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Comment by fchollet | Hacker News Reader

I lived in NYC for a year, working right next to Hell's Kitchen. While the food is great, it's certainly not "incomparable". Paris has better restaurants. Tokyo has better restaurants (cheaper too in that case). Even San Francisco has comparable food standards.

You end up sounding just like so many New-Yorkers --annoying and conceited. But no, living there doesn't make you special. It's just a big city, and not the only one in the world.

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I think once you're hitting the level of "one of the biggest cities in the world" there's almost guaranteed going to be really awesome cuisine. I thought Paris had really great food when I was there, I'm sure Tokyo's got delicious offerings as well (I love Japanese food, mmm).

I just moved to NYC, though, and the food options here are incomparable to anywhere else in the US I've been. (Note: I haven't been to San Francisco, and while I'm sure it has good food too, NYC's excellent transit system means I have wider access to places.)

I'm continuously surprised by how CHEAP things are, too! Yesterday I paid $1.50 for a box of strawberries, $0.75 for some cherry tomatoes, and $2 for a sizeable package of freshly chopped and peeled kiwis. (In the midwest, I'd pay almost that much just for the strawberries.) To top it off, I had the best lamb and rice meal I've ever had...for $5 from a halal food cart. (I actually spent an hour today looking for the cart again, I liked it THAT much, but it was nowhere to be found. I will look again tomorrow!!)

Of course, I still haven't found anywhere that sells a gallon of milk for less than $4, but I'm going to keep searching. I kind of enjoy exploring places and mentally marking down which place has the cheapest offering of a certain thing.

> To top it off, I had the best lamb and rice meal I've ever had...for $5 from a halal food cart. (I actually spent an hour today looking for the cart again, I liked it THAT much, but it was nowhere to be found. I will look again tomorrow!!)

If I were to guess, I'd say it was Halal Boys Platters on 53rd and 6th. Those guys are legendary.

Actually, it was over on...86th and Broadway? Might have been 82nd. After seeing this comment, I went and tried halal guys the other night, but I didn't like the texture of their rice quite as much, and I accidentally put too much hot sauce on. That was my own fault, of course, but I felt like it was more of a chemical burn than a spicy burn. It's not awful, and it's still a good deal for $6 or so, but.

The quest to find the mysteriously vanishing halal cart continues.

I heard Anthony Bourdain being interviewed in SF (on City Arts and Lectures, I think.) Somebody asked him what he thought of the food in SF, and I thought his answer was really interesting. He thought that at the very top end, New York won without question. But that the average restaurant in SF was substantially better.

Paris only has good french and moroccan food, san francisco actually doesn't have nearly as good food, so just stop.

Why are you so defensive? Are you worried you are going to find out you've just been enjoying the taste of your own smugness rather than spectacular food?

I've lived both in SF and NY, and NY significantly has more. Not saying SF has bad food, it does, but it pales in comparison to NY. Of course--that is--excluding Burritos. There's nothing smug about saying the truth.

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