.
|
| I've found some gems by looking for the third category.
|
| Given that "near the train" is a good location, that would
| support this theory.
| robocat wrote:
| Where does crappy restaurant fit into your taxonomy?
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| its either mcdonalds (well known) or close to work (good
| location). i still eat at crappy restaurants if they have 1
| good item.
|
| we used to go a chinese place and we called it "spicy
| chicken." everything else on the menu was trash
| golergka wrote:
| Good location or bankrupt. Just look at all the tourist trap
| restoraunts.
| robocat wrote:
| > tourist trap restoraunts
|
| Recommendations still matter and some tourists are around
| for a week or two. I'm highly likely to be a repeat
| customer at any place that is good.
|
| In my experience finding a good restaurant in a tourist
| zone is not hugely more difficult than finding a good
| restaurant elsewhere. The search is easier as a tourist in
| many ways because the selection is often a limited set.
|
| In San Carlos de Bariloche (highly touristy) I adored Alto
| El Fuego and I want to go back just for that. Don't try
| L'Italiano Trattoria: I wanted a bad experience for a
| masochistic change and I certainly got it. Please gain some
| pleasure that you've never been there. There's a massive
| difference between the tastes of local tourists and
| international tourists.
| hot_gril wrote:
| There's a waiter standing outside trying to get people to
| come in, and I don't mean the reservation / front desk
| person. No way is it worthwhile for a restaurant with
| actually good food to pay someone to advertise outside.
| Scrapemist wrote:
| Have a good location
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's a maximum of two, not a minimum. The minimum is zero:
| low quality expensive food in an inconvenient location.
|
| Luckily, those usually go out of business. Un-luckily, you
| may be a customer first.
| asah wrote:
| They are not mutually exclusive. Counter examples:
|
| - Katz's deli in NYC is incredibly famous, in a great location,
| and actually has kickass pastrami. The trade-off are relatively
| high prices and lines down the block
|
| - restaurants with exclusive relationships.
|
| - restaurants that make money another way, e.g. gambling.
|
| - family owned restaurants with legacy rent deals.
|
| - restaurants that cater to niche audiences e.g. small
| ethnicities and religions
|
| (And others, probably)
| porphyra wrote:
| Probably one of the most famous examples is Jiro sushi which
| is in a subway station.
| deanCommie wrote:
| They're not mutually exclusive because they're a triangle.
|
| Cost, Convenience, Quality: Pick 2
|
| This isn't that deep either - convenience and quality are 2
| things that cost the restaurant money (either via higher
| rent, or more expensive ingredients).
|
| You can't do all 3 because you'll never make a profit.
|
| You can't do only 1 or you'll never get any customers.
|
| Two is just right for both buyer and seller.
| robot wrote:
| these examples are all exceptions. how much do the exceptions
| contribute to the discussion?
| anamexis wrote:
| > how much do the exceptions contribute to the discussion?
|
| A fair amount, if the number of exceptions are such that
| the rule of thumb isn't useful.
| handoflixue wrote:
| I really don't think the 5 provided examples do much - I
| can't even imagine how "Katz deli in NYC" would be a
| useful data point at all.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Do you know what "rule of thumb" means? Did you think you
| were being helpful?
| anamexis wrote:
| > Do you know what "rule of thumb" means?
|
| A broadly accurate guide or principle. If there are
| enough exceptions that it is not broadly accurate, it's
| not a good rule of thumb.
|
| > Did you think you were being helpful?
|
| By doing what?
| ghaff wrote:
| Is Katz's actually a great location? It is for some--well,
| many/most places in Manhattan are a great location for some
| given the density--but it's hell and gone from Midtown, UES,
| etc. As someone who has visited Manhattan semi-regularly over
| the years (and even lived there for a summer) I think I've
| been to Katz's once and would never have described it as
| convenient.
|
| ADDED: These days, sure, close to Lower East Side and Orchard
| Street but that sure wasn't primo real estate a few decades
| ago (including _When Harry Met Sally_ was filmed).
| detourdog wrote:
| Katz's is great because it is one of the last "old school
| Delicatessens". There used to be more convenient deli's all
| over Manhattan.
| ghaff wrote:
| A number have gone out of business to be sure. There's
| still a (couple?) 2nd Ave deli. Not sure what else there
| is at this point.
| acaloiar wrote:
| Comments of this quality are getting frustrating.
|
| The grand parent post clearly stated it is the poster's "rule
| of thumb". By definition they are aware that the rules are
| [likely] "not mutually exclusive". Starting with "these are
| not mutually exclusive", is what makes this comment so
| unnecessary. Don't be proud of having listed exceptions to
| someone's rule of thumb.
|
| Had you started with, "I like that; these are a few
| exceptions I've observed to your rules that I find
| interesting", that would be a productive way to start a
| conversation.
|
| But starting with "these are not mutually exclusive" makes
| you seem like an ass for having pointed at an exception to
| something that by definition has exceptions.
|
| It's right in the posting guidelines [1.]
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| [1.] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Comments of this quality are getting frustrating.
|
| Yeah I'm not a fan but it's orders of magnitude less
| frustrating than the people that try to take a very lossy
| rule of thumb with a fat "better safe than sorry" factor
| baked in and then do mental gymnastics to try and plug all
| the massive gaps.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| "Getting"? HN has always been like this.
|
| Christ this website can be _so_ full of insufferable
| pedantry. I don 't know why people think that such comments
| are a good contribution.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| N gate died far too soon...
| anonylizard wrote:
| Do you worship the posting guidelines or something? Are you
| that offended by someone adding information to a post? The
| forum is a public one, not a 1-1 conversation.
|
| The poster added valuable information, that is interesting
| and not self-evidently obvious to the average person who
| doesn't think much about restaurants, that makes the forum
| more useful to others?
| alwa wrote:
| For what it's worth, I interpreted GP's response as trying
| to build on the rules of thumb by adding some color in the
| edge cases, I didn't read it as any kind of a dig at the
| original proposition.
| hattmall wrote:
| I think it's probably even more close to being the opposite.
| Well known Restaurants in great locations tend to actually be
| very good. I think being good and in a good location leads to
| restaurants being well known. But I also think people claim
| Chick-fil-a and McDonald's aren't good are lying to
| themselves. Those restaurants routinely focus-group their
| food and make sure that it's ranked very high for taste and
| not just among their fast food counterparts. It an acquired
| distaste for people not to like it.
| asah wrote:
| "times square olive garden" hahaha
| jandrese wrote:
| One other:
|
| - restaurants that are going to fail but have not done so
| quite yet
|
| That covers a lot of restaurants. It's a business sector with
| a lot of churn. Many mediocre establishments hold on for a
| few years before they close.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Where I live, video slots have infiltrated many restaurants.
| It is weird!
|
| Even some slightly fancy restaurants have a corner full of
| slot machines. They must make a small mint to offset putting
| off diners.
|
| I know what you are thinking: This guy lives in Nevada. Nope.
| Illinois.
|
| That last category seems to be growing as well nearby. There
| are 3 Uzbek restaurants in the neighboring towns. 3! All
| opened within a year of each other, I think.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Actually OP found a very small correlation between railway
| proximity and _Google rating_. The study didn 't actually
| measure "quality"...
|
| Also, the lowest scoring outliers were the closest proximity,
| which I think is noteworthy.
| ghaff wrote:
| And probably understandable. Empirically, I don't really
| expect to find the best restaurants right around railway
| stations.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah. The overall correlation was tiny but just looking at
| it you could see a pattern that's getting lost in the
| analysis.
| seanthemon wrote:
| My rule of thumb: if it has the name of the country, i expect
| the food to be at best sub-par i.e "Great Indian" (gave me wild
| food poisoning).
|
| Second rule of thumb: if the milkshakes are good, the food will
| be good - almost never fails me.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| For kebab some comedian gave the best advice - look at the
| knuckles of the kebab maker - if they are very hairy it will
| be good. Then look at the neckline of his shirt - if there
| are hairs coming out of it - the kebab will be great.
| slt2021 wrote:
| this reminds me my experience: when I went to Salt Lake
| City and wanted to try Turkish food and picked nearest
| Turkish restaurant with the the highest reviews from google
| maps.
|
| Interior was authentic and nice, but the food turned out to
| be AWFUL, kebab was burnt to ashes, everything food wise
| was horrible.
|
| When I complained, the cook came back and apologized, and I
| saw the cook was White American. Not saying all Americans
| are bad cooks, but in my experience I would have expected
| turkish chef to cook turkish food for authentic experience
| and quality.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Have a friend who rates ethnic restaurants by the decor.
| The fancier the place: the worse the food.
|
| The best places are mismatched chairs and Formica
| tabletops, menus left over from the previous occupant
| with a page of badly translated new menu pasted inside.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Well on the topic of kebab, good Persian restaurants
| usually have better decor.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hm. Not in the case described.
