Tyler Cowen is an economist who teaches at George Mason University. He has written economics columns for the New York Times, published what the Economist called “the most talked-about economics book of the year” in 2011, and was praised recently by Foreign Policy as one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” The man is obviously quite knowledgeable—when it comes to economics. So what’s he doing giving recommendations for what to eat in the local strip mall?

Food, Cowen would argue, is, in fact, always a matter of economics. We all need food. We make food decisions every day, and every one of these decisions has a monetary connotation, so there’s an economic angle to everything and everywhere we eat.

Cowen’s new book, An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies, is filled with advice on food, and if there’s one overarching theme, it’s that “foodie” should not equate to “snobby.”

Part of the book is excerpted in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly, in a story called “Six Rules for Dining Out.” One of the most curious rules is that when it comes to getting the best value for the dining dollar, foodies should pass on nearly every restaurant located in hip urban neighborhoods. Instead, Cowen recommends heading to restaurants that share parking lots with dollar stores, supermarkets, and liquor stores. What we’re talking about is the scintillating dining destination known as the suburban strip mall.

Cue: record scratch sound.

Cowen’s reasoning is that, compared to restaurants in high-rent districts, strip mall eateries have low overhead, so they can keep menu prices down and experiment with foods and ingredients without constantly having to worry it won’t be able to pay the bills:

A strip-mall restaurant is more likely to try daring ideas than is a restaurant in, say, a large shopping mall. The people with the best, most creative, most innovative cooking ideas are not always the people with the most money. Many of them end up in dumpier locales, where they gradually improve real-estate values.

Hip, high-rent urban neighborhoods tend to attract well-established, upscale restaurants, because only these restaurants can afford the rent. The suburbs and peripheries of cities are where immigrants tend to live—and, not so coincidentally, also where they work and eat. Cowen looks especially for areas where a particular ethnic cuisine dominates the scene. When an area is loaded with a huge selection of, say, Indian or Korean restaurants, the odds are pretty good that any individual restaurant’s food is above average, if not excellent. After all, there is plenty of local competition, and their immigrant clientele is informed and unlikely to be swayed by gimmicks or silly trends. If a restaurant was poor or mediocre, it’d quickly be run out of business.

When hunting for restaurants, Cowen targets ethnic areas with just the right “atmosphere.” When the goal is a magic combination of terrific food at the right price, the signs he looks for are abandoned cars, cheap plastic signs, and five-and-dime stores in the neighborhood. Hey, he’s not saying this is the right atmosphere for a first date, just for good food.

On the other hand, Cowen tends to stay away from restaurants that boast of what most diners would categorize as a good, friendly and fun atmosphere. Specifically, he advises foodies to avoid spots filled with “beautiful, laughing women.” Why? He’s playing the odds that because the place is popular and trendy, the focus is on “the scene” rather than the food, which is all but guaranteed to be overpriced:

The point is not that beautiful women have bad taste in food. Instead, the problem is that they will attract a lot of men to the restaurant, whether or not the place serves excellent food. And that allows the restaurant to cut back on the quality of the food.

Another of Cowen’s unexpected, contrarian insights is highlighted in a USA Today review of his book:

Agribusiness, Cowen says, has made good food ingredients available, along with the drawbacks it has spawned. He uses this analogy: “The printing press brought us both good and bad novels, but was a cultural boon nonetheless.”

Contrary to what some foodies assume, Cowen’s take is that businesses that mass-produce food are not necessarily evil, nor is the food they produce necessarily unhealthy. “There’s nothing especially virtuous about the local farmer,” writes Cowen, and by contrast, “technology and business are a big part of what makes the world gentle and fun.” Overall, he explains, advances in agribusiness have been good for everyone, bringing food prices down and feeding more people than ever in human history.

Imagine dining at a Columbia restaurant or shopping at a Columbia grocery store with someone who has a doctorate in ecomonics and is offering a stream of advice.

That sort of approximates the experience of reading “An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies.”

