Food writing that goes beyond the recipe.
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“Does MSG make steak taste better?” is not a testable question in a home kitchen. “Can a taster reliably pick the odd sample at a given dose on a seared crust?” is. The difference matters, because the first question smuggles in a preference claim that no triangle test can resolve, and the second is a discrimination claim that a triangle test is designed to address.
A triangle test presents three samples: two identical, one odd. The taster must identify the odd sample. Chance performance is 1/3, as the sensory literature states plainly: “in the case of a triangle test, there is a 1/3 probability that the participant will select the odd (correct) sample by chance” (Hartley et al., Chemical Senses, 2022). That is the entire instrument. It measures whether a difference is detectable under the conditions of the test. It says nothing about whether the detected difference is pleasant, desirable, or an improvement.
This piece explains what the published triangle-test literature supports, what it does not, and how to run a home adaptation with honest reporting of what the result can and cannot mean.
The standard comparison in umami discrimination research is not MSG on a steak. It is isomolar 29 mM MSG versus 29 mM sodium chloride in solution. The Hartley et al. paper describes the method directly: “To determine individuals’ umami discrimination status, many studies use a series of triangle tests containing isomolar (29 mM) sodium chloride (NaCl) and MSG, requiring participants to correctly identify the odd sample.”
That design isolates the glutamate ion from the sodium ion. Both solutions carry sodium at the same concentration, so a taster who can distinguish them is responding to the glutamate, not to saltiness. The finding that matters for anyone thinking about MSG on food is that a substantial subgroup cannot make this discrimination. As the same paper reports, “A proportion of the population has a reduced or complete inability to taste l-glutamate independent to the sodium ion.”
This is the factual spine. MSG is the sodium salt of glutamic acid (FDA, “Questions and Answers on Monosodium Glutamate”), and the prototypical umami stimulus in sensory research is MSG (Hartley et al., 2022). But the discrimination literature is built on aqueous solutions, not on seared beef crust.
A single triangle test is a weak instrument. The Hartley et al. study makes this explicit: “This indicates that the number of repetitions conducted dictates the proportion of discriminators and nondiscriminators classified from the study population.”
The arithmetic is straightforward. With 24 triangle tests, a taster needs at least 13 correct identifications to exceed chance at P < 0.05. With 12 tests, the threshold is at least 8 correct. The same paper reports that “Twenty-four triangle tests produced the most consistent categorization of tasters across sessions (68.4%),” and that test-retest correlation was highest for n = 24 (ICC = 0.50) compared with n = 12 (ICC = 0.37).
Individual variation across sessions is not a rounding error. In one study cited by Hartley et al., “26% of women who discriminated on day one, did not discriminate on day 2, and 30% of women who did not discriminate MSG from NaCl on day one, did on day 2.” A single session’s result is a data point, not a classification.
The FDA considers the addition of MSG to foods to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). The agency also notes that in studies with self-identified MSG-sensitive individuals given MSG or a placebo, “scientists have not been able to consistently trigger reactions.”
The FDA cites a FASEB report that “identified some short-term, transient, and generally mild symptoms, such as headache, numbness, flushing, tingling, palpitations, and drowsiness that may occur in some sensitive individuals who consume 3 grams or more of MSG without food.” The same source states that “a typical serving of a food with added MSG contains less than 0.5 grams of MSG.”
That 3-gram figure is a safety-context number, not a culinary dose. Using it as a target for a steak would be a category error. The FDA source does not recommend a dose for cooking, and no retrieved source supports any specific gram dose of MSG as correct or optimal on a seared strip steak.
No retrieved source tests MSG on seared steak. No retrieved source measures free glutamate content in a seared beef crust. No retrieved source establishes a culinary dose of MSG for steak. No retrieved source supports the claim that MSG improves the flavor, crust, browning, or perceived savoriness of seared strip steak.
The crust introduces variables the solution-based literature does not model: fat, Maillard reaction products, salt, texture variation, and the thermal history of the sear. A home result should be reported as a result about that steak on that day, not as a general claim about glutamate detectability.
The following is an adaptation of the laboratory method, not a validated consumer protocol. It controls the variables the literature controls: identical samples by mass, identical sear and rest, identical internal temperature, coded presentation, forced choice, and a pre-declared number of trials before tasting.
For each session: steak mass before and after sear, internal temperature at rest, sear time per side, rest time, MSG dose in grams, and whether the taster identified the odd sample correctly. After the pre-declared number of sessions, count correct identifications. Compare to the binomial threshold: at least 8 of 12, or at least 13 of 24, to exceed chance at P < 0.05.
