Rules for Dining Out – How a frugal economist finds the perfect lunch (2012)

&gt;I also start to worry if many women in a restaurant are beautiful in a trendy or stylish way. The point is not that beautiful women have bad taste in food. Instead, the problem is that they will attract a lot of men to the restaurant, whether or not the place serves excellent food. And that allows the restaurant to cut back on the quality of the food.<p>There are issues this writer has with eating out, that no amount of good food will solve.

This is an aside for European visitors to such sites. If you visit from a non-European country, don&#x27;t worry. Everything is fine.<p>If you get a big GDPR &quot;We Value Your Privacy&quot; pop-up with a &#x27;AGREE!&#x27; button, well, guess what? They don&#x27;t value your privacy.<p>The officially sanctioned way of dealing with this is to re-open the link in a &#x27;private&#x27; or &#x27;incognito&#x27; tab and click AGREE! This hits two birds with one stone: from the perspective of the analysts of such sites,<p>a) one person has visited the site and &#x27;bounced&#x27;, that is to say, left the site, never to return. And: b) one person visited the site, &#x27;agreed&#x27; and then never visited again.<p>I mean, unless you <i>like</i> being tracked. Then, by all means, carry on.

I was surprised that the author, given that he is an economist, didn’t provide a single piece of data into the discussion.

It&#x27;s weird he complains about Thai food being too sweet, because I honestly prefer American Thai over Thai food I had in Thailand because it&#x27;s less sweet. When I was in Thailand all the Thai food was sweeter and less spicy than Thai food I found in the states. Heck 90% of the restaurants I went to in Thailand had a jar for sprinkling sugar over your food, like you would traditionally do with salt.<p>Also vietnamese food is sometimes too weird for my palate. I love pho, but can&#x27;t stomach the congealed pork blood.

So many rules, just to avoid a bad meal once in a while. The author should learn to live a little. Also, if I was ordering the least interesting sounding thing at fancy restaurants, I&#x27;d always be ordering a burger.

This article from 2012 reads like a person whose taste you don’t trust giving you their ‘best tips’ on where to eat.

&gt;Instead, the problem is that they will attract a lot of men to the restaurant, whether or not the place serves excellent food<p>Interesting that we can casually stereotype male behavior now. I don&#x27;t think this author is credible.