Eat SMOR food!
I usually eat food. Odds are you eat food too. I usually eat food at least 3 times daily. Because food represents such a large portion of my life, and because food also powerfully attaches to place and identity and nostalgia, I find food immensely interesting. Also, the way humans, as a species, choose to obtain and create food, speaks to both our definition of ourselves and our relationship with our planet.
I don't eat out constantly. Instead, eating out provides the occasional treat. That restriction limits the sample size of my opinions but, I believe that my opinions on venues still possess a great deal of validity. Possibly a greater, but at least a different, validity because the comparison I make deals with the food I could or would have made myself versus with the restaurant I ate at the night prior. Me versus the restaurant instead of the last recent restaurant versus the restaurant.
It's too easy to forget amidst the spectacle that we eat for sustenance first and foremost. So, how does the experience of the food impact my survival? At the base level that should probably provide the initial analysis. The pleasure of the experience then adds. So how did the food's preparation turn something vital into something pleasurable? And what balance did the food preparation strike between sustenance and pleasure?