| hot_gril wrote:
| My family members from Iran and Syria have said that
| people there cook beef extra because it's usually not
| very fresh, unless they're rich. So overcooked beef may
| be the more authentic way, depending on how you look at
| it. Lamb is more common anyway.
| zem wrote:
| I've been to several great restaurants with "china" and
| "burma" in their names. also "siam" and "thai" but not
| actually "thailand" that I can remember.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Great China.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| For a long time, the best Thai restaurant in New York State
| (in my, and many others', opinions) was called simply "Thai
| Cuisine".
| hot_gril wrote:
| I know nothing about the Thai or Vietnamese languages, but
| it seems like all their proper nouns have "Thai" or "Viet"
| in them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| There's a bizarrely good place in Dublin called China Sichuan
| (double whammy; country _and_ region), located in, basically,
| a business park 20 minutes from the city centre in a tram. It
| has no business being any good; combo of name and suburban
| location should condemn it to mediocrity at absolute best.
|
| (They've also clearly spent a lot on the decor, which, again,
| is normally not a great sign in a restaurant. And yet somehow
| it's very good. Against the natural order of things.)
| pimlottc wrote:
| Reminds me of Panda Gourmet in DC. It's near the edge of
| the city, not accessible by Metro, the name sounds it
| should be in a mall and it's attached to a Days Inn budget
| hotel. And it's probably the best Chinese restaurant in the
| city.
| jorvi wrote:
| > (double whammy; country _and_ region)
|
| This is actually good. Its a very basic rule of thumb for
| selecting wine: the more regionally specific they get on
| the label, the more likely the wine is good.
|
| For example, if you see "California" or "Chile" on a <$10
| bottle, expect mediocrity. But if it says "Napa Valley",
| it'll be a little better, and if it also mentions a
| location or vineyard, it'll be a lot better.
|
| My pet theory is that this is because the more specific the
| label gets, the more direct the reputation hit for a bad
| product.
|
| For France and Italy, wine regions and sub-regions often
| have protective status. This makes a wine more expensive
| vs. a non-protected wine of comparative quality, but the
| upshot is that if you see a wine under a protective label,
| you can be sure of a certain baseline of quality.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I agree. But one exception, a lot of good Syrian
| restaurants aren't named for a region in Syria, or the
| country, but some greater region that includes Syria
| (usually "Shaam").
| 98codes wrote:
| This supports the inverse square rule for seafood restaurant
| quality vs. being near the ocean. There are good places, but
| right on the water? Universally bad.
| ghaff wrote:
| Less true if you're talking about seafood "shacks." Tons of
| good places serving lobster rolls and steamers on the ocean
| in Maine for example. But, yes, for fancier restaurants
| especially in cities, the best views often don't come with
| the best food.
| hackingonempty wrote:
| El Bulli was considered the best restaurant in the world
| until it voluntarily closed and it is right on the
| Mediterranean with a dock. The web site even had directions
| to reach it by boat.
| munificent wrote:
| I wouldn't say universally bad. I live in Seattle, and there
| are some restaurants on the water that I like.
|
| The way I think about it is this: the restaurant has to pay
| for the real estate, and that cost must get factored in
| somehow. Water views aren't cheap. So you can get good food
| on the water, but you'll be paying for the view.
| hug wrote:
| If this were true, the best seafood in Australia would be in
| Alice Springs.
|
| Conversely, I have one piece of life advice for you: Don't
| eat seafood in Alice Springs.
| bluGill wrote:
| Shipping of sea food is expensive so even the cheapest
| distant resteraunt will pay for premium prices since the
| difference isn't that much. Near the shore you can save
| buying cheap - but if you know what you are looking for you
| can buy the best off the boat for cheap.
| ghc wrote:
| If this is true at all, it only applies to cities. Many
| fantastic seafood restaurants are on or near the docks in
| regions economically dependent on seafood production.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| My rule for finding a good restaurant - if it doesn't look that
| good and/or is in an out of the way place but seems to be busy,
| its probably good.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| My rule. Check TripAdvisor!
| sthatipamala wrote:
| Is being well-rated on TripAdvisor a positive or negative
| signal? I could see it either way.
| ghaff wrote:
| Given lack of other signals, my experience is that
| TripAdvisor or Yelp is probably better than "they have a
| cool name." I've been living out of a hotel because of a
| kitchen fire and, as someone who really wasn't in the
| habit of eating out around where I live, the
| recommendations have generally been decent--combines with
| a neighbor and personal knowledge.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| You need like always to read some of the reviews and
| judge. If sceptical look at the users histories (e.g. I
| seen perfect 5 star reviews in Google then seen the users
| were bots even though the comments sounded ok)
|
| Depends on the stakes too: anniversary dinner or grabbing
| a coffee in a different part of town?
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| A great way to detect who buys ikea furniture!
| imgabe wrote:
| My only rule is that restaurants in hotels are usually mediocre
| to bad, which fits with your theory. If they have some built-in
| customer base they don't have to work as hard at being good.
| ghaff wrote:
| It does vary. Some are more independent of the hotel than
| others. And the rule of thumb probably tends to be less true
| outside of the US.
| xobs wrote:
| I remember reading an article that had the theory that Thai
| restaurants in hotels were usually very authentic under the
| assumption that the parents were immigrants who wanted the
| child to inherit the business, but the kid wanted to run a
| restaurant instead. It would certainly explain why you get
| Thai restaurants attached to random hotels in the middle of
| nowhere, at least.
| dole wrote:
| The Thai government practices gastro-diplomacy, they have a
| program where you set a Thai restaurant up in a foreign
| country, you can pick from three different packages for
| size or fanciness of restaurant. It's why you see a lot of
| the same decorations and similarities between differently
| owned Thai restaurants, or occasionally a family will own a
| number in a metro area.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| /s missing?
| flocciput wrote:
| > The Department of Export Promotion of the Thai Ministry
| of Commerce offers potential restaurateurs plans for
| three different "master restaurant" types--from fast food
| to elegant--which investors can choose as a prefabricated
| restaurant plan.
|
| from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy#T
| hailand
| hattmall wrote:
| No, this is why there are so many Thai restaurants
| relative to their population. Even most small towns will
| have one or two.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Does not apply to the very top end where many luxury hotels
| also have Michelin starred fine dining restaurants
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. A random mid-range Marriott probably has an utterly
| boring hotel restaurant serving fairly mid-range mostly
| boring fare. You get up to the high-end and you're much
| more likely to get restaurants that don't really seem like
| hotel restaurants at all.
| xattt wrote:
| Hotel restaurants are feature placebo. They are give the
| impression of added value/fanciness, even if they are rarely
| accessed by value-conscious guests.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Many people are tired from traveling and they just want a
| meal before they go to sleep.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _restaurants in hotels are usually mediocre to bad_
|
| This varies strongly region to region (and price level). In
| America and much of Europe, in most cases, yes. (Exception:
| tier 1 cities.)
|
| In parts of Asia it varies from being almost rule to being a
| solid way to avoid great food. Put another way, go where the
| food-obsessed locals go. If the locals are dining at hotel
| restaurants, go there. If they're avoiding them for street
| food, do that.
|
| On a parallel note, crappy little hotel bars are something of
| a delight to visit, particularly in your home town. You get
| to meet randos seeing your familiar through fresh eyes and
| for the first tie, and even if you don't meet anyone
| interesting, the people watching alone is usually paydirt.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The formal terminology is "selection induced negative
| correlation". If a quality score is the sum of two factors,
| those two factors will tend to be negatively correlated.
|
| Mathematically a trivial example is the equation 1=x+y, where 1
| represents some cutoff and could be any value. Clearly x and y
| are inversely correlated.
| fermisea wrote:
| Also a type of collider bias in causal inference, which
| generates all sorts of Simpsons paradoxes
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Are we still using real terminology?
| LPisGood wrote:
| Simpson's paradox is a real thing in medical sampling. As
| far as the rest of it, who's to say?
| janalsncm wrote:
| Berkson's paradox is also real.
| morsecodist wrote:
| Totally agree but I would expand location into convenience. For
| example, I find restaurants that don't take reservations or
| have limited hours are often better.
|
| In my head I have a category for reliable restaurants to go to
| when you are planning something with people and you want to
| make sure to have a consistent, predictable experience and
| restaurants that are worth waiting for or going at a weird
| time.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| Based on the empirical evidence from OP, this seems correct.
| But there's a theoretical argument for why "good location" and
| "actually good" should be positively correlated:
|
| 1. Good locations are more expensive.
|
| 2. People are willing to pay more for better food.
|
| 3. Therefore (all else equal), better restaurants earn more
| revenue.
|
| 4. Therefore, better restaurants have a higher willingness-to-
| pay on rent.
