LAT Food is back, Postmates is bigger, Upperline is accused, and more...

Family Meal - Tuesday, January 15th, 2019

Hello Tuesday,

The winter weather has slowed everything down a bit, including the news, so this morning’s Family Meal may be a bit on the short and gossipy side. I know, I know, it’s like opening the door into a super fancy dining room and seeing a candle-lit table full of still-wrapped fast food.  Not what you expected. Not what you really wanted. But then again…

Let’s get to it.

The Medium – This year’s first entry in the “Turns Out the Restaurant Industry Is Tough” genre comes from San Francisco, where Tawla’s Azhar Hashem wrote “Why SF Restaurants are Suffocating” to discuss the thousand cuts slowly killing her Mission restaurant. It’s got a lot of the usual numbers (wages minus rent = -$), including some that will cross the eyes of servers in less expensive cities – “FOH staff now makes $42–48 per hour ($85,000–95,000)” – but also some tone deaf complaints (“We were astonished when employees asked if we could pay them a better wage if they went without health insurance… But we realized that when you’re struggling to live, you don’t even have higher order thinking that allows you to plan for the possibility of a health emergency”) which local shrinking violet Richie Nakano took apart on Twitter: “The culture you create, the way you train your employees, the way you deal with the changing face of operating in SF, that’s on you. An essay about closing a restaurant without saying ‘we got this wrong and we could’ve done so much better’ is some childish shit.”

Meh. My main gripe on these supposedly transparent pieces: Cool that you’re willing to publicly share staff wages, estimated rents, and (anonymized) personal struggles. What annual profit / owner’s take would you have considered successful? What’s the ballpark on rent / mortgage in your neighborhood?

And for more of the same sad numbers, on Friday, Carla Vianna published “Why It’s So Hard for NYC Restaurants to Calculate a Rent That Works” in Eater NY, with cameos from Yves Jadot (Petite Abeille), Julie Reiner (Flatiron Lounge), Erin Patinkin (Ovenly), Ravi DeRossi (all the bars), Einat Admony (Balaboosta, Taïm, Kish Kash), and Jason Wang (Xi’an Famous Foods).

The Accusations – Down in NOLA, “James Cullen lost his job as a chef of Upperline restaurant Sunday night, but after his last shift… he began a series of Twitter posts that grew through the wee hours into a tirade… By mid-morning Monday he had posted over 90 tweets calling Upperline ‘evil’ and ‘easily the most toxic place I’ve worked’ and variously disparaging his former boss [restaurateur JoAnn Clevenger] as ‘a psychopath,’ ‘a monster’ and ‘abusive.’” The Advocate’s Ian McNulty has the roundup, and you can scroll back to January 7 for the start of his tweets if you’re nosey (like me).

The Accusations Too – Up in New York, “Edward Song, one-time owner of a Korilla BBQ, which closed in 2016, charges he and his companion, Esther Choi, were assaulted on the morning of Jan. 1, 2018 in a ‘gang style melee’ by two of his former employees ‘and up to five others,’ according to court papers. Song and Choi claim Stephan Park, 34, and Paul Lee, 33, have been stalking them after a business dispute stemming from the failed restaurant.” Details in the NYPost from Kathianne Boniello and Dean Balsamini.

Those Delivery $$$ - “Food-delivery startup Postmates has raised a $100 million investment just before it plans to go public, perhaps reducing the amount of money it needs to raise when it eventually lists its stock. The new investment values Postmates at $1.85 billion, inclusive of the new cash, a person familiar with the matter told [Theodore Schleifer and Jason Del Rey at Recode], up from a valuation of around $1.2 billion that it secured in the second half of last year.”

The Media – “Some personal news!” from food editor, writer, and activist Kat Kinsman on Twitter: “Today I'm joining the Food & Wine team as senior editor for print and digital. I'll be working on features, with chefs, and on a brand new podcast and I'm completely gobsmacked.” Send your compliments before you send your pitches (and space the two out a bit if you can).

The Media Too – LA Times Food is back. The site itself still needs some work (I see you, repeat articles), but hot damn, there is content again! Even in the age of Mr. J. Gold himself, the section had become a little stale, with months-old articles presented as if new, and few if any deep dives or larger features. Now, just last week, Gustavo Arellano wrote a terrific obituary of a local legend (“In the competitive world of East Los Angeles tortillerias, where entrepreneurs fight for customers block by block, Francisco Ramírez and his La Princesita towered above them all.”), Patricia Escárcega and Bill Addison issued reviews on X’Tiosu Kitchen and Fiona respectively, there were introductory Q&A’s with both new critics (Addison here, Escárcega here), some local responses to the foie gras ban aggregated by Amy Scattergood, and a Hadley Tomicki shoutout to “Filipino rice bowls and Korean tacos at the new Ord & Broadway in Chinatown”.

Are they breaking crazy new ground? No. But with the new editors and reporters they’ve been collecting, we’re bound to see some new, new media soon. I got a drink with Eater LA’s Farley Elliott when he was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, and he said even they were excited about their rival’s revival. More competition and coverage should be good for restaurants and readers (and writers) alike. Watch that space.

And last and least – Today I learned that “numismatic” is “an adjective relating to or consisting of coins, paper currency, and medals,” as in: “The state mint in Berlin has issued a memorial coin celebrating 70 years of currywurst and it may just be the most horrible thing in the history of numismatics.” Tweet and accompanying photo here. Bitte schön.

Oh, also, the Google Doodle today honours Sake Dean Mahomed, who opened the first Indian restaurant in the UK. Neat.

And that’s it for today. I’m off to read up on how Indian cuisine has fared in the UK in the years since Mr. Mahomed’s first restaurant. Did it catch on? No spoilers, please!

I’ll see you here Friday for next Family Meal.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or the all your most numismatic physical property to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you like Family Meal and want to keep it going, please chip in here. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself! Most archives at thisfamilymeal.com for now.