Denny's has free wifi, open 24/7, free caffeine refills, stabbings are quite rare, basically a hacker's dream. So, Denny's Bacon Hack:
You can order a side of bacon (4 strips) for about $3 or... order a Grand Slam Breakfast and make all 4 components be the bacon (2 strips each), giving you 8 for about $5, a saving of $0.125 per strip! Those savings sure add up during an all night coding/bacon tear.
Next time you're at Chipotle ask for half-and-half meat (e.g. half chicken half carne asada)- you usually wind up with way more protein than you normally would since nobody wants to give you less than half a scoop (x2).
I think I found my answer to the 'successful hack of some (non-computer) system' question.
i've also on many occasions just straight up asked for double meat, and i've never been charged, probably because it's always another person ringing it up.
Now, that could be considered a restaurant hack. Writing a blog post about discovering a well-documented 'secret' (i.e. "we want the general population to order quickly") menu is not hacking. At all.
Also, I'm sorry to say that In-n-Out is simply not that good. There are countless local, independents that serve a much better burger, and have a variety of fresh, seasonal shakes.
Since we don't have In-n-Out in Texas, I was excited to try one out. On a trip to Las Vegas, I made the walk to the one on the other side of the highway, from the strip.
It was mediocre at best and I never really saw what the big deal was.
What really surprised me was Fat Burger. I only knew about Fat Burger from the Ice Cube song, "Today was a good day." I thought it was some made up place, like Big Kahuna Burger. Fat Burger was good stuff and if you have a chance, get one of those!
Google Map Link: http://bit.ly/i6GuZi
I've found it to be true that In-n-Out isn't that good on an absolute scale, but it's great for how cheap it is. I can definitely get a better grass fed beef hamburger for $10 (or an even better one made from the ground lamb at the Berkeley Bowl for $8.99/pound) but haven't had a better fast food burger than In-n-Out.
haven't had a better fast food burger than In-n-Out.
I have. Also, the only places serving burgers I've been to that aren't fast food are the few gourmet burger restaurants. The problem may be that you're in the Bay Area (the burrito capital of the world, IMO).
In-n-Out as a burger compared to the entire burger ecosystem true enough, not very awesome. However in its own category it reins king. I feel like it dominates 2 cross sections, the first of course is fast food. Compared to almost any other quick burger joint its the best. In terms of the style (I've seen referred to as 'West Coast style' which is a thin paddy, often several of them relying on sauces and veggies for substance) it is also near the top.
There's also a lesson for HN to take away. In-n-out is a extraordinarily example of making the best product they can using the best production methods they have for their target market.
Unfortunately, as a (very) regular patron of the relatively new In-n-Out on Veterans Blvd in Redwood City, I can attest that many of these items aren't actually known to all In-N-Out outlets/cashiers. In particular, the Flying Dutchman is not very well known, and cashiers either try to order (A) A protein style Double-Double (with all of the sauce), or, (B) when they enter it as a Z-Plain Protein, I don't get the cheese.
So - at the end of the day, I've had the most success carefully describing exactly how I want my burger prepared - they are pretty much prepared to do anything. Use the Secret Menu as a guide, but be prepared for Cashiers _not_ to know some of the names.
Nice writeup. Engaging writing and good idea, ordering it all at once on a story that has otherwise been beat to death. As an aside, I'm surprised at how many of my college friends don't know about the secret menu despite growing up on In-n-Out.
You can get any of the sauces they put in the burgers on the side to dip your fries into also.
On a related note, I recently at at 5 guys and it was 2x as expensive and about 1/2 as good as in-n-out. Anyone who says it's better is absolutely nuts. They expanded too fast.
When my co-founder and I went to interview for YC W11, the only good restaurant near our hotel was an In-n-Out. We were there for four days. We didn't find out about the secret menu until dinner of the fourth day...
Hey, guy who's been here for a couple days and has never written a comment more than 50 words long who just flagged a J Kenji Lopez-Alt story --- written by probably the best food writer on the web today --- about something you can actually do at In-N-Out burger, an SFBA hacker moth-light?
I just flagged your comment.
I suspect my flag will have about as much impact as yours, but, like yours, it sure made me feel better.
Welcome to Hacker News. We like articles like this.
Oh come on! I enjoyed that immensely and if it wasn't on HN I would have never knew about it. As a native Californian I feel truly well-equipped now. I had known about the Animal styles, and extra meats, but almost everything else is unbelievably new. BTW, another trick I learned which wasn't mentioned in the article is dipping your fries in your milkshake. Try it, trust me.
Fries in a Wendy's frosty is far superior. There is something about the consistency that is just right. For those who haven't tried it, just think of it as the American fast-food version of Thai food: that magic combination of sweet and savory.
Fries in a milkshake? That sounds even worse than my friend's practice at Mexican restaurants of using the honey (intended for sopapillas) on his tortilla chips. Never could figure that one out.
The article isn't worth flagging over the submitter's poor title choice. I prefer the real title of the article because it actually tells you what you're going to read: "The Ultimate In-N-Out Secret Menu (and Super Secret Menu!) Survival Guide."
A better title would be "Gratifying My Intellectual Curiosity Regarding In-n-Out". It still pleads relevance to HN, and is even more difficult to argue to be inaccurate.
Per the definition:
"Hacking (English verb to hack, singular noun a hack) refers to the re-configuring or re-programming of a system to function in ways not facilitated by the owner, administrator, or designer"
The owner (or in n out burger corporate) would like you to enjoy from a very limited menu. The article writer was attempting to circumvent that and use the underlying system in a different manner to produce other results.
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Lots of hackers eat In-N-Out, the 'secret menu' is something that's pretty interesting. I learned something out of this, and while it wasn't entirely highbrow or technically complex, I'm still glad it was posted to HN.
This kind of reminds me of the story in Steven Levy's "Hackers" about how the early MIT AI Lab hackers learned the ins and outs of Chinese-language menus that were not intended for non-Chinese at Chinese restaurants (this at a time when egg rolls were still sort of exotic).
You can order a side of bacon (4 strips) for about $3 or... order a Grand Slam Breakfast and make all 4 components be the bacon (2 strips each), giving you 8 for about $5, a saving of $0.125 per strip! Those savings sure add up during an all night coding/bacon tear.