|
| 5. Therefore, better restaurants will outbid worse restaurants
| for good locations.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You lost me at point 4. Why would more revenue mean a higher
| willingness to pay rent unless it made them more profit?
| gamedever wrote:
| A restaurant that has more money can afford more rent. A
| restaurant that doesn't have more money can't afford it.
| So, everything else being equal, better restaurants, making
| more money, are more likely to rent places that cost more
| since. Seems pretty straight forward.
|
| it's no different than saying people with higher income,
| overall, rent/buy housing that costs more.
| morsecodist wrote:
| This falls apart a bit if providing better food costs more.
| Restaurants with better food may earn more revenue all else
| being equal but their costs may be higher. People are willing
| to pay more for the same quality of food in a better
| location. It makes sense for a the restaurant with worse food
| to outbid a restaurant with better food because the location
| is more important to them and they are allocating more money
| towards towards rent rather than food quality so they have
| more to spend.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _People are willing to pay more for the same quality of
| food in a better location_
|
| If they know. West Coast bagels have been almost
| consistently garbage until very, very recently because the
| people willing to pay up for a great bagel weren't able to
| pick out those that were freshly boiled. Combine that with
| the economics of bagels prohibiting boiling and baking to
| order (hmm...) and you wind up with the necessity of
| toasting old (but not stale) bagels.
| hot_gril wrote:
| This addresses supply (cost) but not demand. There won't be
| enough demand for known bad food, unless it's a tourist
| trap.
| hot_gril wrote:
| This is how I think of it too. In a popular location, the
| restaurants won't necessarily be the best, but they'll be
| better on average.
|
| Also, compare any big city to its adjacent areas. Like
| everyone knows LA has better food than San Bernardino.
| HolyLampshade wrote:
| I'd posit that closer proximity to drinking establishments
| would mean increased foot traffic with a less discerning
| clientele.
|
| Every kebob is a good kebob when you're a few drinks in.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Your logic works in a world with only restaurants. In
| reality, every other type of business has better margins than
| restaurants and also competes for the best real estate. So
| the good restaurant in a good location is soon having their
| rent hiked and closing down, or has to follow the beaten
| path: Decrease quality and increase prices.
|
| Sure, there's always exceptions, especially in older cities
| where the restaurant was established in a great spot a long
| time ago and is owned by a family. But generally, restaurants
| have far too low profit margins to remain for long in a top
| location. And I think all of us know this from experience.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| On location, consider discriminating by repeating versus non-
| repeating flow. Repeat flow tends to encourage good food. If
| you fuck up the food, you go out of business. Non-repeating
| flow encourages tourist traps.
|
| I'd be curious about the article's study being re-run with a
| dummy variable for predominantly commuter versus tourist train
| stations.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I used to try random restaurants that don't look good, then I
| realized that they usually are in fact not good.
| gamedever wrote:
| good location = higher rent = food better attract people
|
| I'm not saying that holds up, only that it's not clear to me
| that "good location" = skimping on actually being good.
|
| To go the other extreme, I guess all the best restaurants in
| the USA are in Wyoming since they arguably have worst locations
| (low population density = low traffic) so they must have to
| concentrate on food. Yea, ... no.
| glitchc wrote:
| The notable exception perhaps is Kings Cross Station in London.
| Food is generally excellent.
| wftglf wrote:
| Hmm but is it excellent for kebabs? I'm more a falafel person
| so can't really judge but I think crystal kebab is the only one
| and it doesn't do any form of deep fried chickpeas I rate the
| chinese place over the road though!
| legitster wrote:
| This immediately reminds me of Tyler Cowen's book "An Economist
| Gets Lunch". He infers all sort of rules for profiling restaurant
| quality.
|
| In fact, he makes this very observation - high foot traffic areas
| command higher rents, and it's harder to provide both good
| quality and good value where rents are high. But restaurants that
| can be successful without good real estate are a green flag.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| function_seven wrote:
| You're doing important work throughout this thread. Thanks.
| ggambetta wrote:
| In a similar vein, in Venice I developed this theory that you
| could estimate your distance to San Marco by the price of a slice
| of pizza (more expensive meaning closer). Never tested it, but
| would be fun to see a heatmap.
| joshka wrote:
| A stronger hypothesis to test might be the statement: "the
| closest kebab to the station is worse than the next farther one",
| which would be the intuitive implied meaning of the original
| statement (even though it's not a perfectly accurate
| interpretation).
| mdahardy wrote:
| Seems like a lot of this could be explained by better food
| tending to be served in locations with lower commercial real
| estate prices (I believe Tyler Cowen has written about this).
| Kozmik1 wrote:
| Has anyone tried Le Train Bleu inside Gare de Lyon station in
| Paris? It's a very fancy restaurant (French, obviously). Like
| many such places, the reviews are mixed, but it was plenty to
| impress my simpleton American expectations. Certainly a step up
| from the options one might find in Penn Station (at least to me)!
|
| https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d11097...
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure there's a lot of interest in the US for fancy
| dining in transportation hubs. In fact, airports have generally
| moved away from fancier dining generally towards fast casual.
| There is some decent food in the new Moynihan train hall in
| Penn but certainly no fancy dining.
|
| Not sure I disagree as a traveler.
| jerlam wrote:
| Wouldn't it be "good, convenient, cheap - pick two" (at most)?
|
| There can be good food near transportation hubs, but it will be
| more costly. It is difficult to filter out price as a factor in
| reviews because people can value their money differently,
| especially tourists.
| smpnav wrote:
| On a slightly related note, what's with the terrible quality
| kebabs in the UK? You go to Germany and it's almost a completely
| different food.
| macintux wrote:
| The ancient joke springs to mind.
|
| Heaven is where the cooks are French, the police are British,
| the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything
| is organized by the Swiss.
|
| Hell is where the cooks are British, the police are German, the
| mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is
| organized by the Italians.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| And Canada is a place with American cuisine, French
| government and British technology.
| Kozmik1 wrote:
| My favorite German food is Turkish. My favorite British food is
| Lebanese.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't know, I've lived here for a long time and I've been
| wondering this too. It's like the entire country has been
| brainwashed long time ago to call these blobs of minced meat
| that get shaved into skin-like strips kebab - every chippy in
| the country is guilty of this monstrosity. I'm glad some
| companies are now starting to appear that make a dent in this,
| I am forever thankful for a branch of GDK that opened in my
| city because that's literally the only place that doesn't serve
| this carboard imitation of a kebab, but yeah I don't get it.
| People just say "mate it's mint after a night out" - yeah, and
| so is the real thing???
| seanalltogether wrote:
| At least where I live in the UK, kebabs are treated as drunk
| food, not lunch food. This is completely different to the US
| where a gyro is treated as a lunch food and always seemed
| higher quality.
| wftglf wrote:
| Disappointed to discover OP didn't actually go and eat in all the
| kebab shops.
| nly wrote:
| The kebab shop in my local Tube station in London used to wrap
| his kebabs in free bakery counter bags stolen from the local
| Tesco. Presumably to save on costs.
|
| I don't mind saying it was the worst kebab I've ever had.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Worst kebab in London is highly competitive race with no need
| for handicaps.
| vzaliva wrote:
| This is a good example where a summary produced by much-hated AI
| (GPT 4o) is quite useful (to people who do not want to read all
| details in he article):
|
| "In his study, James Pae examined the hypothesis: "The closer to
| the train station, the worse the kebab." Focusing on Paris, he
| analysed kebab shops' proximity to train and metro stations
| alongside their Google review ratings. His findings revealed a
| negligible correlation between a kebab shop's distance from
| stations and its review ratings, suggesting the hypothesis lacks
| substantial evidence. Pae acknowledges potential influencing
| factors such as tourism and review biases and expresses
| intentions to revisit the study for further analysis."
| pocketarc wrote:
| I don't think a lot of people have a problem with AI summaries
| (a lot of people are using AI for exactly that). I think the
| 'hate' mostly comes from the fact that people tend to
| copy/paste whatever AI says without adding anything to the
| conversation.
|
| It's the same as me running a query on Google and copy/pasting
| a list of 10 results. It doesn't really add anything to a
| conversation - anyone can go to Google and look something up.
| sockmeistr wrote:
| For what it's worth, I do hate people pasting their AI
| summaries to the comments. Not only are they adding nothing,
| they are actively detracting from the conversation; they have
| just pasted a wall of text without fact-checking it. And in
| fact, this "summary" misrepresents the article; it completely
| ignores the humor and presents it as a serious scientific
| endeavour.
|
| But judging from the rest of the comments, it seems like most
| people barely managed to finish reading the title, so perhaps
| there's no need to worry about them reading this AI slop...
| tredre3 wrote:
| Asking a question to a coworker and having him copy paste
| from chatgpt has to be the worst thing about being a
| programmer in 2025.
|
| If I'm asking you something it's because I want to discuss
| it, not because I couldn't be bothered to google it myself.