This is an illustration of how to read results, not a report of an actual test.
Suppose a taster runs 12 sessions at a dose of 0.5 g MSG per spiked steak. The taster correctly identifies the odd sample in 7 of 12 sessions. The binomial threshold for 12 tests is 8 correct. The result does not exceed chance at P < 0.05. The honest conclusion is: under these conditions, at this dose, on this steak, this taster did not reliably discriminate the spiked sample from the unspiked sample.
Now suppose the same taster runs 12 sessions at 2.0 g per spiked steak and correctly identifies 10 of 12. That exceeds the threshold. The honest conclusion is: under these conditions, at this dose, on this steak, this taster reliably discriminated the spiked sample. It does not mean the spiked steak was better. It does not mean the taster would discriminate at a lower dose. It does not mean the result generalizes to other tasters, other steaks, or other sear methods.
If the taster runs 24 sessions at 0.5 g and correctly identifies 14 of 24, that exceeds the 13-of-24 threshold. The result is stronger because the repetition count is higher, but the same limits apply: it is a discrimination result, not a preference result, and it is specific to the conditions recorded.
You can conclude that under the conditions you recorded, at the dose you used, on the steak you cooked, a taster did or did not discriminate the spiked sample above chance. You can report the dose, the mass, the temperature, the time, and the count.
You cannot conclude that MSG improves steak. You cannot conclude that any dose is correct or optimal. You cannot conclude that your result generalizes to other tasters or other steaks. You cannot conclude that a single session’s result classifies you as a “taster” or “non-taster” in the sense the literature uses, because the literature’s classification depends on repetition count and shows substantial variation across sessions.
The triangle test is a discrimination instrument. It answers a narrow question well. It answers the broader question — whether MSG belongs on a seared strip steak — not at all.
You can, but the result is a single data point. The literature shows that discrimination status varies across sessions, and that the proportion of “discriminators” depends on the number of trials. A single session cannot classify a taster reliably.
No retrieved source establishes a culinary dose for MSG on steak. The FDA’s 3-gram figure is a safety-context number for consumption without food, not a cooking recommendation. Choose a dose, record it in grams, and report it. The result is specific to that dose.
No retrieved source measures glutamate detectability on a seared beef crust. The published literature uses aqueous solutions. The crust introduces fat, Maillard products, salt, and texture variation that the solution-based method does not model. This is an open question, not a settled one.
The FDA considers the addition of MSG to foods to be GRAS. The agency notes that studies with self-identified sensitive individuals have not consistently triggered reactions, and that a FASEB report identified transient symptoms in some sensitive individuals at 3 grams or more without food. A typical serving of food with added MSG contains less than 0.5 grams.
That is a result. It means that under your conditions, at your dose, on your steak, you did not discriminate above chance. It does not mean MSG has no effect on anyone, and it does not mean your palate is defective. The literature documents a substantial subgroup with reduced or complete inability to discriminate isomolar MSG from NaCl.
Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.
The garment preview shows two lines of white type on a dark shirt. The upper line reads IN DOG BEERS. The lower line reads I’VE ONLY HAD ONE. There is no dog. There is no glass, no paw, no leash, no bone. The entire design is a typographic substitution, and the substitution is the joke.
I want to treat this as a piece of visual rhetoric rather than a product recommendation, because the design makes a specific claim about how the reader should process it. The claim is not “dogs are funny” or “beer is fun.” The claim is that you, the reader, already hold a conversion factor in your head, and that the shirt can activate it with four words and a line break.
The phrase dog years is a colloquial convention, not a scientific unit. The common figure is seven human years per dog year, though veterinary consensus has complicated that ratio for decades. I am not going to adjudicate the biology here. What matters for the design is that the convention exists in popular language, that it is widely understood as a multiplier, and that the shirt borrows its structure without explaining it.
The move is a category substitution. Dog years becomes dog beers. The multiplier stays. The unit changes. The result is a sentence that reads as a confession: in the units of dog beers, I have consumed only one. The humor depends on the reader performing the conversion silently and arriving at the punchline without being told.
This is why the design is typographic rather than illustrated. An illustrated dog holding a beer would explain the joke. It would also kill it. The two-line text layout forces the reader to supply the missing term — years — and then replace it. The shirt is a fill-in-the-blank exercise with the answer printed in the wrong unit.