Tyler Cowen is a university-based economist obsessed with eating and drinking (obsessed in a good way, once the idea of thinking about food consumption in a new way takes hold). “An Economist Gets Lunch” is a mind-bending book for non-economists. Cowen offers lots of mantras for foodies, and the dominant mantra reads like this: “Food is a product of economic supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative and the demanders are informed.”

In his own life, Cowen uses the mantra to experience excellent food wherever he goes — in the Washington, D.C., area where he resides (he is on the faculty at George Mason University); in his home kitchen; in other locales across the United States; and in nations around the globe.

Challenging tenets

Cowen opens the book with “a journey into the unknown,” the unknown being the nation of Nicaragua and the journey being about finding delicious, affordable meals.

As he travels through Nicaragua, Cowen is consciously upending three tenets of “food snobbery” that have become conventional wisdom:

• The best food is the most expensive.

• The primary source of cheap food, agribusiness, is evil.

• Chefs, food writers, cultural leaders and political officeholders know best; everyday foodies are not a trusted source of innovation.

Good food is often reasonably priced, Cowen says, and the most expensive restaurants are often serving trendy atmosphere for the upper crust of society rather than focusing on the tastiest meals. In his own neighborhood, Cowen has located outstanding restaurants where the meals are priced under $15. “These favorite restaurants serve diverse items, ranging from Sichuan dan dan noodles to French Epoisses cheeseburgers to red salmon curry to Ethiopian raw beef with chilies and dry cottage cheese.” Further from home, “the best barbecue cooks of Texas are highly skilled applied scientists; you can find chili ecstasy in Albuquerque diners and sometimes even in pharmacies; and the region in Italy with the fewest Michelin-starred restaurants — Sicily — has some of the best, most surprising and also cheapest food in Europe.”

A common denominator, Cowen asserts, is “their on-site owners and chefs are devoted to food they love to prepare.”

Every person who wants to stay alive must consume food and drink.

In a sense, that makes everybody an expert on food and drink. But it is the rare consumer of food and drink who swallows with an economist looking on.

Tyler Cowen is an economist obsessed with eating and drinking. Obsessed in a good way, once the idea of thinking about food consumption in a new way takes hold.

An Economist Gets Lunch is a mind-bending book for non-economists. Cowen offers lots of mantras for foodies, the dominant mantra reading like this: “Food is a product of economic supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed.”

In his own life, Cowen uses the mantra to experience excellent food wherever he goes—in the Washington, D.C., area where he is on the faculty at George Mason University; in locales across the United States; and around the globe.

If that sounds somewhat selfish, please know that Cowen is fully aware of the big issues: starvation, daily hunger for many of those not literally starving, obesity, food-related cancers, a lack of food safety, environmental degradation related to food production, corporate farming, greedy agribusiness conglomerates, and more.

He deals with all those issues, especially in the chapters titled “Another Agricultural Revolution, Now” and “Eating Your Way to a Greener Planet.”

Other books may deal more fully and interestingly with the big issues. But Cowen’s book is a thoughtful, offbeat guide to better individual eating for readers with money to prepare food in well-appointed home kitchens, to dine at restaurants near home, and to travel widely away from home while eating experimentally.

Cowen opens with “a journey into the unknown;” the unknown being the nation of Nicaragua and the journey being about finding delicious, affordable meals.

As he travels through Nicaragua, Cowen is consciously upending three tenets of “food snobbery” that have become conventional wisdom:

•The best food is the most expensive.

•Agribusiness, a primary source of cheap food, is evil.

•Chefs, food writers, cultural leaders and political officeholders know best; everyday foodies are not a trusted source of innovation.

Agribusiness, Cowen says, has made good food ingredients available, along with the drawbacks it has spawned. He uses this analogy: “The printing press brought us both good and bad novels, but was a cultural boon nonetheless.”

Good food is often reasonably priced, Cowen says, and the most expensive restaurants are often serving trendy atmosphere rather than focusing on the tastiest meals.

In his own neighborhood, Cowen has found outstanding restaurants where meals are priced under $15.

“These favorite restaurants serve diverse items, ranging from Sichuan dan dan noodles to French Epoisses cheeseburgers to red salmon curry to Ethiopian raw beef with chilies and dry cottage cheese.”