| Do people really not realize that?
| brachistochron wrote:
| at some point of my life I was working on improving search
| results for the query "restaurant"
|
| for solving the problem of reviews not representing kebab taste,
| you can put reviews through the llm and ask it silple question -
| does it say that kebab is good or bad, or it is not about the
| taste at all
|
| given then a set of labeled reviews, you can very reliably devise
| the label you need
|
| you also can widen your top funnel with the approach, as it is
| agnostic to category, name, etc.
| JmsPae wrote:
| Hi there, "OP" here.
|
| First off, it's been fun to see this post spread across the
| interwebs since I first wrote it one caffeine-fueled day just
| over a week ago (first Meneame, now here) and for the heck of it,
| I thought I would clarify a few things;
|
| This post was (sortof) a meme. Sure, I "understood the
| assignment" and performed the quick "study" ("analysis" might be
| more fitting) for the sake of the original post over on r/gis,
| but I was surprised to see how seriously others took the matter.
| I suppose good kebabs are a serious matter.
|
| As others have pointed out, a linear correlation was likely a
| flawed approach for testing the "hypothesis". Though the original
| wording from the french post which first brought this to my
| attention implied as much, in hindsight it's likely that the
| kebab shops within a certain radius are on average worse than the
| rest.
|
| Also, it seemed that Paris was one of the worse study areas. It,
| apparently, has some very good kebab shops that just so happen to
| be in close proximity to train stations.
|
| I suppose I need to start working on part 2....
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Try fitting something non-linear or simply plot a mean (or
| median) rating over distance with some smoothing.
| wjholden wrote:
| Which R-Tree Rust library were you referring to?
| JmsPae wrote:
| https://github.com/georust/rstar
|
| Banger library. Not sure how it compares to, say, kd-tree in
| terms of performance but it allows for plenty of primitives.
| lqet wrote:
| Why did you include metro stations in your study? The original
| quote only included train stations. The metro originally
| largely replaced a tram network, so the metro station density
| in Paris is higher than for other underground systems. I think
| it is very hard to find kebap shops in Paris that are _not_
| within 500 m of a metro station. This kind of dilutes the
| significance of your study, because I never really noticed that
| metro stations had a negative impact on their surrounding area
| (the opposite, really).
|
| I think your study would have been much more interesting (but
| not that algorithmically challenging...) if you only included
| the large train stations in Paris.
| maeln wrote:
| I would second this. In Paris, but I find it to be true in
| most European city, the area surrounding train station is
| usually not very nice. It is usually surrounded by cheap
| hotel for 1-night traveler, overpriced fast food (hence the
| initial theory) and social housing / cheap building (a lot of
| people don't want to live next to a train station due to the
| nuisance, so poor people often get stuck there).
|
| On the other hand, metro station are pretty much anywhere,
| and they tend to have the opposite effect. Having a metro
| station close by is very practical and doesn't generate as
| much nuisance since it is underground and pretty well hidden.
|
| I am almost sure the data will look very different if you
| only look for train station.
| yard2010 wrote:
| This is such a dystopian phenomenon, I'm far from an expert
| but I guess it's a matter of city planning?
| lqet wrote:
| It's very hard to avoid this. It's mostly a combination
| of railway noise, throughput of a large number of people
| who are only travelling through, opportunities for
| pickpockets and beggars, and historically of soot and air
| pollution by steam engines, which makes these areas
| unattractive to live in.
|
| And it is not for lack of trying. City planners since at
| least the 1850ies have been trying to improve the areas
| surrounding large train stations.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's also a very large building or roofed space, where
| it's more difficult than elsewhere to accuse homeless etc
| of loitering.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| It is difficult to avoid, as metro passengers are mainly
| residents or workers in nearby premises. Station halls
| are also much bigger and attract the marginalised who
| want to shelter from the elements.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You would need to further filter for the largest railway
| stations, perhaps by number of platforms >= 6 or 8,
| otherwise you will include many urban and suburban stations
| that serve essentially the same purpose as metro stations.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| There are not a lot of stations that a Parisian dweller
| would consider to be a "railway station" AND "inside
| Paris".
|
| I'd say mostly Montparnasse, Gare de Lyon, Gare de l'Est,
| Gare du Nord, and Austerlitz.
|
| RER, Transilien, Metro and Tramway stations would not
| count as "train stations" in the eyes of a
| Parisian/French person, and places outside of the
| Peripherique (the ring road that follows the old
| defensive "Thier walls" of the city) would not count as
| "Paris" for this kind of conversation.
| Timshel wrote:
| For those wondering the original image was speaking of
| "Gare" which are well-defined: https://www.sncf-
| connect.com/gares/paris
| ElFitz wrote:
| And Saint-Lazare, the third busiest train station in
| France based on the number of daily travellers, and the
| oldest in Paris.
| numpad0 wrote:
| As a non-Parisian: the hard distinction between "metro" and
| "train" can be non-obvious, even perplexing, depending on
| which train systems one is accustomed with. Some systems
| just don't have it, in manners that if said in Paris terms
| it might be train to Lyon arriving next to Line 6
| Westbound.
| account42 wrote:
| It doesn't need to be a hard distinction. I'm sure
| everyone can see the difference of a building with
| multiple platforms and usually shops and other things
| targetting non-locally-resident travellers and your
| average metro stop with has two platforms (one for each
| direction) and not much more than an entrance and exit.
| Where exactly you draw the line doesn't really matter.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That. That kind of distinction isn't universal. Some
| places just have a fused metro-plus-train system, in
| which you can slip in a $1 metro ticket, ride along
| changing metro trains for over a day across
| >1500km/1000mi, and pay outstanding fee at the exit, like
| on Japanese JR networks and metro trains interoperating
| with it.
|
| I'm not saying which modes of thinking are more rational
| or superior or anything of that sort, just that the
| seemingly instinctive distinction you have described is
| not necessarily so to everybody.
| eloisant wrote:
| There is usually a difference between a "local network"
| to travel within a metropolitan area and "intercity"
| train to go from one big city to another.
|
| That is what matters here.
| the_clarence wrote:
| Train has a train station (with paid toilets now
| unfortunately in France) and connects to other parts of
| the country. Metro is a subway and is within city
| boundaries
| leptons wrote:
| >As a non-Parisian: the hard distinction between "metro"
| and "train" can be non-obvious
|
| Do you know the difference between "train" and "subway",
| because "the metro" is just a subway, just like in NYC or
| commonly found elsewhere in almost any large city.
| JmsPae wrote:
| I thought to include metro stations mostly because of the
| nature of the original French subreddit (https://www.reddit.c
| om/r/MetroFrance/comments/1hcifh1/pas_vu...). It perhaps
| doesn't make much sense in hindsight, but I also filtered out
| metro stations later on in the post and it didn't change
| much.
|
| I'm starting work on a follow-up which will sample more
| cities, though I still plan to use walking distances w
| network analysis for now.
| Timshel wrote:
| Hey, Not sure what you were left with once you removed
| metro stations but in the context of the original image the
| "gare" would be: https://www.sncf-connect.com/gares/paris .
|
| And people would probably often forget Paris Bercy ^^.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Seconded. Train stations are important attractors for some
| kinds of people and some kinds of eating place, metro
| stations (particularly relatively small and uniformly
| distributed ones, as is the case in Paris) are only able to
| give a restaurant an easily reachable position, only for
| metro travellers, compared to others in the neighbourhood.
| Different effects, good for a different study.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| please do berlin, london, and stockholm.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Yeah, this is a nice selection of European cities to compare!
|
| Having lived in Berlin and Stockholm (and a few other
| cities), I'd say Stockholm has _by far_ the worst kebab
| options of all places I 've lived, while Berlin was the best
| one.
|
| I'm curious whether this is reflected in local reviews, or
| whether the locals just lower or heighten their standards
| based on the what the average food quality is like.
| vidarh wrote:
| Kebabs are one of the foods (like Chinese cuisine) that
| morphs depending on a combination of which kebab-eating
| group brought it to the country, and local cuisine.
|
| I'm not sure about Stockholm, or Sweden in general, when it
| comes to kebabs, but kebabs in Norway bear little
| resemblance to the kebabs I get in London. And the UK now
| has a chain serving "German" kebabs, which again are
| significantly different from the kebabs we get from Turkish
| takeaway places and restaurants here... It's not that
| they're better or worse - I might crave one or the other
| depending on what I'm in the mood for, as they're almost
| different dishes.
|
| So, comparing cities against each other is a lot harder
| than comparing differences in local opinion by location
| within a city.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Kebabs in Australia are basically a different food to the
| one you get in continental Europe.
|
| Good, but different.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| The author is Swedish, and having asked some Swedes they
| basically consider the kebab to be the goto "local"
| cuisine.
|
| London of course has the two styles, |Turkish| and
| Turkish via Germany.