The break between IN DOG BEERS and I’VE ONLY HAD ONE is doing structural work. If the phrase ran as a single line, the reader would parse it as a sentence and move on. The break creates a pause, and the pause is where the substitution happens. The eye reads the first line, recognizes the familiar shape of in dog years, and then the second line delivers the altered unit.
I have written before about how packaging and label design use line breaks to control timing. The same principle applies here. The shirt is not a poster. It is a garment that will be read at conversational distance, often while the wearer is standing still or moving slowly. The two-line stack gives the reader a beat to catch up. A single line would be a statement. Two lines make it a setup and a punchline.
The color choice reinforces the restraint. White type on a dark ground is the highest-contrast, lowest-decoration option available. It says: the words are the design. Nothing else is competing for attention. No gradient, no distressed texture, no faux-vintage wash. Just the substitution, stated plainly.
Here is where the design gets more interesting than it first appears. The joke requires the reader to know the dog-years convention, but it also requires the reader to accept a deliberately bad conversion. One dog beer, under the standard multiplier, would be seven human beers. The shirt is not claiming the wearer has had one beer. It is claiming the wearer has had one dog beer, which is a much larger quantity, and that this larger quantity is still modest by the standards of the room.
That is the actual joke: the speaker is using a unit that inflates their consumption, and the inflated number is still one. The humor is in the mismatch between the unit and the count. It is a self-deprecating brag disguised as a confession, or a confession disguised as a brag, depending on how you read it.
This is also why the shirt works better as a typographic design than as an illustrated one. An illustration would have to choose a dog, a breed, a posture, a beverage. Each choice would narrow the joke. The text version leaves the dog unspecified. The reader supplies whatever dog they have in mind, which is usually their own or one they know. The design is a template for a personal association.
I want to be precise about what the observed artwork does not contain, because retail descriptions sometimes drift toward the generic. The preview does not show a dog costume, a dog face, a paw print, a bone, a leash, a collar, or any other canine signifier. It does not show a beer glass, a bottle, a can, a foam head, or a bar setting. It does not use a script font, a badge layout, or a vintage label treatment. It is two lines of sans-serif capitals on a dark ground.
That matters because the keyword dog beers shirt could describe a dozen different designs. This one is specifically a text-based pun. If you are looking for an illustrated dog in a drinking context, this is not that object. If you are looking for a design that trusts you to complete the joke, this is that object.
The shirt is available at the listing linked here: In Dog Beers I’ve Only Had One Funny Beer Pun. I have not worn it, washed it, or tested its fabric. I am describing the printed artwork as observed in the native garment preview, and the argument I am making is about the design’s rhetorical structure, not its textile performance.
I have spent a lot of time on this site writing about steak, heat transfer, and the auditable claims of restaurant menus. This column is a departure, but not a large one. The common thread is that I am interested in objects that make a claim and then ask you to verify it. A steakhouse menu claims a grade and a weight. This shirt claims a unit conversion. Both are falsifiable in principle. You can check the weight. You can check the math.
The math here is deliberately wrong, which is the point. The shirt is not a scientific statement. It is a linguistic one. It assumes a shared convention and then breaks it in a way that is legible to anyone who has ever heard the phrase dog years and understood it as a multiplier. That is a large audience, but not a universal one. If you do not know the convention, the shirt reads as nonsense. If you do, it reads as a joke that took you half a second to get.
That half-second is the entire design. Everything else — the dark ground, the white capitals, the two-line stack — exists to protect that half-second from interference. The shirt is not trying to be clever in a way that requires study. It is trying to be clever in a way that rewards recognition. The best typographic puns work like this. They do not explain. They assume.
One more observation about the phrase itself. In dog beers is grammatically odd in a way that in dog years is not. We say in dog years because years are a unit of time and dogs age faster. We do not have a standard unit of dog beers. The phrase is a nonce construction, invented for the shirt. That is part of what makes it funny. It is not a real conversion. It is a conversion that exists only because the sentence needed a second term to replace the first.
This is the kind of thing that separates a designed pun from a found one. A found pun is a phrase that already exists and happens to be funny. A designed pun is a phrase that has been built to be funny, with each word chosen to support the structure. In dog beers is designed. It does not exist in common usage. It exists because in dog years does, and because the substitution is close enough to be recognized and far enough to be absurd.
The shirt is a small piece of language engineering. It is not trying to be more than that. It is trying to be exactly that, and it succeeds on its own terms.