Farther from home, “the best barbecue cooks of Texas are highly skilled applied scientists; you can find chili ecstasy in Albuquerque diners and sometimes even in pharmacies; and the region in Italy with the fewest Michelin-starred restaurants—Sicily—has some of the best, most surprising, and also cheapest food in Europe.”

A common denominator, Cowen asserts: “their on-site owners and chefs are devoted to food they love to prepare.”

For home cooks, Cowen includes well-researched chapters about shopping in ethnic supermarkets and using cookbooks wisely.

Cowen’s latest work of pop economics is a bracing riposte to the locavore likes of Michael Pollan and others who blame commercialization and agribusiness for the miserable state of North American cuisine. While he doesn’t deny that American food has journeyed a “long arch through some big black spots,” Cowen argues it is too simplistic to vilify the industrialization of agriculture. Instead, he blames factors ranging from Prohibition, which forced the closure of some of the best restaurants, to the rise of the two-income household, which popularized the frozen dinner. These forces created “a century-long perfect storm of bad news for good food,” but blaming the agricultural infrastructure is misguided. “The printing press brought us both good and bad novels,” he writes. “but it was a cultural boon nonetheless.” His thesis is well taken, but some of his best insights come when he applies an economist’s methodology to everyday quandaries like choosing a restaurant. He argues that low-rent venues allow restaurateurs to innovate, making them better bets than hot restaurants in pricey locales. Thinking of dining at an ethnic restaurant near a dollar store with an abandoned car out front? “If so, crack a smile, walk through the door, and order,” he says. “Welcome to the glorious world of good food.”

Tyler Cowen is both a renowned economics prof at George Mason University (Business Week last year called him “America’s Hottest Economist,”) and a widely-read food blogger, and he combines those passions in his newly published book, “An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies.” When the world’s media come to interview Cowen, he takes them to some nondescript ethnic food haunt in Northern Virginia, and explains how his love of Ethio­pian injera or Korean kimchi expanded his understanding of how the world works.

For the last 23 years, even as he traveled and eaten in more than 80 countries to discuss economics, Cowen has always happily returned to what he calls “the magic of Northern Virginia.” For it’s here, Cowen says, that a combination of immigration, quality education, wealth, good business environment and affordable housing leads him to conclude that “Northern Virginia does integration better than any other part of the country, and I’ve been to almost all of them.”

He’s off to Italy and Romania this week, but “I’m always happy to come back here,” Cowen said, as we dined on spicy goat at Bang Ga Nae, a six-table Korean place in a house on Little River Turnpike in Annandale that you really have to know is there. “I always feel rejuvenated by my return.”

Cowen apparently had written about Bang Ga Nae on his ethnic dining blog before, because in the middle of our dinner, a man at the next table came over and asked politely, “Are you Tyler Cowen?” He proceeded to tell Cowen that they were there because of him, they go to all the places he recommends, consider themselves huge fans and his blog is simply amazing. It was like seeing a Beatles fan approach Paul McCartney. Which, in the small world of economist-foodies, I guess makes sense.

Cowen, originally from New Jersey, first landed in Fairfax when he attended GMU as an undergrad in the early 1980s. There was no ethnic food scene here then, and the immigration boom had not visited us. Yet.

But his palate was permanently enlightened after a year spent in Europe during graduate school. After a couple of years teaching in California, Cowen returned to Fairfax in 1989, by which time the ethnic food scene here had begun to take off. He has lived in Tysons Corner, Baileys Crossroads, Vienna and, now, just outside Fairfax City.

“I find that there’s daily enjoyment for me here,” Cowen said, hunting the corridors of Eden Center or the strip malls of Baileys Crossroads for new, fun foreign food.

“The immigrants want to come here and cook for us. They work hard. They pour their lives into this,” he said gesturing at the table full of Korean food, which was unique even in the local Korean community. There were only nine things on the dinner menu in the tiny restaurant. “They have to do some of them very well.”