| ido wrote:
| As someone whose been living in Berlin for the last 11
| years I'm always horrified to read people say they wish the
| had high quality kebabs "like in Berlin" - the average
| kebab here is _atrocious_ (obviously optimized for price
| and not for quality) - the best ones are OK but definitely
| not amazing.
|
| I don't want to find out how bad the kebabs are in Sweden
| and other places you hear the from like some US cities if
| you think Berlin kebab is high quality in comparison.
| klausa wrote:
| As someone who moved out of Berlin a year and a half ago
| -- you truly do not want to find out how other people
| live.
|
| I know getting something on the same level as Ruyam would
| be impossible; but I would pay a not-insignificant money
| for something resembling a random Bude near my old place.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Well, technically I _did_ say "has best options", not
| "the kebab quality median is great".
|
| I now live in Malmo, which has a much higher number of
| people from Middle-Eastern countries, so their cuisine is
| also a lot better than what you can get in Stockholm.
| However, since I've also become vegetarian in the
| intervening years I could not tell you what the local
| quality of the kebab is. Falafel is pretty passable
| though. And one of my Iraqi friends has said the better
| places in Malmo win the _" least disappointing experience
| in Sweden compared to home"_ award, for what it's worth.
| ido wrote:
| "Least disappointing experience" is how I would put the
| better kebab places in Berlin! Shawarma in Tel Aviv is
| not exactly the same but similar and so much better (of
| course there's a lot of variability in quality there too,
| and it costs something like 2-3x as much as kebabs in
| Berlin).
|
| I'm sure you can also get amazing specimen in Arab
| countries and in Turkey (I don't have first hand
| experience there).
| s0fasurfa wrote:
| Berlin shouldn't be a surprise, because the Kebap Sandwich
| was invented here (at least according to some sources:
| https://berlinexperiences.com/was-the-doner-kebab-
| invented-i...)
|
| Before that, Kebap was a dish served on a plate, taken in a
| seated manner.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The article itself gives a negative verdict on this:
| Verdict NO The Doner Kebab was not
| invented in Berlin. Popularised here? Ok.
| But there are no participation trophies for that.
|
| And they're correct. After all, you have not experienced
| _doner kebap_ until you have tasted the original Klingon
| _jIrtaH ghab_.
| the_clarence wrote:
| I don't understand how it was popularised there though.
| It's a staple in France and seems to have no connection
| to Germany
| mda wrote:
| Doner kebap was invented in Ottoman empire in 19th
| century. It was also usually eaten inside bread.
|
| Turkish immigrants introduced it in Germany in 70's.
| However it is true that the current version of Doner
| kebap in Germany is quite different than Turkish
| counterparts. (Sauces, toppings etc)
| percevalve wrote:
| That looks like a typical collider bias to me... There should
| be no correlation between location and quality... But as you
| are looking at restaurant that are still "in business" you are
| introducing a bias. If you simplify, a restaurant can have : -
| good/bad location - good/bad food
|
| If your restaurant has bad location and bad food, it is not
| going to stay in business very long.
|
| After that you can have a mix of all, but if you remove the
| "bad/bad" restaurant there is a correlation that appears, but
| it is due to the collider bias.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _if you remove the "bad/bad" restaurant there is a
| correlation that appears, but it is due to the collider
| bias._
|
| This sounds like the correlation _appears_ because of you
| throwing away some data, but the way I see it, that
| correlation is real - you 're not removing the bad/bad
| restaurants, _the market is_.
|
| I've been reading up on collider bias on Wiki and pondering
| the examples[0] - restaurants, dating, celebrities - and the
| way I see it, the biased statistics is still true for whoever
| is doing the classification (person visiting fast-food
| restaurants, or looking for a date), and if their selection
| (taste) generalizes, it might also carry over to the general
| population.
|
| I feel the restaurant example from Wiki, with its associated
| image below, is worth discussing:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox#/media/Fil.
| ..
|
| "An illustration of Berkson's Paradox. The top graph
| represents the actual distribution, in which a positive
| correlation between quality of burgers and fries is observed.
| However, an individual who does not eat at any location where
| both are bad observes only the distribution on the bottom
| graph, which appears to show a negative correlation."
|
| This feels wrong to me. Why is the regression line nearly
| horizontal when, eyeballing the graph, a _nearly vertical_
| one would fit better _and_ capture an even stronger positive
| correlation between qualities of hamburgers and fries? In
| fact, I 'm tempted to even throw away the leftmost and
| rightmost points on the lower panel as outliers.
|
| Anyway, this example assumes the bad/bad restaurants are not
| visited by the subject - however, if we take your scenario
| where bad/bad restaurants quickly go out of business, then
| it's _the market_ that _creates_ the correlation between
| those two hypothetically independent qualities, so as long as
| we 're talking real world and not some imaginary spherical
| restaurants in frictionless vacuum, it would be fair to say
| the correlation exists (and that the causal mechanism behind
| it is market selection).
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The correlation is still there, but it's a reason the
| causation you might have been thinking plausible might not
| be.
|
| In OP's case, however, the correlation did NOT seem to
| exist.
| drpixie wrote:
| Paris is a special case - you've got a great metro and
| everywhere is close to a station :)
|
| Perhaps distance to a non-metro station (eg a TER "mainline"
| station like Gare du Nord) would give more representative
| results?
|
| I wait with interest.
| larodi wrote:
| I'd love to see more spatial sql applied. As a side effect tbh
| your code may get shorter. Even though R and Python are type
| go-to langs for ML, it is SQL which excels at spatial analysis.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I just want to tell you that it's very well written, well done!
|
| > With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data
| indicates that this could be true!
|
| I almost choked on this bit, as I was eating a sandwich (not a
| kebab sadly)
| 3abiton wrote:
| > I suppose I need to start working on part 2....
|
| I'll wait for the ignobel paper.
| paulorlando wrote:
| When I moved to the West Village in NYC, the first night I went
| to a kebab place right by my building. The owner was talkative
| and friendly and gave me a free cup of ayran. I went back
| regularly, but the place was almost always empty. Meanwhile,
| visiting friends would always want to go to a different kebab
| place just down the block. For the first year I stayed loyal to
| that friendly kebab shop owner, until one day I went to the other
| kebab place. Long lines and... much better food! I never went
| back to the first one.
| hackit2 wrote:
| And the kebab circle of life is complete. People are ruthless
| when it comes to food prices/quality.
| paulorlando wrote:
| It was all quality. The food was so much better at the second
| place that even if the first place was free I wouldn't have
| gone back
| joshdavham wrote:
| Awesome post! Also, I dig your writing style
| I_dream_of_Geni wrote:
| "The best food in the world is made in France. The best food in
| France is made in Paris. And the best food in Paris, some say, is
| made by Chef Auguste Gusteau"
|
| -quote from Ratatouille
| hansvm wrote:
| TFA mentioned several ways in which Google reviews aren't an
| ideal tool here. Tossing out a couple more, you (1) don't have
| the same people giving reviews at each location, and (2) have a
| bias in those who choose to give reviews. As a point of anecdata
| about (1): Saturne in Paris (now closed) served some of the best
| food I've ever eaten, and it had lower ratings than a tourist-
| trap fish place on a pier near to where I live, even if you
| filter the reviews to only those describing the food.
|
| I'd be interested in seeing the same analysis with other metrics
| of quality, like the proportion of negative reviews referencing
| food vs other things (or a wilson-scored version thereof).
| hobofan wrote:
| There is also a bias in the rating range of a city. E.g. in
| Berlin when looking to go out to eat I'd look for 4.5 and above
| as it uses quite a wide range for ratings, while e.g. in Rome
| most time I'd be happy with a 4.0. There are many phenomena (in
| Rome probably high tourist expectations) that can skew the
| distribution of reviews in a way that makes it hard to use as a
| "quality" scale.
| kewho wrote:
| Was confused about this part the last time I saw this posted
| online:
|
| > With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data
| indicates that this could be true!
|
| This sounds like op thinks the data supports the hypothesis.
|
| One would assume a negative result for the hypothesis would occur
| when there is a bias in the upper left quadrant, where shortest
| distance and highest score intersect, and looking at the graphs
| in figures 8 and 9, to me, there appears a bias there.
| physhster wrote:
| There is an amazing kebab across the street from the Bordeaux
| train station. Your entire study is debunked!!
| ralferoo wrote:
| I was hoping for a systematic and consistent reviews of many
| dozens of kebab shops in a certain metropolitan area.
|
| Just basing any kind of research of reviews on the web is
| fundamentally flawed as only a tiny fraction of customers would
| ever review a restaurant - and usually reviews are overly biased
| negative from bad experiences, or biased positive by people being
| incentivised to leave good reviews by discounts or outright fake
| reviews, or some kind of average of the two. As such the actual
| results from these reviews are pretty meaningless, apart from the
| number of reviews which might correlate roughly with how likely a
| place is to be visited, good or bad. In this case, I think that
| will also probably correlate with proximity to stations, rather
| than the quality.
