Good content comes in all shape and sizes. Some times is its just a great story.
Sometimes its a bit of a life lesson. Either way you can't ignore it
I recently watched the Netflix documentary Noma.
About the world famous restaurant in Copenhagen.
And René Redzepi, a Hollywood looking movie star in the making if ever there was one..
This guy took a concept of simple eating and turned it into a grandiose mission statement.
He is a Johnny Foreigner in Denmark.
Raised in Macedonia and taken to Denmark as a child.
He then becomes more Danish than the Danish themselves.
And re-invents Nordic Cuisine.
The man is without doubt a fucking genius.
But also bat-shit crazy, in a way all Great Chefs are crazy.
Images Courtesy Pixabay
I worked in Peder Oxe, a restaurant in GRÅBRØDRETORV 11 in the center of Copenhagen as a Dishwasher.
Back in the day when I and the world was young.
It's still there at GRÅBRØDRETORV 11 - look it up on a city map, as it is well hidden.
It was a magic place full of beautiful sexy girls.
Who waited tables and an owner who ate left overs, out of the rubbish containers.
Constantly hunting down any food thrown away.
The Kitchen was always spotless.
The Chefs and young trainees where all mad as hatters.
I was told it was working with the red meat that drove them all insane.
But it was never a Noma.
If you want a great Steak with a Great Desert.
Peder Oxe is the place you need to go to.
If you want food for your Soul, you go to Noma.
Images Courtesy Pixabay
René Redzepi and his Noma concept has transcended food.
Transcended time and place.
Moving food from, a just stuffing your face action, to a place where it was part of your life energy, just like breathing.
But sometimes, as that Comic Freud, Groucho Marx often said, "A Cigar is just a Cigar. Or A Steak is just a Steak."
Which brings me nicely to the original article of Why the Golden Age of American Restaurants is coming to an End.
Images Courtesy Pixabay
Semmelhack is not the only restaurateur looking to duck and cover. The American restaurant business is a bubble, and that bubble is bursting. I've arrived at this conclusion after spending a year traveling around the country and talking to chefs, restaurant owners, and other industry folk for this series. In part one, I talked about how the Good Food Revival Movement™ created colonies of similar, hip restaurants in cities all over the country. In the series' second story, I discussed how a shortage of cooks -- driven by a combination of the restaurant bubble, shifts in immigration, and a surge of millennials -- is permanently altering the way a restaurant's back of the house has to operate in order to survive.
This, the final story, is simple: I want you to understand why America's Golden Age of Restaurants is coming to an end.
To do that I'm going to tell the story of the rise and fall of Matt Semmelhack and Mark Liberman's AQ restaurant in San Francisco. But this story isn't confined to SF. In Atlanta, D.B.A. Barbecue chef Matt Coggin told Thrillist about out-of-control personnel costs: "Too many restaurants have opened in the last two years," he said. "There are not enough skilled hospitality workers to fill all of these restaurants. This has increased the cost for quality labor." In New Orleans, I spoke with chef James Cullen (previously of Treo and Press Street Station) who talked at length about the glut of copycats: "If one guy opens a cool barbecue place and that's successful, the next year we see five or six new cool barbecue places... We see it all the time here."
Even Portland, the patient zero of the Good Food Revival Movement, isn't safe. This year, chef Johanna Ware shut down universally lauded Smallwares, saying, "the restaurant world is so saturated nowadays and it requires so much extra work to keep yourself relevant." And Pok Pok kingmaker Andy Ricker closed his noodle joint Sen Yai, citing "soaring rents, the rising minimum wage, and stereotypical ideas about 'ethnic food' as 'cheap food'" in an interview with Portland Monthly.
Rising labor costs, rent increases, a pandemic of similar restaurants, demanding customers unwilling to come to terms with higher prices -- it's the Perfect Restaurant Industry Storm. And even someone as optimistic as Ricker offers no comforting words about where we're headed.
"These are tough issues that many restaurateurs may face in the very near future," he says. "Closing now is preemptive."
Read the full Article Here:
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/american-restaurant-industry-bubble-burst
image courtsey of @reneenouveau
Badge Courtsey of @elyaque
