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/ #arftw / adam riff™ food and travel week
I believe that the best way to experience a city is to eat it. If you eat a city properly, you will visit places that you might otherwise not visit, and see things that you might otherwise not see, like this mesmerizing sculpture outside Columbia University's law school building, which I stumbled upon while trying to locate a coffee shop.
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Simmons asked me to create a formula that mirrored the popular baseball statistic VORP, an acronym for "Value Over Replacement Player." The VORP metric attempts to isolate the merits of a particular hitter or pitcher in comparison to a fictional "replacement player" — a hypothetical strawman who's an average fielder and a mediocre hitter. "Would it be possible," pondered Simmons, "to create an identical statistic for music?"
That was VORM. This is VORE (Value Over Replacement Eatery).
In layman's terms, the higher the VORE, the better the eatery – in my opinion.
| VORE NYC | ||
| Eatery | Neighbourhood | VORE |
| Earl's Beer and Cheese | Spanish Harlem | 60.2 |
| Dirty Bird To Go | West Village | 52.2 |
| Mile End Delicatessen | Boerum Hill | 42.3 |
| Henry Public | Cobble Hill | 38.6 |
| Xi'an Famous Foods | Chinatown | 34.4 |
| Ample Hills Creamery | Prospect Heights | 29.6 |
| Pies 'n' Thighs | Williamsburg | 23.9 |
| Fatty Cue | Williamsburg | 19.9 |
| Torrisi Italian Specialties | Nolita | 17.5 |
| 53rd and 6th Halal Cart | Theatre District | 15.3 |
| Shake Shack | Battery Park City | 13.6 |
| Blue Ribbon at the Brooklyn Bowl | Williamsburg | 12.4 |
| Gray's Papaya | West Village | 10.6 |
| Gramercy Tavern | Flatiron | 9.1 |
| Doughnut Plant | Lower East Side | 8.4 |
| The Spotted Pig | West Village | 7.6 |
| Robicelli's | Downtown Brooklyn | 6.8 |
| BaoHaus | Lower East Side | 6.2 |
| Pommes Frites | East Village | 5.7 |
| Johnny Foxes | Upper East Side | 4.8 |
| La Esquina | Nolita | 4.0 |
| The Smith | East Village | 3.5 |
| Sweetwater Restaurant | Williamsburg | 3.1 |
| Di Fara Pizza | Midwood | 2.5 |
| Graffiti Food and Wine Bar | East Village | 2.1 |
| The Dutch | Soho | 1.6 |
| Dos Caminos | Soho | 1.3 |
| Solber Pupusas | Red Hook | 1.0 |
| Artisanal | Murray Hill | 0.8 |
| Traif | Williamsburg | 0.6 |
| Dos Toros Taqueria | Union Square | 0.5 |
| M. Wells Diner | Long Island City | 0.4 |
| Taïm | West Village | 0.3 |
| Patacon Pisao #2 | Elmhurst | 0.1 |
| Pão de Queijo | Astoria | 0.1 |
| Smashburger | Fort Greene | 0.0 |
| Rosa Mexicano | Upper West Side | -0.1 |
| Crumbs Bake Shop | Upper West Side | -0.1 |
| Calexico | Flatiron | -0.2 |
| Momofuku Milk Bar | East Village | -0.2 |
| Jacques Torres Ice Cream Shop | DUMBO | -0.2 |
| Spot Dessert Bar | East Village | -0.3 |
| Peels Restaurant | East Village | -0.4 |
| Il Laboratorio del Gelato | Lower East Side | -0.5 |
| Magnolia Bakery | West Village | -0.6 |
| Cones | West Village | -0.7 |
| DuMont Restaurant | Williamsburg | -0.9 |
| L'Arte del Gelato | Chelsea | -1.1 |
| Motorino Pizza | East Village | -1.9 |
| Porchetta | East Village | -2.3 |
| Popbar | West Village | -2.9 |
| San Loco | East Village | -3.7 |
| The Meatball Shop | Lower East Side | -4.5 |
| FoodParc | Midtown West | -6.6 |
| T.G.I. Friday's | Times Square | -14.3 |
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Special Recognition:
Smoked Meat Sandwich (Mile End Delicatessen)
I want to take it behind a middle school and get it pregnant
Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding (Blue Ribbon)
puts Pizookies to shame
Spicy Cumin Lamb Hand-Ripped Noodles (Xi'an Famous Foods)
immaculate Asian fusion
Chairman Bao (BaoHaus)
Eddie Huang's pork belly bun is quietly superior to David Chang's
Bread Pudding (Earl's Beer and Cheese)
I know. Another bread pudding? But this maple stew of bread and apples topped with cotton candy devastated me. Earl's menu >>>>>
Well done. 2-5 all hold a very special place in my heart, and couldn't agree more with their placements.
The Fridays in UNION Square, however, if i follow the formula correctly, would be even lower, considering several of the cities' best restaurants are literally steps away, AND it actually replaced an extremely popular and productive vegetarian restaurant.
But again, very well done. I didn't know Dirty Bird was a destination eatery, but was my favorite delivery spot before I moved to Brooklyn last fall (to an apartment right between Henry Public and Mile End.)
Your VORE rating; does it adjust for local market saturation? I don't know what your formula is specifically.
does it adjust for local market saturation? no.