| Naru41 wrote:
| > I'll be expecting my Nobel peace prize in the postbox and
| several job offers in my DMs within the next 3 working days.
|
| This joke alone was worth the read.
| pizlonator wrote:
| This made my day, it was science at its finest
| stevage wrote:
| >There are many aspects of the dining experience that could
| hypothetically impact a review score. The staff, cleanliness, the
| surrounding environment, etc. Not to mention online skulduggery
| and review manipulation.
|
| Don't Google Maps reviews separately measure food, "ambience" and
| service? Is it not possible to access the food component
| directly?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Don 't Google Maps reviews separately measure food,
| "ambience" and service? Is it not possible to access the food
| component directly?_
|
| It's debatable whether these components can actually be
| segregated that way. In practice, no, every review system is
| plagued with reviews in the form of 'delicious food, lovely
| staff, but another table was too loud one star.'
| stevage wrote:
| True. Everyone has the one thing they care about. I care
| about ambience. I barely notice the food.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I care about ambience. I barely notice the food._
|
| I'm saying it's difficult if not impossible to disentangle
| these elements. The vibe, perhaps even the staffs' moods,
| will be in part a function of the diners. That, in turn,
| turns at least in part on the food. And vice versa--a place
| with a devout following that respects the kitchen staff
| will probably produce better food _and_ ambiance, as both
| arise out of a sense of mutual respect.
|
| You may not care about the food directly. But if your
| barmate in a fun outfit with a contagious laugh does,
| that's part of the vibe you're there to feed on. (I love
| food. But I've sometimes found myself winnowing down a list
| of restaurant options by the lighting.)
| coryaf wrote:
| For the Americans - by kebab it means gyro
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Kebab and Gyro are pretty different in terms of bread, salad,
| sauce and even meat.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Also, Americans all know what kebab is, but not the case with
| gyro
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| Tangential, and not a train station, but one of the best Turkish
| sis kebabs I ever had was at Esenler Otogar (bus station) in
| Istanbul. The station is something out of a horror movie, but if
| you go up to the second floor there are some fantastic little
| places to eat.
| m0llusk wrote:
| this thread is making me very hungry
| hot_gril wrote:
| Cash only => good. "Bistro" in the name => bad.
| jaydeegee wrote:
| Finally someone using GIS data for the great good of humanity.
| Horffupolde wrote:
| This was discussed by Taleb as "I'd rather my surgeon be ugly and
| not look like George Clooney."
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| Try correcting for density first.
| protocolture wrote:
| There was briefly a fad where a person would review "HSP's" from
| every kebab store in their area, it might be easier to use a
| single users spread of reviews rather than average review scores.
| lukaslalinsky wrote:
| I think it's clear from the plots, that the closer you are to a
| train station, the more bad kebab shops you will find. That's why
| it's easy for humans to make the original assumption.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's a massive number of kebab shops in Paris...
| lqet wrote:
| > I could've absolutely just routed to every single entrance for
| every single restaurant to get the nearest... But that would've
| taken several decades.
|
| Hm, this seems like a standard many-to-many routing problem on a
| relatively small road network (only Paris). Why would this take
| several decades? Even if you just implemented a straightforward
| Dijkstra without any speed-up technique, it should take not more
| than a minute (you can trivially compute routes from N to M
| places using N Dijkstra runs).
| shoo wrote:
| > you can trivially compute routes from N to M places using N
| Dijkstra runs
|
| to do even better, you can compute the shortest path & distance
| to M kebab shops from the nearest of N train stations using a
| single run of a standard shortest path algorithm like Dijkstra,
| by changing the initial condition of the search to start from a
| set of multiple source nodes, not a single source node.
|
| another way to think about this is to take the graph and
| augment it with an additional virtual root node and add length
| 0 edges from that virtual root node to each of the N train
| stations, then use that virtual root node as the source for a
| single-source Dijkstra.
|
| alternatively, modify the original graph by merging all the
| train station nodes together into one node (if this introduces
| self-loop edges, delete them, if this introduces multi-edges
| between same pair of nodes, delete all but a minimal length
| one)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Here in Berlin there are an enormous amount of kebab places
| (thousands). Basically, most places are embedded in neighborhoods
| and have a crowd of locals that go there. The quality varies
| wildly as a lot of these places are obviously aimed at the money
| laundering business (cash only) rather than serving food. Poor
| hygiene, indifferent service, etc. Many of these places are
| completely pointless from a business point of view. Other than
| the money laundering thing. They are easy to recognize since they
| look kind of old and dirty and there are usually not a lot of
| customers. If it's lunch/dinner time and nobody is eating, maybe
| skip it.
|
| And then there are some really outstanding places with proper
| char coal grills, staff that knows what they are doing and are
| friendly and laser focused on customer service. These places are
| wonderful and generally good value. Some of these marinade their
| own meat as well and they venture beyond just serving the
| standard kebabs. If you find yourself in Berlin, worth getting
| some advice on where to go in your area. There are some amazing
| kebab restaurants and most of those places have been around for
| ages.
|
| And then there's a third category of places that you find in the
| usual late night and travel hot spots targeting travelers or
| people that are drunk that will probably not be regulars.
| Competition for this audience is fierce and there are some good
| choices here that people will take detours for to get to. Many of
| these places are well run and optimize for throughput and
| consistency (but not necessarily high quality).
| skrebbel wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance, but I always wonder how these money
| laundering kebab places work. We have some in my city too and
| they always leave me puzzled. If nobody eats there, how do they
| launder money? I'm probably daft/naieve but can't figure out
| the mechanics of money laundering when the business doesn't
| actually move any product.
| timvdalen wrote:
| They pretend like people _do_ eat there, that's how the dirty
| cash ends up in the register.
| tinco wrote:
| You have money you can't explain to the IRS how you got it,
| that's dirty money. Now you use some clean money to buy a
| kebab shop. Every day you give your dirty money to the kebab
| shop, the kebab shop prints fake receipts. Now the IRS can be
| convinced the money came from cash in hand customers.
| robocat wrote:
| Does the IRS somewhat encourage dirty money to be taxed?
| I'm guessing they would prefer to have it highly taxed but
| perhaps getting some tax is second best.
|
| In New Zealand "Income that is earned from illegal
| activities needs to have tax paid on it." however they do
| try to deter money laundering, tax evasion and tax fraud.
|
| In New Zealand it is getting harder to launder money
| because cash is not used as much as it used to be.
| Certainly a legitimate kebab shop should now receive the
| majority of their money as card payments. Few businesses
| here would have a majority of takings in cash.
| tinco wrote:
| Well yes, in the sense that Al Capone famously got nailed
| on not filing income taxes. But of course, if Al Capone
| had told the IRS that he got his money through extortion
| and illegal liquor, gambling and drugs or whatever it was
| he did then the IRS would gladly give that information to
| whoever was investigating him, so I don't think the IRS
| would profit much from it either way.
|
| And I imagine card payments do make it harder, but the
| schemes just become more difficult, which might press on
| the margins a little. You could always buy your kebab
| shops overseas. Sell your drugs for Bitcoin, send the
| Bitcoin to Berlin, exchange them there for Euros, cash
| them in at your Kebab shop, and then wire them back to
| New Zealand, bam you're an international investor in the
| eyes of your government.
| splintercell wrote:
| Just to be clear, it has been the law of the land that
| IRS is not allowed to share this information with
| criminal investigation. They realized how badly they
| screwed their revenue collection by "getting" Al Capone.
| To be clear, Tony Soprano files his taxes. It's generally
| the smaller henchmen who don't.
| jclulow wrote:
| The point is generally to recover cents on the dollar from
| money you can't otherwise use. Imagine you have a network of
| people moving illegal drugs. They collect money from their
| customers, and they need to pay it to you, the supplier.
| Arrange for them to eat a lot of food at your restaurant.
| Maybe they shout their friends. The money goes into the
| restaurant, and is mingled with other money. That money is
| used to pay costs for the business, but some of it is still
| profit. That profit, while less than the illegal input money,
| is _clean_ money, which is much more valuable because you can
| spend it without fear generally.
|
| It's really just about making it harder for law enforcement
| folks to draw associations by looking directly at the bank
| accounts of several people they suspect are in cahoots. Or,
| in some cases, about making it harder to trace specific cash
| serial numbers or other instruments like cheques.
|
| I recall reading of a crime outfit in Australia that would
| have the elders in their family take their illicit cash and
| use it to place an endless stream of bets on poker machines.
| By law they're required to return some high percentage, say,
| 75%, of the money put into them (the house keeps the rest).