Cowen’s ethnic restaurant exploration has led him to devise a number of interesting rules and guidelines, such as: Avoid restaurants with beautiful women (the place is likely more focused on its social scene than its food); Don’t avoid strip mall restaurants (they have lower rents, more likely to be adventurous); Order what sounds least appetizing (it’s not designed for mass tastes, but rather for the local immigrants of that culture, probably more interesting).

Cowen feels that a number of factors have combined to make NoVa one of the most intriguing food spots in the country. He said our quality schools have attracted immigrant families, who place a high value on education, but are unwilling to put their kids in private schools. “Ethnic food and education go together,” Cowen said.

He said immigrants could go to Maryland, whose schools are fine, but Cowen said that side of the Potomac feels older, less fresh to him, and probably to new visitors as well. He said Virginia is better for small businesses, which the immigrants intend to open, and has slightly lower taxes.

Ethnic communities also evolve in reasonably close proximity to where their businesses, shops and restaurants are in Northern Virginia, such as Annandale for the Korean community and Baileys Crossroads for the Ethio­pian community. Even when immigrants don’t live near their work, getting there by car or bus isn’t the ordeal that it is in New York or Los Angeles, Cowen said.

And Northern Virginia, through its government contracting, among other things, also has wealth, Cowen said, “with people who are cosmopolitan, well-traveled, willing to take chances.” Their communities are, by and large, not gated enclaves, apart from the rest of the world. “I think immigrants, when they come here,” Cowen said, “feel more accepted than in California. There’s no paranoia here that people are coming in to take over. It’s much more relaxed and healthier. I like living in an area that has arranged that well.”

Though he spent plenty of time in Mexico and loves Mexican food, ”There’s none of it that I enjoy” in NoVa, Cowen said. But we do have good ethnic groceries, particularly the Lotte stores and the Great Wall in Falls Church, he said.

The best food choices in NoVa these days, Cowen said, are the Bolivian food in Arlington and Falls Church; the Ethio­pian along George Mason Drive in Baileys; the Korean food in Annandale; and the Vietnamese food at the Eden Center in Falls Church.

Other helpful guidelines: Pick Vietnamese over Thai food (he says Thai food here is getting too sweet and Americanized); and pick Pakistani over Indian (Indians are also reducing their heat for Americans); look for places with older customers (they’re fussier); avoid places with billiards tables (not serious about food).

Cowen fears the effects of gentrification, which tends to drive up real estate rates and drive out ethnic restaurants. It can also lead to blander food. But if defense funding is cut, and the impact is felt locally, that would be a good thing for ethnic restaurants, if not for the populace in general, Cowen said.

And finally, some more helpful tips for ethnic restaurant exploration: ”It’s all about the ordering,” Cowen said. The best places have smaller menus, so they aren’t trying to please everyone, and likely do several things very well. Don’t ask the waiter what’s good, “that will only confuse them.” Instead, ask, “What dish do you have here which is special?” or “What are your regional specialties.”

Don’t be afraid to ask questions about what’s arriving, pointing if necessary, and don’t be afraid to check out what others are already eating. Ask these questions — and stay away from the beautiful people — and you’ll have a great time, Cowen assures.

Don’t eat at a restaurant packed with beautiful women. Any Chinese place, even at the most woebegone formica joint in the dullest small-town strip mall, can be a good one if you know what to say. And get to a barbecue place early — before noon.

So says Tyler Cowen in his smorgasbord “An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies” (Dutton). The vague title provides cover for the wide range of food issues Cowen considers, all the way from why American food got so bad to why hundreds of millions of Indians are starving to why locavorism usually makes no sense. Just think of it as another contrarian ideas party; “Freakonomics” for food.

Cowen’s special sauce is rationality, which is why this may be the first food book I have ever made it through. (I nearly threw Anthony Bourdain’s macho-man pose-a-palooza “Kitchen Confidential” into the fireplace after 20 pages). Eating, especially in restaurants, is a subject that opens into a lot of other fields. There’s location, trendiness, class, alcohol, decor, socializing and even the beauty of your servers and fellow diners to distract you.

