Week 1/14 — 1/20

Everybody should cook more.

I told a friend that once, months and months ago.

“You want to work in the restaurant industry; why the fuck would you say that?”

If people cook more for themselves, they’re inevitably going to try and make it taste good. At the very least, that means they’re thinking about what they’re doing. How do I get this flavor, what does this spice do, how hot is my pan. And then when they go out to a restaurant, maybe those same questions start popping up. What is this flavor, how is it different from what I do at home, how do I do this.

I’m a part of this industry for the time being, for better or worse. So I want people to care and truly appreciate what we are trying to do. That starts with caring about what you’re eating, and the best way to learn is simply to cook more.

I don’t know. I guess I’m weird. I’m obsessed with the food, and I love the hard work a restaurant requires. But the food is far more meaningful to me than the health of the industry.

“Don’t you want the industry to grow?”

No. I’m serious about that. I want it to fucking stabilize first.

The restaurant bubble is popping. Or has already popped. The general public hasn’t taken too much notice, but anybody that gives a shit has.

Every month, a different publication writes another article about the linecook shortage. Everybody knows that back of house needs to be paid more. Hell, everybody needs to be paid more. And yet. restaurant openings continue unabated. Take a look here at my city. I’m not going to bother counting, but the number of openings outnumbers the closings over the last five years. By a lot. And openings continue unabated.

It sort of boggles my mind to be honest. It’s an industry which generates an average profit of less than 5 fucking percent (Hold on one second. Yes. Five. As in, that $200 bender you had at that bar last weekend might have resulted in $10 profit. And yeah, that number does include restaurants operating at a loss. But fucking still.) But people continue creating and building restaurant concepts without any idea about how they’re going to attract good people to staff these places.

Writing a good menu is not difficult. Finding somebody to execute correctly? Holy shit that is difficult, especially if you’re large and you need 25 people to execute to the same high standard. And you can only pay an hourly wage of $11.

“Don’t you want people to eat out more?”

Yes, but I want them to be more involved in where they choose to eat.

And then you have fuckers writing this kind of shit. You don’t have to click on that. Here’s the part I take issue with:

More importantly, the lean structure of fast-casual helps keep prices at sub-restaurant levels. That’s hugely important. For a young gastronome, the $16 carrots with XO sauce at Roberta’s might serve as a gateway drug for the $195 tasting at Blanca next door. But for someone who doesn’t go out at all, the $6 Mini-Me at Fuku+, only a few dollars more than a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, is a less frightening point of entry into the world of Momofuku than $19 rice cakes. Perhaps such talk of sandwiches or meat-free burgers doesn’t excite in the same way that Estela’s beef hidden underneath potato chips does, but if you want to get non-food people hooked on the larger culinary world, fast-casual is how you do it, and New York is doing it right.

It’s fucking insulting. Yes, it’s nice that there are more options for consumers at a lower cost, and I love that people are getting to taste more. But holy shit, the problem with the industry does not stem from a fucking lack of customers (and if you think a Chik-Fil-A competitor is going to hook people on the larger culinary world, you’re out of your mind).

The larger problem comes from being able to find and retain talented people within the industry. Demanding higher standards at a lower price (and therefore, lower wage) is not how you make that happen. Creating a casual chain restaurant concept (where creativity and culinary interest is necessarily limited) is not how you make that happen.

I guess what I’m trying to say here, is that while things are looking up for diners, the larger problem here is not the problems that diners have been facing. The fact of the fucking matter is that they have had it pretty fucking good for a long fucking time. That the cost of food in restaurants is incredibly low compared to what it should or could be.

[Sidenote 1, you are jizzing yourself, stating that an example of something good for dining in NY, one of the world’s premier fine dining cities, is a fucking Chik-Fil-A competitor.]

[Sidenote 2, those casual concepts are generally speaking, no more profitable than larger restaurants. Guess how those fast-casual restaurants end up truly profitable? They fucking turn into chains with huge commissary kitchens pumping out food to them, reducing costs. As in, they sacrifice freshness/creativity of food, what I would consider good things. And that’s somehow good for the state of dining?]

[Sidenote 3, these are my views. I don’t know. I could be completely wrong. All I know is it’s impossibly difficult to find good help these days, and fast-casual does not seem like a responsible answer.]