| If you gamble tens of thousands in those machines, and you
| don't care about the losses, you get a reasonable expectation
| value back out as laundered winnings. In that case you don't
| even have to own the pub with the pokies, that's just how
| they work.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you gamble tens of thousands in those machines, and
| you don't care about the losses, you get a reasonable
| expectation value back out as laundered winnings.
|
| Where does the laundering come into it? If the machine pays
| out in cash and you just walk away with it, you've gone
| from having a big pile of dirty money to having a slightly
| smaller pile of dirty money. You _could_ declare that the
| smaller pile is all gambling winnings (off of a low base),
| but as soon as that gets audited you have to refer the
| auditor to the casino 's security cameras and there you are
| spending a lot more than you got back.
|
| You could ask the casino to make a formal declaration that
| your smaller pile of money is gambling winnings (maybe it's
| chips!), but why should they lie for you?
|
| And if it is chips, you had to buy chips originally. How do
| you explain how you afforded those chips?
|
| What's the part of this scheme that works?
| jajko wrote:
| You are overthinking all this. This is not Al Capone
| investigation, tax offices are understaffed and petty
| negligence or even crime happens with tax returns very
| frequently. You think taxmen are going to investigate
| endless hours of video feed from some casino via court
| order for some 10k win claimed in taxes? Not sure if
| casinos even keep all video feeds for say 3 years since
| it takes time to actually file and process those tax
| returns.
|
| If you are not big enough fish or have some bad luck, you
| can slip through quite easily. The key is to keep it down
| money wise, spread it across many places and random
| dates. You can't do big sums alone, hence the grandpas in
| parent comment.
|
| Basically, small crime these days, at least in Europe, is
| not punished unless you literally steal from police
| personnel. And if you do it well you can hide bigger
| crime in sea of small crime.
|
| Maybe AI could help with some of that, but I see often
| lack of any interest by police to even care that ie your
| 700 euro phone was stolen, even if you still know its
| exact location in specific house. No AI is ever fixing
| that.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Hell, even someone like Dan Bilzerian basically openly
| laundered tens of millions via "private poker games" and
| he's never going to be charged for it.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Yep. A classic movement (at least on Spain) is buying
| winning lottery tickets.
|
| You locate people that have winning tickets and offer
| them certain percent of money over the prize value. For
| example, if it's a 10K prize, you offer 12 or 13K. The
| ticket owner gets dirty money and avoids paying taxes on
| the prize (so they get 40 or 50% more than they would
| have got with the ticket). The other side gets clean
| money.
|
| When dirty politicians get audited they find how "lucky"
| they are, having won lottery tens of times in a couple
| years or three. What an statistic oddity, huh? ;)
|
| https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2015/12/21/inenglish/14
| 506...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You can say whatever you want if you assume you can't be
| audited. In that case there's no reason to play the slots
| at all. Your money will stay just as dirty in either
| case, but you'll have 30% more of it.
|
| The problem I see with the casino "strategy" is that, as
| soon as you are audited, your story immediately falls
| apart. That's a terrible cover. Who needs a defense that
| can never be penetrated as long as it's never attacked?
| The idea of laundering is to say something that's
| difficult to disprove.
|
| > You think taxmen are going to investigate endless hours
| of video feed from some casino via court order for some
| 10k win claimed in taxes?
|
| If you have a thousand of them, yes. If you have one, it
| was a waste of your time and your money to pretend to
| launder it through slot machines.
| csunbird wrote:
| If you play long enough, you always lose all of your
| money.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Requiring your henchmen to eat a lot of Kebab all the time
| is not at all a scalable money laundering scheme. It's also
| self-defeating since they will become fat and sickly from
| too much Kebab :-(
| hinkley wrote:
| The more common thing that comes up in hypothetical
| conversations of the sort "you acquire $5M through less
| than legal means. How can you spend it?" is owning a bar.
|
| Buying the liquor gets a bit fuzzy as to where the money
| comes from. But the bigger thing is you can have
| imaginary customers and either drink "their" alcohol,
| pour it down the drain, or use it for gifts and bribes,
| all while booking receipts for people who never came into
| the bar at all.
|
| It's not that the henchmen spend every ill gotten dollar
| in the restaurant, it's that the restaurant looks busy
| enough for that level of revenue to look even remotely
| plausible.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| While on holiday in South America, I visited a friend and
| we went out for drinks quite a few times, we visited
| different neighborhoods and at times I was really puzzled
| as to why this very "new" looking, gigantic, fully
| staffed bars were often completely empty, he clarified
| that those were likely laundering drug money.
| hinkley wrote:
| Well, let it never be said that South and Central
| American cartels aren't ballsy af.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The house is also part of the crime? As in, loosing is part
| of the money transfer plan?
| hinkley wrote:
| A bunch of computer games have had very restrictive rules
| about getting money back out of the game that other people
| have put in.
|
| Because if you overprice something in a video game someone
| might buy it anyway. Because who's to say the price didn't
| spike high for some real world or in game event (like a
| holiday, a new challenge opening, or a voice actor died and
| everyone wants to dress like their characters). If you can
| turn the in game currency back and forth to hard currency,
| then you can sell a $5 item for $500 and walk away with
| 90-99% of the value (depending if the company charges a
| transfer fee).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| <cough> Counterstrike skins and gambling websites <cough>
|
| Except the joke there is, you never even have to pay out!
| Gift cards to various tradeable "assets" are a reliable
| way to launder money, or more directly, launder stolen
| credit card details into usable money.
| aqme28 wrote:
| You don't need them to eat kebab. Just put on your books
| that you sold a lot of kebab. Do it in cash. Buy some meat
| and throw it out if you want, and you're fine.
| hooli_gan wrote:
| Yeah that's how it's done. The other comments are
| overcomplicating it.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| they only throw out the meat on the books: mark it as
| unsellable and deduct it as shrink.
|
| in reality it just goes home w/ the business owner and/or
| his people -- sometimes the same day as it's bought. drop
| off a couple kilos of unsold doner kabab meat to his mom
| who is retired, hand some out to uncle, etc.
|
| it's hard to trace, and hard to ID -- just some random
| meat in an old lady's freezer, and may have already ended
| up in a stew or something -- and in theory should have
| been disposed of (in theory) anyway per health code
| regulations.
|
| pretty common technique in use, like, everywhere.
| shizzor wrote:
| They already have the money, they just need a business as a
| facade to claim the money was earned by running the business.
| But you are right, eventually it would be suspicious if they
| only sold food but never bought the matching raw ingredients.
| That's probably why they now moved to barber shops - nobody
| knows or can prove you didn't cut the hair of the hundreds of
| people that were never there.
| mindok wrote:
| Hmmm. Maybe that's why hairdressers are on the skilled
| worker list for immigration to Australia.
| lqet wrote:
| > If nobody eats there, how do they launder money?
|
| The laundered money is reported to the tax office as cash
| payments from customers. Add some fake invoices from meat
| suppliers to make your books look legit, and you have
| converted dirty money into clean, even taxable income.
|
| This only works to a certain degree, though. If the tax
| office becomes suspicious, they will definitely use
| undercover people to count customers and meat deliveries over
| a few weeks. But if for example only 10% of your sales volume
| is fake, it is quite hard for the tax office to prove this.
| For smaller laundry volumes, you don't even need fake
| supplier bills, you can always just claim that you put a bit
| less meat on the kebap, etc. The general idea is to take
| advantage of the fact that even the tax office acknowledges
| that it is impossible to keep books accurate to the last
| penny in such businesses.
|
| When I was a student I often ate pizza in a really nice
| Italian restaurant which later turned out to be a money
| laundering front for the Mafia. But the pizza was great!
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| All cash transactions with essentially no/sloppy bookkeeping.
| Receipts optional. Money goes in, taxes are declared but it
| doesn't necessarily all add up. So they mix in some non clean
| revenue and it all comes out as income.
| auselen wrote:
| I think there is some exaggeration
|
| > obviously aimed at the money laundering business
|
| Places also provide facade to some social networks. They can
| keep relatives having a job, can act like a store front for
| doing whatever deal.
|
| I accept they don't survive by just serving food, but some of
| it basically just bad business or some guys to have a legit
| place for other activities.
| jon-wood wrote:
| As an example of something similar happening, my family and I
| once went to a little village in the middle of Bulgaria to
| visit a family fried, and booked a hotel room for the week.
| This was a huge hotel, next door to another huge hotel,
| serving a village with a population of a few hundred people.
|
| At one point our friend told us it was well known that both
| were owned by the local mafia. If you were to check the books
| you'd find the place was fully booked every day of the year
| and doing a roaring trade, while if you actually went and
| visited you'd find 3 slightly bemused looking English people
| and maybe a wedding party.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| Although no one eats there, he declares 50 kebab sales, the
| purchase of a frozen kebab skewer and bread rolls, etc. The
| raw materials will either be thrown away or sold on to
| another real restaurant. But to pass the checks, the
| purchases of raw materials must be consistent with the sales.
| The 50 sales are made with cash from drug trafficking. The
| simpler the activity, the fewer raw materials and the bigger
| the margins, the better. Amsterdam has its Nutella waffle
| stands, Berlin its kebabs, Paris its nail bars and massage
| parlours.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Ireland and the UK have Vape Shops, Mattress Stores,
| Internet Cafes, Sunbed Salons, Phone Repair Shops, and
| increasingly 'US Sweet Shops' for some reason (presumably
| high margin, low price shelf-stable inventory, no
| significant food safety or service regs for ambient goods
| storage, can be run by minimum wage staff.)
