4 ms·

> In LA at least, some of the best tasting meat, specialty stuff like birria with actual goat stewed for hours with love with traditional techniques perhaps, i

> In LA at least, some of the best tasting meat, specialty stuff like birria with actual goat stewed for hours with love with traditional techniques perhaps, is not going to be easily found in any restaurant. You will find it served in tin foil or styrofoam off a folding table under a canopy tent on the sidewalk. They start stewing the meat on site hours before even making their first sale, which might even be well after the sun has set. The restaurant model cannot afford this overhead Huh? Are you under the impression that restaurants don't spend hours prepping their food? It takes a good pizzeria three days to make their dough. You couldn't do that at a roadside stand. I can't think of a single dish that you can make at a roadside stand but not in a restaurant with significantly better facilities. You're making a correlation vs causation error here -- yes, there are some types of food that you will more typically encounter in food-truck-type situations (e.g. in NYC that'd be something like lamb over rice with white and red sauce), but that's not because restaurants can't do it. There's just market segmentation.

rkangel 5y ago
I think of road side food vans as equivalent to Indie games. There's a low buy in cost which means that there's much more opportunity for the creativity of the individual can flourish.
robrenaud 5y ago
> I can't think of a single dish that you can make at a roadside stand but not in a restaurant with significantly better facilities. Put a price constraint on it, and you probably agree with the parent poster.
asdff 5y ago
I'm sure some restaurants do actually make proper birria but there is no chance they can afford to pay rent and also offer it for $1.50 a taco like someone whose only expense is materials and labor (and not commercial rent), so I haven't even seen anywhere make a go at this market at this pricepoint. One place I do like for tacos that is a restaurant is itself very barebones, a walkup only shack of a building situated in the parking lot of a liqour store that doesn't have any indoor space except for the small kitchen, and they charge accordingly more than a comparable street vendor (more like $2.50 a taco). This is probably the floor of what a brick and mortar can afford to charge for that tier of meat with involved prep.

rkangel 5y ago

I think of road side food vans as equivalent to Indie games. There's a low buy in cost which means that there's much more opportunity for the creativity of the individual can flourish.

robrenaud 5y ago

> I can't think of a single dish that you can make at a roadside stand but not in a restaurant with significantly better facilities. Put a price constraint on it, and you probably agree with the parent poster.

asdff 5y ago

I'm sure some restaurants do actually make proper birria but there is no chance they can afford to pay rent and also offer it for $1.50 a taco like someone whose only expense is materials and labor (and not commercial rent), so I haven't even seen anywhere make a go at this market at this pricepoint. One place I do like for tacos that is a restaurant is itself very barebones, a walkup only shack of a building situated in the parking lot of a liqour store that doesn't have any indoor space except for the small kitchen, and they charge accordingly more than a comparable street vendor (more like $2.50 a taco). This is probably the floor of what a brick and mortar can afford to charge for that tier of meat with involved prep.