Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I have thought about this quite a bit. There is good food in some suburbs, particularly where rents are low and chefs can do good stuff. I don't know the NY suburbs and I do know DC, but I think the economics are probably the same. (SF and SV are weird because SV rents are so expensive.) When food is bad, it's often because the restaurant has high rent and needs to play it safe or because it doesn't serve that many people and needs to play it safe to appeal to more of the people it does serve. Delivery helps with both problems, so it should help suburban restaurants. Suburban Chinese and pizza does often suck, but if you've got more choice then it should get better. Delivery helps urban restaurants too, but not quite as much relatively. The economics of delivery work better where you can get around well by car. All else equal, the city is always going to be better off because the kind of people who want to create good food are more likely to want to be in the city.
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The problem with ethnic food (even Chinese) in the suburbs is that it has to be completely de-spiced to appeal to the overwhelmingly bland suburban palate. The number of suburbanites I've been exposed to who cannot stomach any form of spice is enough to make me never want to move to the suburbs by itself.
The problem with your theory about delivery in the burbs is gas prices and time spent driving. It's not worth it to a restaurant for a delivery guy at a non-chain restaurant to try to cover the 5 square miles it would take to have enough orders to justify delivery service. I could be wrong, but when I go to my ex-wife's house, their options are pathetic. And they have to drive for 5 mins to get milk, 10 to get actual groceries, and between 10 and 30 to get to any restaurant that's halfway decent.
But, whatever. I hope delivery explodes in the suburbs such that you're living the life of a pretty little flower! Suburbanites feel superior about how they live, city people feel the same. We just value different things. I despise the "create my own little pod" approach to life. But that's probably not how most suburbanites view how they live. They just want a yard and some space. Fair enough.
But the mall is everything that's wrong with this country. I'm not budging on that.
TM