The graphic is a butter stick wrapper. Blue vertical lettering runs down the side: SALTED BUTTER. Not unsalted. Not “butter.” The qualifier is the whole design.
That is the first thing to notice about the salted butter shirt, and it is the thing most people will skip past. A butter costume is a familiar shape. A butter costume that insists on its salt content is doing something narrower and, I think, funnier.
Editorial note: this publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.
Based on the supplied visual observation, the design reproduces the front face of a butter stick wrapper as a costume graphic. The dominant element is the vertical blue wordmark reading SALTED BUTTER. The word “salted” is present and load-bearing. The design does not say unsalted.
I want to be careful here. I have not worn this garment, handled it, or measured anything about it. What I can describe is the printed artwork as observed: a wrapper-style layout, blue vertical capitals, the salted qualifier. Everything past that is interpretation, and I will flag it as such.
Consider what a generic butter costume would be. A yellow rectangle. Maybe the word BUTTER. It reads as a food object and stops there. The wearer is a stick of butter. Fine. Done.
The salted version adds a second layer. Salted butter is not the default butter of the dairy case in the way people often assume. It is a specific product with a specific position: the spreadable one, the table one, the one that already has something done to it. Unsalted is the baking butter, the control variable, the one you buy when you want to manage salt yourself.
So the shirt is not saying “I am butter.” It is saying “I am the butter that already made a decision.” That is a different and more specific claim, and it is the reason the design works as a costume rather than as a plain food graphic.
The design is not a drawing of butter. It is a drawing of butter packaging. That distinction does real work.
A stick of butter has no natural label. The label is applied by a manufacturer. When you wear the wrapper, you are wearing the applied identity rather than the substance. The costume is about branding as much as it is about dairy.
This is why the vertical blue lettering reads correctly. Wrapper typography is vertical because the stick is long and thin. The design is borrowing that constraint. It is not decorating a shirt with the word butter; it is reproducing the geometry of a package.
The retail brand attached to this listing is “Salted and Unsalted Butter Couples Costume.” That is a retail description, not a printed element, and I am treating it as such. But it does explain the design logic.
If you have a salted butter shirt, the natural complement is an unsalted one. The pair only makes sense because the two products are distinguished by a single word. The costume is a two-body joke about a one-word difference.
That is a structurally efficient costume. It requires no props, no makeup, no coordination beyond wearing the right shirt. The humor is entirely in the label, which means the label has to be legible and specific. A shirt that just said BUTTER would break the pair.
I want to be explicit about the limits of this analysis. I am not claiming the shirt is comfortable, well-made, or accurately sized. I have no textile data, no fit data, and no wear data. I am not claiming the design is historically significant or that it originated anywhere in particular. I am not claiming it improves anything, cures anything, or does anything other than present a printed graphic.
What I am claiming is narrower: the design’s humor depends on the word “salted,” and that word is doing more work than the rest of the graphic combined.
Food packaging works as costume material because it is already designed to be read at a glance. A wrapper has to communicate product, category, and differentiation in a fraction of a second on a shelf. That is exactly the constraint a costume graphic faces on a person.
The salted butter design exploits this. It takes a package that already solved the problem of instant legibility and transfers that solution to a body. The result is a costume that reads correctly from across a room, which is the only distance at which a costume actually needs to work.
The qualifier is not a detail. It is the mechanism.
Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.
The artwork on the Yes I Can Drive A Stick Funny Witch Broom Halloween Women shirt presents a compact visual puzzle. A cream-colored, engraved-style pointed witch hat sits above the serif capitals YES I CAN DRIVE A STICK. A long broom runs down the right side, and a crescent moon, small stars, and flourishes surround the lettering. The design is not merely decorative; it is a deliberate composition that rewards a closer look at how its elements interact.
My hypothesis is that the shirt’s humor and visual appeal depend on a specific relationship between text and image: the text sets up a double meaning, and the image resolves it through a visual pun. To test this, I examined the supplied visual observation and considered how each component contributes to the whole.
Method
I treated the design as a set of discrete elements: the hat, the broom, the text, and the surrounding celestial motifs. I then asked how each element would function if removed or altered. This is a thought experiment, not a controlled cook, but it follows the same logic: isolate variables to understand their contribution.
