[PLUG-TALK] Open-Source Restaurants

[Aaron Burt]

On 2016-04-29 08:29, Rich Shepard wrote:
> Chinese restaurants outside of China, and especially in the US, are the
> restaurant equivalent to linux while McDonald's and the other chains 
> are the
> equivalent of Microsoft's Windows.

Interesting perspective.  I can see how the nature of immigrant 
communities (somewhat insular because of social/language barriers, with 
a strong ethic of information exchange and mutual support) would lead to 
a similar result (emergent standardization.)  Same thing happened with 
"Mexican", Thai, Vietnamese and "Teriyaki" (Korean?) restaurants.
It happened pretty early.  The Canton Grill by my house opened in 1943 
as a standard-issue Chinese restaurant (same year my house was built) 
and "Comidas Chinas" has a long history in Mexico.

Unrelated, my first thought was of how Gigantic Brewing publishes all 
their recipes.  Home-brewing is very open-source-ish, but commercial 
brewing less so.  I think Gigantic does that to flaunt their "never the 
same beer twice" ethos.

More blather: my general neck of the woods (Montavilla and surrounds) 
was mostly farmed by Japanese immigrants until the Internments.  Bought 
my house from the estate of a dear old Japanese woman.  Don't know how 
she and her husband had bought the place a few years after they were 
released, but I have great admiration for them.