Tell us about your favourite restaurant of the moment

(Daisies was great, btw, but even accounting for tip I thought 25% on top felt kinda high, however you break down tip vs. "fees". 15% tip and 10% fee? 20% tip and 5% fee? On top of entrees generally in the mid $20s.)

i'm still trying to get used to $15 burritos. i still flinch a little.

Yebo Beach Haus in Atlanta

https://yebobeachhaus.com/

Eclectic menu, really friendly staff, not too loud or crowded.

Hinoki and the Bird in LA

https://www.hinokiandthebird.com/

Best pork chop I have ever eaten, hands down.

what i like about my little town of 17,000 people right now. good homespun breakfast place where i can go and never see anyone i know so that i can eat my omelette in peace with a room full of cops and senior citizens. good homemade local donut shop. sweet little Korean restaurant. wood-fired pizza place. good new american place run by my best friend from high school with the best shrimp & grits in Massachusetts. mostly decent if not wonderful Greek place two doors from my store for gyros. across the street from my store an amazing for real deal bakery (called Rise Above) an awesome Indian restaurant and a good Thai restaurant. 3 Chinese restaurants of varying quality but the best of them also has the best sushi around. TWO Salvadoran restaurants and a Mexican food truck and TWO more Mexican restaurants that are decent.

terrible regular pizza though. people who grew up here are used to it but i will never be used to it. the local Big Y supermarket makes better pizza than any of the terrible Greek-style pizza places. Have to go to Northampton for decent pie. or Connecticut.

so, nothing fancy but it is really not fancy here. again, have to go to NoHo or Amherst for fancy.

your town sounds really nice. it makes me nostalgic for the place where I grew up and also the place where I went to college, but since then I haven't spent any time in those kinds of towns except when visiting friends in the Litchfield Hills of Northern CT and the Berkeshires in MA

it has its problems but its nice here overall. the mohawk trail. the valley. its pretty. for some reason i was really surprised that both my kids LOVE coming home when they come home from school. they speak of this place so fondly. i never wanted to go back to my neck of connecticut. it was lame to me. but its different here. you do have to have a lot of tolerance for ex-hippies though. they are kinda the scourge. not the fentanyl crowd.

i dunno. i probably shouldn't look an oblivious and annoying gift horse in the mouth. better to be surrounded by ex-hippies than maga nation.

Some places boast that they've kept prices stable, but then they add on a 3+% fee. A place we're going to next week:

As a way to offset rising costs associated with the restaurant (food, beverage, labor, benefits, supplies), we have added a 3% surcharge to all checks. We do this in lieu of increased menu prices. You may request to have this taken off your check, should you choose.

There's a place here that adds a 10% fee on all checks, unrelated to tip, no taking it off. I feel like it just puts the wait staff in an awkward position to explain it to anyone who looks at their check, and feels like a slightly scammy way to keep the prices appearing the same on the menu.

when i used to wait tables a lunch/salad bar place at the Bourse across the street from the liberty bell in the late 80s in philly we would add a gratuity if someone had any kind of accent. tourists, you know. but they really didn't tip. we would get 10 germans at a table. we had to do it. but people would ask about it every once in a while. sometimes if you were lucky you would get a table of 10 people and they would leave a big tip! we called that a double grat. cha-ching!

i'm torn. the friendly's in town - there used to be two! - tasted like poison and i kinda always felt like i was gonna die after eating there but starbucks sucks too. well, to be fair, i have only been to starbucks once. in the 90s. their coffee sucked. it tasted burnt and i hate burnt coffee. not a fan of french roast either. i will always have fond memories of friendly's in the 70s though. and those butter-toasted hamburger buns.

https://www.recorder.com/Starbucks-applying-to-take-over-Friendly-s-on-Mohawk-Trail-54183907?fbclid=IwAR201qnYQQiMgtg7O5pU8WC5rxETKIXoowdzO4sFgf9M3yev1Wu3qRFFnw4

There is very odd cafe in Shibuya where you walk through this baroque exterior straight out of Vienna's 6th district and inside is this cloistered set of benches not unlike a church, theater or train all focused on these massive 10 foot tall speakers playing classical music on this *serious* hifi. You're expected to be silent (except for your whispered order to your server) during your visit.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%90%8D%E6%9B%B2+%E3%82%AB%E3%83%95%E3%82%A7+%E3%81%83%E9%9F%B3%E3%80%81+%E6%B8%8B%E8%B0%B7&tbm=isch

Just heard some people on a radio show talking about that place (Dave from Dirty Projectors)

They have an excellent magazine selection available for perusal. While waiting for my colleague I picked up a thick glossy edition about vertical coffee cultivation and it was amazing (nb: I could barely read it but the pictures were excellent).