Discussion summary
A family has kept a pot of soup for 52 years, sparking mixed reactions online. Some find it intriguing or traditional, while others consider it unhygienic or unappetizing.
What the discussion says
- Some commenters compare it to traditional Italian cooking practices.
- Others find the idea unappealing or unsanitary.
- There is curiosity about the cultural background of this practice.
“Disgusting.”
“52 years concentrated heavy metal soup.”
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- Hacker News
- I'm currently in bangkok atm. where can I go try this soup?
- One of the speculations as to how life was created on this planet: stable environments hosting hydrothermal vents over long periods of time.
Could perpetual stews over decades act in the same manner?
- I've gone without a fridge for 8 years now and do something kind of like this usually - I'll cook a pot of food and then steam or boil it again after ~24 hours to reset the clock on it rotting. It's handy for things like eating a whole chicken or other large soup. I switch between being home and on the road a lot so my pot just comes with me and can be re-cooked on my car stove or my home stove. I tend to cook or re-heat once a day. Ideally I'd rather be sharing freshly prepared food with other people every meal and I do that when I can, but this works for when I'm feeding myself alone - cheaper and easier than any other approach.by lithocarpus
- I think there is an optimization question buried here. In tech lots of people have experience with A/B tests, which function on the assumption that you have a stream of fresh sessions which are independent. Multi-armed bandits, Thompson sampling etc give us frameworks for generalizing this towards finding the best option among a finite set of candidates, if goodness is fixed over time. This is kinda the opposite end of a spectrum: you get to run one policy at a time and the whole premise is that goodness is heavily state dependent. How do you decide whether to keep going with your current policy vs when to start over with another?
Sure, the soup is good ... but is it the best they could have after 52 years? By committing to maintaining one pot for so long, they pay the opportunity cost of not being able to explore related long-lived methods. If there's a different recipe that surpasses this one after only one year of simmering, they'll never find it.
At first I thought this might be related to the secretary problem, but of course if after 50 years of recipe B, you have the option of switching back to recipe A if it's better.
by abeppu - I have lived around the corner from this place for nearly 13yrs. It’s fine, not any better or worse than places serving a similar dish but without the perpetual stew marketing.
The funny thing is, this place got famous a dew years ago, so you now have to wait in line for hours to have this perfectly normal bowl of $2 soup. I didn’t really mind because even if there was no line I’d probably eat here once every 3yrs when I was hungry and happened to be in front of it.
But this is relatively common in Bangkok and actually one of my favorite places was recently headshotted by fame. They serve pad kapow, which domestically is the most commonly eaten and beloved dish amongst Thais. This place managed to elevate the dish without getting snooty about it, reasonably priced, fantastic ingredients, consistent quality, great service, hygienic, and just excellent in all regards. It’s a 10min walk and my wife would go there to eat multiple times a week.
Unfortunately a YouTuber made a video about it and now all of the YouTubers who pass through town make a video about it and there’s a 2hr line at all hours. I’m happy they found success, but also obviously annoyed despite the selfish nature of these feelings.
We now order it for delivery every couple months.
Usually the stuff that goes viral doesn’t bother me- the tourists need to eat somewhere, and living here I have much more ability to find good food than they would, so it kind of works for everyone that they end up concentrated in a few places that I don’t miss.
But I do dearly miss the pad kapow at Gapow Tapae (if you’re passing through Bangkok get there 20min before they open and wait in line, it’s worth it).
by joeguilmette - by kameit00
- Perpetual stew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew
- Many years ago I saw a Japanese TV program that explored the food of southern Taiwan and one of the stops was a restaurant that had a 106-year old vat of broth. It was tall and narrow and had a giant hump of crust on one side.
If it's still open, it would be going for 130+ years at this point.
ETA: Found it. Established 1895, the year Taiwan was annexed by Japan. It's not soup, it's a meat sauce (滷肉) used on a noodle dish. Scroll down to the middle of the page, which shows the chef with the pot in front of him.
by ilamont