All of these are factors in why food writing is so bad: There are so many other things to consider that the restaurant critic often doesn’t get around to the food until the second half of the review. When I pointed this out to one such writer, he sighed heavily and said, “Yes, but how many ways are there to say ‘crunchy’?”

EATING OUT — FAR OUT

Cowen is an economist at George Mason University who is widely admired in the field for his influential Marginal Revolutions blog and also runs a food blog (Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide, whose motto is “all food is ethnic food”). He gets around the food-writing problem by taking it for granted that you’ll agree with him on what makes a great-tasting meal.

The meal is all that matters to him. He doesn’t care if it’s served in a hut by the side of the road or if you have to sit on a picnic bench to eat it. He’s willing to for a fantastic dish, but he doesn’t pretend food is better just because it cost more. Some of the best meals (not just for the buck, but best meals period) can come from food trucks operated by struggling immigrants.

Consider barbecue: The best examples of it, Cowen believes, are to be found at places on the outskirts of towns in Texas or at roadside stands in Mexico. Why roadside? Genuine barbecue requires slow roasting at low temperatures in a pit. Even in Mexico, government regulators are nervous about potentially out-of-control fires and fumes bothering or endangering neighbors. Roadside stands outside of town don’t have to worry about neighbors. Moreover, rural Mexican police are easily bribed.

If you care about decor, you’re probably not going to be exposed to much great barbecue. (On his foodie blog, Cowen says that what might be the best barbecue on the entire East Coast is to be found in Queens, at the modest John Brown’s Smokehouse in Long Island City). The best barbecue is cooked overnight, and when it’s ready, you should eat it as soon as possible. That means, perhaps, as early as 7 a.m. Great barbecue places like the ones in Mexico and Texas run out of supply as the day goes on, and when the meat is gone they simply close. (Beware of bigger, more commercial places that never run out, as in North Carolina. That means the meat is likely to have been frozen.)

The short business day means it isn’t wise to invest in the look of your place. An exception: Manhattan’s Blue Smoke in the Flatiron District. It charges premium prices that in part reflect the regulatory burdens of operating a barbecue pit in an urban area and also relies on its customers to spend a lot for drinks, which in my experience they are delighted to do.

Some of the same reasons — quality family-made food, of limited profitability, made under limited regulation — are why food carts serve up many of Cowen’s favorite meals. Washington, DC, he notes, is forever threatening to put food carts out of business, urged on by heavy lobbying from restaurants, though there is one area (in Adams Morgan at Columbia and 18th streets) where trucks serve first-rate Central American and Puerto Rican dishes.

Austin, Texas, Portland, Ore., and New York are much more accommodating to food trucks, and with delicious results. As more cities continue down this path, “the next food revolution in the United States is likely to be a mobile one,” he predicts. And thanks to social-media sites like Twitter, it’s easier than ever to track your favorite vendors.

COOL IS NOT HOT

The overall vibe of a restaurant (the aspect of the experience that takes up, say, two-thirds of a standard restaurant review in The New Yorker) is, for Cowen, an irrelevant distraction. You will search his writing in vain for the tiresome snark about how a restaurant is bad because it attracts power-tie-wearing bankers or those supposedly awful bridge-and-tunnel people New York nightlife writers are so obsessed with denigrating.

Yet the vibe can be a useful counter-indicator. When you see a restaurant that’s full of happy, smiling, chatty people, run the other way. Why? “Don’t get me wrong,” he writes, “There is nothing wrong with having fun, but it’s not the same thing as good food. So many restaurants ‘get by’ — and charge reasonably high prices — by creating social scenes for drinking, dating and carousing. They’re not using the food to draw in their customers . . . They will serve some kind of overpriced fusion cuisine, sponsored by a famous or semi-famous chef who is usually absent from the premises . . . The famous chef, or some competent delegate, will be on hand early in history of the restaurant to make sure it gets good reviews from sophisticated food critics and smart food bloggers. Then everyone will want to go there and the place will become established as a major social scene. The laughing and the smiling will set in. Beware! That’s when you need to stop going.”