

My Mega HN Dinner Party (32 people, 7 courses) - shalmanese
http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/my-hn-dinner-party-3/

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maxklein
What about some pictures of the event? And I think this dinner party idea is
extremely brilliant as a way to get his name out there. If I had a company in
the area I'd hire this dude immediately.

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matty
I took a couple quick snaps before I left. Not the greatest quality since they
were from my iPhone. They are at <http://www.flickr.com/groups/hndinner/>

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llimllib
there's nothing there?

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barnaby
I can't say enough good things about this event. Great people, great food.
Let's do it again! Or at the very least, let's all keep in touch and meet for
a beer or coffee sometime soon.

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shalmanese
Say thank you to Julia for me, she was an invaluable help in the kitchen!

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davidw
> even ridiculously expensive polenta is still dirt cheap

This is because polenta is "poor people food". My father in law looks at us
badly if we give it to our daughter; I think because he grew up when there
were plenty of people who ate too much polenta and not enough
meat/veggies/other stuff.

Details aside, sounds like fun. I don't do lots of fancy courses like that,
but once again, a nice "grigliata" awaits anyway who stops by Padova.

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shalmanese
God bless the yuppie trend of glorifying the "authentic" peasant food of
another culture as haute cuisine I guess :).

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patio11
Remind me to tell you about $50 Japanese tacos sometime. ("An _authentic_
expression of the culinary diversity of the American Southwest.")

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davidw
Hah, I'd love to hear that. I'll be it's even worse than European Mexican
food.

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ig1
It'd be great to have one of these in London, there hasn't been a significant
HN meet here since the SongKick organized ones a couple of years ago.

Although given the premium on space in London, finding someone who can host a
large dinner party might be tricky. Still maybe booking out a floor at a
restaurant might be a possibility if people are interested.

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tonystubblebine
Hang did a great job of cooking. The food really was astoundingly good and
would have been impressive even if he was cooking for a smaller group in his
own kitchen.

The company was nice too, so I don't think less ambitious cooks should be
scared of hosting their own HN dinner party. It turns out that HN readers have
a lot to talk about!

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shalmanese
Thanks Tony,

I think you hit on the key point, it's not about the quality of the food, it's
about making people happy. It's a great concept and I hereby license it under
whatever open source license covers this sort of thing :).

~~~
tonystubblebine
But quality food is nice too! Thank you for being such a good cook. It's a
little nerve wracking on our end too--if the food fails will people be
rummaging through our kitchen? But once I tasted the lasagna filling I knew
the meal was going to be a big success.

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kbrower
You mentioned that you were still reading about food in your college dorm.
What did you read?

Also I have made a few cooking/recipe tools <http://cookthing.com>,
<http://recipepuppy.com>, <http://foodguts.com>. I would love to collaborate
to make something new.

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willwagner
I've checked out recipepuppy.com before but not foodguts.com, which I think is
terrific (although I'm not entirely enamored with the domain name as
descriptive of the content) and will definitely use it in the future.

I could see that site having more social features and the ability to customize
the content by moving and resizing boxes and having a my.foodguts.com with all
your favorite content to quickly navigate the site. From a business
perspective, recipepuppy.com might make more money but as a user, I can see
using the content of foodguts.com more often.

~~~
kbrower
thanks for your feedback on foodguts. I really hadn't considered making
personalized cooking pages but that sounds like a great idea. I was really
unsure about the name, but other feedback has been mostly positive, and that's
good enough for me.

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JeffJenkins
He's totally right about gauging responses. I've found the best question to
ask people I've cooked for, especially if I'm going to continue cooking for
them, is if they would eat this meal again. People seem to be much more
forthcoming if I try to commit them to eating the meal again in the future.

~~~
shalmanese
Hrmm... That's a good tip. I've never tried that.

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logicalmind
Very impressive! I am a cooking-obsessed hacker too, but I haven't attempted
something this ambitious.

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shalmanese
Give it a go :). Part of how I got to where I am today with cooking was to
think of the most ridiculous challenge possible, pile on some additional
ridiculousness and then go attempt it.

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jrockway
I detect the start of a delicious new Internet meme! Nice to know that it's
not just 4chan that starts them.

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juliang
Duck lasagne was my fave. Tx Hang!

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handelaar
Seven courses of instant ramen, I hope.

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mattmaroon
Man I wish this was going on when I lived in the area.

