F&W Best New, Staff infections, Kalanick thick, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, June 19th, 2020
Hello Friday,
First, many, many apologies for the lack of Family Meal on Tuesday. I keep attempting to write about racism, and turns out I’m not great at it. Even today’s has a lot of holes in it, which especially sucks, because… Happy(?) Juneteenth!
Work in progress.
Let’s get to it…
The Lists – Food & Wine published its big Best New Restaurants 2020 list, with editor Khushbu Shah including the now common caveat-heavy intro (“A pandemic doesn’t cancel the work that these remarkable chefs and restaurant owners have done over the past year”), and an additional section for each entry on how they’ve pivoted to meet this moment. (In a bit of a miss in this moment, I don’t see any Black people on the list?) Congrats to: Automatic Seafood and Oysters (Birmingham), Bon Temps (LA), El Ruso (LA), Gado Gado (Portland, OR), Golden Diner (NYC), Molly’s Rise and Shine (New Orleans), Kalaya (Philadelphia), Nixta Taqueria (Austin), Thattu (Chicago), and Thamee (DC).
The Lists Too – We have come to that part of the (American) pandemic wherein Eater’s two biggest Texas cities are running lists like this: “These [Dallas and Houston] Restaurants Have Temporarily Closed After Employees Tested Positive for COVID-19.” Orange County got a similar treatment yesterday. NB: Nick Kokonas has a good thread here about what The Alinea Group has been doing in the face of at least two infected employees at different times in its restaurants. It’s… prohibitively expensive: The first time, they tested 30 employees at a cost of $3k (all results negative). Second time, more employees, $5k (“another set of negative results, good news”). Plus closing, sanitizing, contact tracing guests, publicly announcing the infection if necessary…
What Guests Are Reading – Headline in the LA Times Monday: “At least 1,000 L.A. County restaurants not following coronavirus safety rules, inspections show.” Story from Colleen Shalby and Alex Wigglesworth: “Officials visited roughly 2,000 restaurants over the weekend and found that half of them were not in compliance with the county’s guidelines. The findings come amid a continued rise in coronavirus cases in California, which reported record tallies on consecutive days last week.”
The Delivery Wars – Hard to keep track of the trials and tribulations of delivery companies in their boom times, but a quick look at the headlines says they still aren’t winning many local government friends. Here’s Gabe Guarente for Eater Seattle: “Seattle City Council Passes Bill That Secures Hazard Pay for Food Delivery App Drivers. Gig workers in Seattle delivering for apps like Grubhub and Doordash will get an extra $2.50 per order during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Eve Batey for Eater SF: “San Francisco’s District Attorney Is Suing DoorDash for Alleged Unfair Business Practices.” Madeline Wells in SF Gate: “Grubhub defies SF's commission cap, hikes restaurant fees again.” Laura Hayes in Washington City Paper: “Postmates Still Hasn't Complied With D.C.'s 15 Percent Commission Fee Cap.” Cool cool cool.It’s the Uber “we make the rules” strategy all over again.
The Ghost Front – And speaking of the Uber strategy... For HNGRY, Matt Newberg looked at Travis Kalanick’s latest delivery-only gambits this week. Worth a read if you want the bigger picture:“CloudKitchens’ sales team has been aggressively approaching restaurants in cities like LA, Austin, Chicago, New York, and Houston under the guise of delivery consultants using the ‘FutureFoods’ moniker. The service… sends free tablets containing its proprietary Otter software and a handful of brands. The company claims it can generate $1,500-$3,000 a week in incremental top line sales for restaurants at a $28 average order value. Depending on the establishment’s cuisine, ‘FutureFoods’ can license any one of its 28+ in-house concepts without lifting a finger in exchange for a 10% commission on top of the traditional 30% delivery fee. These concepts include ‘Thick Chick’ fried chicken sandwiches, ‘Dolce & GaPasta’ pasta dishes, and ‘Grannies Pannies’ pancakes.” It’s as if they found a crumpled up branding brainstorm list with ‘TOO CHEESY / BORDERLINE OFFENSIVE / POSSIBLE IP ISSUES’ written in across it in red ink and thought, “Jackpot!”
The Media Conversation – The James Beard Foundation hosted a conversation between Tunde Wey, John T. Edge, and Jamila Robinson that’s worth watching for the sharpness of Wey’s argument that white food media leadership doesn’t need to just make room, but to get out of the house and hand over the keys. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I read Amanda Kludt’s recent piece on what Eater is planning (“finding ways to hold the gatekeepers accountable, not with new quotas but new mindsets”), the JBF’s own anti-racism plans (better pay at the Beard House, less charging for awards, equitable funds distribution) and this from LAT critic Bill Addison last weekend: “We need Black critics. Even in this moment, it remains my job to report on the pluralism of Los Angeles.” Wey spent a good deal of the JBF webinar asking Edge to quit his job, so not hard to imagine what his response to that set of sentences from Addison would be... Login to watch here. I am still trying to get my thoughts together on this (leaning heavily on threads like this from Whetstone’s Stephen Satterfield). Penny for yours.
The Media Opportunities – FYI: Adam Rapoport and Matt Duckor’s old jobs are now up on the Conde Nast career sites and ready for your applications. Director, Video Marketing, Conde Nast Entertainment here; and Editor-in-Chief, Bon Appétit and Epicurious here. But I must warn you, I plan on applying for the latter, so…. Good luck!
P.S. - Rachel Premack (Business Insider reporter covering the Bon Appetit implosion) and Solah El-Waylly (underpaid Test Kitchen team member who was instrumental in the demolition) were on the Sporkful this week if you want to hear more on that from the inside. (NB: If you’re still trying to get your head around what happened, the episode’s liner notes are basically a list of almost every link you’d ever need on that story so far.)
Meanwhile, the Houston Press is hiring a full time food editor if you prefer Texas to the Test Kitchen.
Michelin Season(?!) – Per Marja Novak at Reuters: “Slovenian restaurants received the country’s first ever Michelin stars on Tuesday with Hisa Franko getting two out of the maximum possible three stars and five other restaurants one each.” There were also 9 Bibs and 37 unrated entries.
And last and least: For Design Fans – In Paris, “Alain Ducasse… unveiled a novel air ventilation system in one of his smallest Parisian restaurants [Allard] to try to overcome the distancing restrictions related to the coronavirus… The system, which has cost 50,000 euros to install at the Allard, on Paris' chic left bank, aims to dramatically reduce the risk of airborne virus transmission using technology from hospitals — with a touch of Parisian style.” Re that “style,” the AP’s Thomas Adamson, reports: “Images of air divinities, as well as pigeons and clouds — emblematic of Paris — decorate the filters to prevent a sanitized feel.” Hm. I’m not so sure these cute little sketches printed on the long white vacuum bags dangling from Allard’s shiny metal ductwork are going to do the trick, but… it’s a start?
And that’s it for today. So much more to say, but I’m late for a pre-Father’s Day tomato martini at LPM with my stepfather-in-law. Never had one, but he assures me it is both delicious and not a Bloody Mary. We shall see.
I’ll see you here Tuesday for next Family Meal.
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