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Comment by LargeWu | Hacker News Reader

One of the sad things about this sort of list is that it's literally just one guy's opinion. Sure, he tried all the burgers. I'm sure all the burgers in the top 100 are good burgers, but there's probably very little separating them except some personal preference. For example, I probably wouldn't have rated this place as high because I don't care for grilled onions on burgers; I would much rather have raw onions.

The only reason anybody cares about that reviewer's opinions are because he has a platform and people are desperate to belong to something, anything.

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His opinion about what's best probably could be argued with.

However, there are lots of definitely mediocre restaurants out there that would not make it to anyone's top ten list. So I'd have every reason to visit a restaurant on this sort of list as opposed to visiting a restaurant at random.

Personally, I'm OK with either grilled or raw onions (though I prefer raw). But there are lots of characteristics with few if any fans - soggy, overdone, cooked lettuce, etc.

The big thing is most restaurants don't have any reason to work at being good not to mention great. Most restaurants just soak up whoever happens to be in the area and has a preference for their type of food and so mediocrity not pretending to be anything else rules. Good-enough food at a good-enough price to make the owner a good-enough profit is it.

> The only reason anybody cares about that reviewer's opinions are because he has a platform and people are desperate to belong to something, anything.

I disagree. It's not about "belonging to something". I agree with what the author wrote in the article. The problem is with the paradox of choice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice). Decisions are paralyzing when people are faced with a myriad of choices. "Best of lists" fix this problem for many people, which is why they are so universally popular across industries. Now instead of picking from a 1000 choices, you have 10.

I think it's both. Lists do practically help us navigate the overwhelming number of options we're presented with, but there is also a large social signaling factor to them. Knowing what restaurants are popular or new or exciting is a way for someone to communicate to other people that food is an important part of who they are. But in order for that signal to work, it sometimes helps to have "canonical" definitions of which restaurants are "in" and lists and critics enable that.

What I find really sad about all this, though, is that it sacrifices the value of our own personal narrative and preferences. The idea that there is a "best" restaurant implies that my experience at it is irrelevant since "best" is apparently a customer-independent property.

That in turn implies that my own stories around which meals I loved are not worth telling to others. I think that's a terrible perspective. I'd much rather read an article about the top ten meals someone had — a narrative about them experiencing the food and not about the food itself — because it's ultimately people that matter.

> For example, I probably wouldn't have rated this place as high because I don't care for grilled onions on burgers; I would much rather have raw onions.

Blasphemy! The one true greatest burger has both kinds.

Also, the grilled onions are between the meat and cheese so that the latter holds them in place.

Even sadder is that it probably depends on a lot on the day and time you go. Its not like you get the same experience every time you go to that restaurant.

Also on the person who cooked it, the ingredients they got that day, how busy they were, whether they got a call during the cooking process, what you ate that day and the day before, as well as what you drank, and even how you go there.

There are so many variables.

> I would much rather have raw onions.

Really? Yes, people are different, but this automatically invalidates you from any lists at all. Raw onions. Wow. Why not just eat an onion

There are several types of onions. Some are sweeter and can be eaten raw, reds are ofter smaller and closer to the wild type and not so accurate for that, but some people would prefer its more complex taste and are better adapted to survive in cold areas. The same variety can taste also different if cultured in winter or summer and if you use vinager or not.

Yeah, strangely enough, food and its accompanying culture is one of the most prevalent socially acceptable, encouraged biases. There's no objective, empirical stance you can take. Well, sure you can value food based on its nutritional content, but food and health science is continuously flipping back and forth on the facts and is overrun with pop-science, stirring confusing to no end. But most of all, your brain doesn't care about nutritional value once something is in your mouth.

"I don't like onions." "Oh, how can that be?" "Well, uh, they taste bad, I avoid them." "Well, I think they're great [because I like them]."

And yet these kinds of worthless opinions are given credence to no end in all levels of discourse from casual small talk to high-class cuisine.

I think we're just in the age of "if you have an opinion on anything, no matter how shallow, you should share it and suggest it's self-evident, universal, and the only thing that matters."

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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