About Ryan Bluestone

Ryan Hunter Bluestone is a venture capital investor with experience in corporate innovation and early-stage startup investment analysis. Ryan honed his skills serving several venture capital funds and startups where he built his reputation by surfacing differentiated investment deal flow, creating sustainable business design, and informing corporate innovation strategy.

Ryan Bluestone currently draws from his experience to help startups with opportunities for pilots, partnerships, investments, and acquisitions. Ryan Bluestone has notably worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies and early-stage startups to facilitate environments where all entities involved can accelerate growth and deliver organizational goals.

In addition to Ryan’s professional experience, he is a home cook and foodie who is constantly on the lookout for innovative, diverse cuisine locally, nationally, and internationally.

Ryan Bluestone Explores What Makes Great Food

As a resident foodie and home-cook, Ryan Hunter Bluestone is always on the lookout for great, memorable foods. Ryan has become a student of what attributes make great food so irresistible, and why so much of what we eat misses the mark.

Here, Ryan Bluestone explores just a few of the qualities of great food, and why these factors are so important to foodies looking for the best of the best.

Balance

Have you ever tried something that left an undesirable taste lingering on your palate? Perhaps too much salt, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, or spice? In these situations, it is likely that the meal was simply imbalanced, leaving you with flavors that aren’t conducive to a great meal. Ryan Bluestone mentions that balance is one of the most ignored elements of food preparation. A great chef making great food inherently understands the importance of maintaining balance within their final product. The best food is a collection of flavors playing a symphony wherein none of the background flavors completely overtakes the others. You want to be able to enjoy your meal to the fullest, and this is why Ryan speaks to how balance plays a key role in a foodie’s ability to do so.

Intention

Whether you are getting your food from a Michelin starred restaurant or a hole in the wall, you will almost always be able to tell if the chef truly prepared the food and presentation with intention. By intention, Ryan Bluestone means that the individuals preparing the meal have a plan, are laser focused on the wants/needs of their customers, and that they work to deliver a product that fits the bill. A sloppy, thrown together takeout container from an establishment or an over garnished mess of a plate in a restaurant both show a lack of intention that can certainly impact the enjoyment of food. Ryan Hunter Bluestone notes that even simple food can be intentional in its preparation, and even well-known, acclaimed establishments sometimes miss. The more food that you experience, the easier it is to tell how mindful a chef was of presentation, color, perceived quality, etc. as they prepared the meal.

Quality

While not every great meal needs to be an extremely high quality, Michelin-level endeavor, quality still plays a role in great food. There is a reason why after some meals we feel completely terrible, greasy, and maybe even unsatisfied rather than full and happy. Ryan Hunter Bluestone acknowledges that one way that food can vary in terms of quality is the ingredients that were used. The best meals will feature high quality, fresh ingredients from reputable sources. There are many other aspects that impact quality, such as the varying standards that are upheld by any given restaurant. A prime representation can be in areas that require attention to detail, such as how often grease is replaced in friers, how crisp the vegetables are, and how colorful the fruit is. Restaurants that skimp on these types of factors compromise the quality of the final product. If you have ever had fries or chicken that was obviously fried in old oil, you have had an experience where the quality of food has negatively impacted your experience.

Sensory Experience

Ryan Bluestone mentions that, when we think of great food, we usually are talking about one sense —taste. However, every other sense also plays an important role in how we perceive food and judge its quality. Texture, for example, is a critical component of all foods, with some being almost entirely centered around how they feel, crunch, etc. when eaten. Smell is especially important, and it is more heavily linked to taste than most people are aware. When we think of our favorite foods, the sensory experience is often on full display. We smell food as it arrives in front of us, see the food before we start to eat, explore textures as we taste it, and can even hear the food snap, crunch, and pop as we explore our meal. Sensory experience is why we don’t usually eat meals that are all creamy or all crunch. We crave diversity!

Appearance

Food that looks good invites us to try it, and great meals commonly look just as good as they taste. According to Ryan Bluestone, the concept of eating with your eyes is well known by foodies as they explore the food world, and for a good reason. Looks matter when it comes to cuisine. There can be exceptions to this rule, though, as many can attest to having a dish that looked less than stunning but had strong delivery in the flavor department. However, if you are looking around for an excellent meal, looks and smells are our most valuable tools for evaluation before tasting. Even if you aren’t taking a picture this time around, when food looks good on our plate, it makes us more excited to eat.

Interested in More from Ryan Hunter Bluestone?

Ryan Bluestone speaks to how there are many people who would like to improve their financial futures by exploring the investment world. Ryan also mentions that, in the current landscape, there has been a boom in people interested in expanding their food knowledge and their quest for great cuisine. Future posts from this site will, therefore, aim to help readers explore conversations linked to both Ryan’s personal and professional interests to their benefit. Content featured on RyanHunterBluestone.net will include:

• Financial Services Resources
• Professional Development Content
• Foodie/Home Cook Insights
• Industry News

If you are interested in learning more about financial services, professional development, food exploration, and more from the insights of Ryan Bluestone, be sure to check this site for more informative content.