Results
The text YES I CAN DRIVE A STICK is the first element a viewer encounters. In isolation, it reads as a boast about manual driving—a common phrase. But the presence of the witch hat immediately reframes it. A witch does not drive a car; she rides a broomstick. The word “stick” thus becomes a pun: it refers both to a manual transmission and to a broomstick. The hat signals the witch context, and the broom, running down the right side, reinforces it. The crescent moon and stars add a nocturnal, magical atmosphere that further cements the witch theme.
The composition is balanced: the hat sits above the text, the broom runs vertically along the right, and the celestial elements fill the negative space. The cream color of the hat and broom against the shirt’s background (likely a dark fabric, though the observation does not specify) creates contrast. The serif capitals are formal, almost engraved, which contrasts with the informal, punny message. This tension between formality and humor is part of the design’s charm.
Discussion
What makes this design effective is its economy. It does not rely on a long joke or a complex scene. Instead, it uses a single visual cue—the witch hat—to transform a mundane phrase into a seasonal pun. The broom is not just a prop; it is the visual equivalent of the punchline. Without it, the hat alone might suggest a generic witch, but the broom makes the connection to “driving a stick” explicit.
The design also plays with expectations. The phrase “I can drive a stick” is often used as a marker of skill or toughness. Here, it is appropriated for a witch, who presumably has no need for a manual transmission. The humor comes from the incongruity: a witch boasting about a human skill that is irrelevant to her. This is a gentle, self-aware joke that works for anyone who enjoys wordplay.
From a technical standpoint, the design’s success depends on legibility. The serif capitals are clear, and the hat and broom are distinct enough to be recognized at a glance. The flourishes and stars add visual interest without cluttering. If the text were smaller or the hat less prominent, the pun might be missed. But as observed, the elements are well-proportioned.
One could argue that the design is niche—it appeals to those who appreciate both Halloween and puns. But that is precisely its strength: it knows its audience and does not try to be everything to everyone. The shirt is a conversation piece, a small visual joke that rewards those who look closely.
Conclusion
The Yes I Can Drive A Stick shirt design is a successful example of visual wordplay. It uses a minimal set of elements to create a layered meaning, and its composition is balanced and legible. While I cannot speak to the wearing experience or the shirt’s material, the artwork itself is clever and well-executed. For those who enjoy seasonal humor with a twist, this design delivers.
As always, I welcome corrections and alternative interpretations. The data here are limited to the visual observation, and I have tried to stay within those bounds.
I have a recurring nightmare. In it, a server presents a tomahawk ribeye the length of a canoe paddle, the table applauds, and someone at the table says, “Now that’s a steak.” Meanwhile, I am quietly calculating the price per edible ounce and finding it potentially much worse than the standard bone-in ribeye on the same menu. The applause is for bone.
This is not a rant against tomahawks. It is an argument that the tomahawk carries a measurable surcharge — a tax — paid in bone mass and frenching waste. The tax is not hidden. It is simply not priced. Below I lay out what can be measured, what can be inferred, and where the evidence runs out.
A tomahawk ribeye is a bone-in ribeye in which the rib bone has been frenched — the meat, fat, and connective tissue stripped from the bone for a length of several inches — leaving a long, exposed handle. The steak itself is cut from the ribeye roll, typically between the 6th and 12th ribs, and the bone is the rib bone left attached. A standard bone-in ribeye is the same cut with the bone left intact and the meat running closer to the end of the bone.
The difference is not the steak. The difference is the bone presentation and the meat removed to create it.
I cannot give you a USDA-published bone mass fraction for a tomahawk ribeye, because I have not retrieved one. The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service grades-standards page and the FSIS meat-and-poultry pages were unavailable at the time of writing. What I can do is reason from the anatomy and from the arithmetic that any butcher or steakhouse can verify with a scale.
A beef rib bone is dense cortical bone. Its mass scales with length and cross-section. A standard bone-in ribeye typically leaves 2 to 4 inches of rib bone attached. A tomahawk leaves 5 to 8 inches or more, depending on the house specification. If the bone cross-section is roughly constant, the bone mass scales roughly linearly with exposed length. A tomahawk with 6 inches of exposed bone versus a standard with 3 inches carries roughly twice the bone mass — but the absolute bone mass is still small relative to the steak.
Here is the arithmetic that matters. Take a 32-ounce tomahawk with 8 ounces of bone and 24 ounces of edible meat. Take a 24-ounce standard bone-in ribeye with 3 ounces of bone and 21 ounces of edible meat. The tomahawk has 33% more total weight but only 14% more edible meat. If both are priced at the same per-pound menu price, the tomahawk’s price per edible ounce is higher by roughly the ratio of edible fractions: 24/32 = 0.75 versus 21/24 = 0.875. That is a 16.7% penalty. If the tomahawk is priced at a premium — which it usually is — the penalty grows.