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2024/05/08/londons-
| plagu...
| eddiewithzato wrote:
| Pretty sure it's mostly for tax dodging than money laundering.
| Less risky too
| JR1427 wrote:
| After a ten second glance, it looks like there are simply more
| kebab shops close to stations, and therefore a larger sample from
| which to see a broader range of ratings (including bad ones).
| rcpt wrote:
| > not in the mood to build a web scraper (it has the same soul-
| sucking effect on me as prompting an LLM)
|
| I guess the joke is that nowadays you crawl pages by prompting
| and LLM
| higeorge13 wrote:
| It's extremely funny that this is accurate for souvlaki in
| Greece. :) On the contrary, I was amazed by the quality of food
| in stations in Japan. Some "shady" shops there had some of the
| best ramen/udon I had in Japan.
| qq66 wrote:
| It makes logical sense. The closer a shop is to the train
| station, the more it pays in rent, requiring it to skimp on
| ingredient quality.
| setr wrote:
| Presumably they'd have higher traffic to offset the rent
| increase. I would expect more quality damage from the fact that
| they effectively have guaranteed minimum traffic ala airports
| skrebbel wrote:
| It's not true though!
| Justta wrote:
| It's case old saying lost it's relevance. This is absolutely
| correct in developing countries which only has one main railway
| station or bus stand for the whole city or town. These
| establishments targeted one time customer who will never return
| in a year. Including metro is not valid or violation of the
| actual circumstance this saying originated. Including Mtro and
| even if still counting walkable distance of 100 m from the
| station almost covers the whole city. Doing this in Paris with
| more strict enforcement of food safety and quality isn't really
| going to validate.
| josefrichter wrote:
| One sub-hypothesis to add: people getting off the train are more
| hungry than general population + hungry people generally give
| more favourable reviews :-)
| einpoklum wrote:
| A study of life as limited and filtered to the Google-verse. I
| disapprove.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Best Doner i ever eaten, was a small turkish kiez kebap in one of
| berlins backyard streets - they roasted the hell out of that
| chicken doner and you got only crust. Worst war lunch rushhour
| large chain kebap near the chinese embassy.
| hinkley wrote:
| This seems like a clear case of survivor bias. When you're near
| commuters and infrequent visitors, accessibility is a quality all
| of its own. As long as you don't become infamous, you're gonna
| get traffic.
|
| The farther I have to travel to get to the food, the more
| motivation I'm gonna need. I'll go pretty far for my favorite
| Korean food or for my buddy's favorite doner, but if I've got a
| meeting in 30 minutes then I'm going to the least objectionable
| of the four closest places. And as easily nerd sniped as I am,
| let's be honest that's happening at least once a week, which is
| probably more often than I go to the good places.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| more please
| evanb wrote:
| For an exception, Kebapland in Ehrenfeld, Cologne is in the
| shadow of the mainline rails to Aachen and on top of the
| Ehrenfeld U-Bahn. It has the hands-down best kebap (and euro-for-
| euro meal) found in Koln.
|
| This is not a paid endorsement, it's just insanely good.
| philjw wrote:
| Finally - this was long term observation I conducted in many
| cities so far (Check Utrecht, The Hague, Valencia, Frankfurt-
| often the case you have <4 star kebab shops right next to train
| station) . If not true for kebab on broader scale, it surely is
| for McDonalds / Burger King: They use their position / monopoly,
| no coupons accepted, higher prices - and in some cases not even a
| seating area. A true real life dark pattern right there.
|
| I also rated some of them with 1 star because fast food seemed to
| have degenerated to "being stuck in waiting line with gigworkers
| collecting food for other people"-food. Not the best experience
| when you're on a mission to catch the next train in 15 minutes
| and they let you wait. @BigFastFoodChain if you read this - Have
| an extra menu with a category "Super Fast Food" or "Ready &
| Available in under a minute" that enables people in frequented
| locations to use their time better. Also goes for supermarkets -
| add self check-outs!
| sdushane wrote:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/7imPTP88PrYLpABb9
|
| Best kebob in Stain-Denis, maybe all of Paris. Not close to
| train.
| sdushane wrote:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/7imPTP88PrYLpABb9 Best I've tried in
| Paris - Saint-Denis. Not near train.
| account42 wrote:
| Besides the other mentioned issues, using average user rating as
| a proxy of quality is something that needs at least an argument
| why you expect the ratings to be comparable. Consider that for
| example shops near a train station will see a lot more one-off
| customers who might be inclined to rate differently compared to
| the shop's neighbors.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| kinda related, there is this guy in Berlin who reviews all the
| kebab places closest to each subway station
| https://www.youtube.com/@CanF.Kennedy
| machine_ghost wrote:
| So, this is anecdotal, and it's not true at the moment (because
| the end of the Santa Cruz wharf just fell into the ocean, and now
| the clam chowder restaurants are closed), but ...
|
| ... I had an ex who was a huge clam chowder fan, so she did her
| own "experiment" and tried every chowder-serving restaurant on
| the Santa Cruz wharf (I think there were seven).
|
| Her completely unscientific finding was that the very best
| chowder was at the end of the wharf, and generally speaking the
| chowder got worse as you got closer to the start of the pier (ie.
| the closest place to The Boardwalk ... where all the tourists
| come).
|
| It makes perfect sense to me: if people come to your restaurant
| because of its location, you don't put much effort into quality.
| If you're far from the walk-in traffic, you need to do something
| (like make really delicious chowder) to get people to walk out to
| you.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I find it difficult to compare this to real world results,
| because where I live has neither train stations nor kebabs.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I was hoping when clicking on the article that they would also
| reveal new ways or collecting data of restaurants and their menus
| nearby, damn. Very fun article to read anyways!
|
| Would overpass turbo maybe be a better alternative for finding
| specifics things depending of multiple clauses geographically?
| tankenmate wrote:
| It could be a one way correlation; i.e. the only way a bad kebab
| restaurant can survive is to be near a train station.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I was actually expecting to see data that would refute the
| initial claim in the reverse! The outcome was not at all what I
| was expecting.
|
| The assumption that I had made was, "More foot traffic = more
| customers = more reviews = higher overall rating". I was
| expecting to see a very high score close to train stations, and a
| hard slope the further you went from stations. My thinking was
| that location would _heavily_ favor the rating, both in terms of
| convenience for customers, and in terms of non-Parians eating the
| food, because they are on vacation, traveling, etc. as the author
| had mentioned. I figured that if they are in higher spirits, they
| would leave higher reviews.
|
| After seeing the results, it does make me wonder if this might
| have still played a role, but to a lesser degree? Hard to say,
| given how scattered it all is. Botting really does ruin metrics
| like this.
|
| Personally, I think, it would be interesting to see something
| like the following in part 2:
|
| 1) Distance from station _and_ proximity of kebab shop to bars
| /nightclubs. Perhaps someone who is drunk, and plans on taking
| the metro back to a hotel is likely to think a kebab is far
| better, compared to one who is further away from heavy drinking
| and further away from transportation. Both of those things being
| removed would make me think the overall review would be lower,
| but I think the actual ratings would be far more _accurate_ , and
| more likely given by Native Parisians (assuming it's by a
| neighborhood, or whatever.)
|
| 2) It would be interesting to see what the impact is, in terms of
| _amount_ of reviews reviews, the further away a kebab shop is
| from a station.
|
| For example: If we are to assume that kebab_1 and keba_2 both
| open within six months of one another, but one is 1km from a
| station, while the other is almost on the platform, how much will
| that impact the number of reviews received?
|
| 3) Finally, it might also be interesting to hear what other food
| review websites that might offer this type of information. I
| assume the French have _at least_ one French-centric social media
| platform for food reviews, which you can (hopefully) grab data
| from. How does that sites info compare to Google?
|
| 3a) Other nations food review sites might be interesting, too. My
| understanding is that Iran and Turkey are both very passionate
| about kebab, I could imagine them have thorough reviews of
| Parisian kebab shops. I could also see Japan having a pretty
| passionate food review site, given how crazy the Japanese can get
| for France, Paris in particular. I.e.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
|
| 4) Perhaps there would be some interesting datapoints to pull out
| based on places that have closed permanently. That is, "Is a
| kebab shop that is close to a station more likely to stay open,
| or close down?"
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