These numbers are illustrative, not measured. The point is the method: weigh the bone, weigh the trim, divide.
Frenching removes intercostal meat, fat, and connective tissue from the bone. That material is edible. It is not served. It is either discarded or diverted to trim. The amount depends on how aggressively the bone is frenched and how much meat the butcher leaves on the bone.
A conservative estimate: frenching a tomahawk removes 2 to 4 ounces of edible tissue per steak compared to leaving the bone untrimmed. A more aggressive french — longer exposure, cleaner bone — removes more. This is not a USDA figure. It is an inference from the anatomy and from the observation that the intercostal muscles between the ribs are real muscle, not gristle.
Combine bone mass and frenching waste. A 32-ounce tomahawk might yield 22 to 24 ounces of edible meat after accounting for both. A 24-ounce standard bone-in ribeye might yield 20 to 21 ounces. The tomahawk’s edible fraction is lower, and the price per edible ounce is higher.
The claim that bone-in steaks taste better because the bone adds flavor or moisture is common. I have not retrieved a peer-reviewed source that supports a measurable thermodynamic benefit from the bone in a tomahawk. The bone is a heat sink: it has thermal mass, it conducts heat slowly, and it can affect the temperature gradient near the bone during cooking. Whether that effect is large enough to matter at the palate is an open question.
What I can say with confidence is that the bone does not add edible meat. It adds mass, presentation, and a handle. If the bone contributes a culinary benefit, that benefit is not priced separately. It is bundled into the tomahawk premium.
You need four measurements:
Then: edible weight = total weight − bone weight − trim weight. Edible price per ounce = menu price ÷ edible weight.
For a standard bone-in ribeye, the bone is smaller and the trim is less. For a tomahawk, the bone is larger and the trim is more. The calculation is the same. The result is usually unflattering to the tomahawk.
If you want to be rigorous, weigh the bone at the table. Most steakhouses will not object. If they do, that is data too.
Menus rarely list bone mass or edible yield. They list total weight. A 32-ounce tomahawk sounds like more steak than a 24-ounce bone-in ribeye. It is more total weight. It is not proportionally more edible meat. The menu is selling weight, not yield.
If the tomahawk is priced at a premium per total ounce, the premium is compounded by the lower edible fraction. If it is priced at the same per total ounce, the tomahawk still loses on edible price per ounce because of the bone and trim.
The only case in which the tomahawk wins on edible price per ounce is if it is priced at a discount per total ounce large enough to offset the lower edible fraction. That is rare.
High confidence: bone mass and frenching waste reduce edible yield in tomahawk ribeyes relative to standard bone-in ribeyes. This follows from anatomy and from the definition of frenching.
Moderate confidence: the edible price-per-ounce penalty for a typical tomahawk is in the range of 15% to 40% relative to a standard bone-in ribeye at the same menu price per total ounce. This depends on bone length, frenching aggressiveness, and steak thickness.
Low confidence: the bone contributes a measurable culinary benefit that offsets the penalty. I have not retrieved evidence for this, and the thermodynamic argument is weak.
Is a tomahawk just a bone-in ribeye with more bone?
Essentially yes. The steak is the same cut. The difference is the length of exposed bone and the amount of meat removed to expose it.
Does the bone add flavor?
I have not retrieved a peer-reviewed source that demonstrates a measurable flavor contribution from the bone in a tomahawk. The bone is a heat sink and a presentation element. Treat flavor claims as unverified.
How do I compare a tomahawk to a standard bone-in ribeye on a menu?
Ask for the bone weight and the trim weight, or estimate them. Then calculate edible price per ounce. If the tomahawk is more than 20% worse, the tax is real.
Is the tomahawk ever a better deal?
Only if the per-total-ounce price is low enough to offset the lower edible fraction. That is uncommon but not impossible.
What about cooked yield?
Cooking losses are similar for both cuts if cooked to the same internal temperature. The difference is in the raw edible fraction, not the cooked yield.
The tomahawk tax is the difference between what you pay for total weight and what you pay for edible meat. It is measurable with a scale and a calculator. It is not a scam. It is a pricing convention that favors presentation over yield. If you value the presentation, pay the tax knowingly. If you value the meat, order the standard bone-in ribeye and put the difference toward a better bottle of wine.