NYC 10%, Bars indefinite, Conran gone, what Lang knew, and more...

Family Meal - Friday, September 18th, 2020

Hello Friday,

Per the new normal, at bottom is a copy/paste of last Tuesday’s Family Meal for paying subscribers. If you too want to get Tuesday’s on Tuesdays…

This one was a mini-rant, and I wanted to edit it after the subscriber feedback (one person told me the writing was not up to my usual standard – fair!), but did not have time. So… It’s still rough, and you can still give feedback.

To be honest, I’m just getting frustrated with all the burn-it-down stuff I’ve been reading lately, which comes in many “The System Is Broken” guises. Some of it makes sense, but it often feels like goals are getting confused for (or heavily favored over) plans, consequences are not always fully considered, and babies are getting thrown out with bathwater. Capitalism, amirite?

Let’s get to it…

What Guests Are Watching – On MSNBC last night with Chris Hayes, a Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked whether he agreed with the scientists who say we should keep restaurants and bars shut down. Fauci’s response: “I totally agree… When you have restaurants, indoors, in a situation where you have a high degree of infection in the community, [and] you’re not wearing masks, that’s a problem.” He goes on to re-emphasize that the risk is based on how much virus is in the community, but also singles out bars again, and it doesn’t sound good for them anytime soon.

Case in point: Texas announced yesterday that restaurants could go up to 75% capacity indoors on Monday. Bars? Still closed. Details on that from Amy McCarthy in Eater Dallas. Quote from Governor Greg Abbott: “Because bars are nationally recognized as COVID spreading locations, they are still not able to open at this time. However, it is important for them to know that we are focused on ways to get them open.”

The Coping Mechanism – “On Wednesday, the [New York] City Council voted, 46 to 2, to let restaurants impose a temporary ‘Covid-19 recovery charge’ to help them through their fiscal straits. The bill… will allow restaurants the option of adding a surcharge of 10 percent or less to each bill (though not for takeout or delivery), as long as it is clearly noted on menus.” Rachel Wharton has the mixed reaction in the NYT. Some worry more fees will scare off customers. Saru Jayaraman and One Fair Wage are against it because they think customers will misinterpret it as gratuity and tip less. And “Kalergis Dellaportas, the general manager of his family’s Bel Aire Diner, in Astoria, Queens… has already planned for the extra costs of running a restaurant, including restarting indoor service at the end of the month… Unless new, unforeseen costs arise, he said, ‘[the surcharge] kind of feels like price gouging.’” (Congrats to Kalergis on getting his numbers right, but I’d shy away from public use of ricep-ay ougingg-ay phrasing at a time like this…)

Meanwhile, a quick trip into the comments section shows several people think this is just an indirect cash transfer to landlords under the guise of helping restaurants. Whether that’s a part of the city’s calculation or not, a restaurateur in Hong Kong did tell me last week that any change in government rules even hinting at increased revenue meant a call from the landlord. “Newspaper says you have cash?”

The Anticipation – Did not expect to see this anytime soon, but Eater started trickling out some “Most Anticipated Restaurants – Fall 2020” lists this week… Normalcy ho?! No. But hopeful lists are live in New York, Seattle, and Las Vegas.

The Suits – In SF, Hanson Li, founder of the investment group behind Dominique Crenn’s restaurants and others, is trying to rally support for a lawsuit to force the city to allow indoor dining (or at least provide a concrete plan for it). Eater SF’s Eve Batey says that’s similar to the $2B class action filed by restaurants against NYC earlier this month. It looks like Li is trying to raise at least $200k through sliding scale contributions from fellow restaurateurs in the Bay Area. “It will cost the plaintiffs in the mid six-figures just to seek ‘a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction,’ Li says.” OK, cool, but I’m happy to write a very strongly worded letter-to-the-editor for low five-figures if you guys want to save some $$$…

The Funds – “Announcing the James Beard Foundation Food and Beverage Investment Fund for Black and Indigenous Americans, a new grant initiative to provide financial resources for food or beverage businesses that are majority-owned by Black or Indigenous individuals.” According to an official release, “The Fund aims to disburse grants of $15,000 each equally across Black and Indigenous populations throughout the United States. Using the most recent census data, six regions of the country have been delineated, each containing 16 to 17 percent of the total Black and Indigenous population in the U.S.”

The Ends of Eras – Carolinas classics edition: In Charleston, “After nearly four decades, the doors of Martha Lou’s Kitchen have closed for good. Although she served out of a humble pink building, her Lowcountry cooking was known around the country… At 90 years old, Martha Gadsden said she had to close over the weekend after the land she rented was sold to a developer.” Details via Lillian Donahue on Live5News. And up north in Charlotte, Kathleen Purvis has a farewell for Bill Spoon’s Barbecue, closed for good this past Wednesday after 57 years, in the Agenda.

Some Sad News – In the UK, “Sir Terence Conran, whose London restaurant legacy includes Bibendum, Quaglinos, and the now-closed original Blueprint Cafe at the Design Museum, has died at 88. Marked by a deep, earnest sincerity about the values of — Anglo European — simplicity, quality, and taste, his overarching restaurant legacy now reverberates louder in the kitchens of his alumni than those that bore his direct name.” James Hansen has that obituary here, and his embedded link above goes to Stephen Bayley’s version in The Guardian.

And last but not least: The Tea –  A new podcast has one of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, tracking down the dead billionaire’s former staff, including Adam Perry Lang of APL in LA. Per the Daily Beast’s Kate Briquelet, Giuffre thought of the chef as a friend, and “Lang was someone Giuffre wouldn’t forget. ‘He used to talk to me like I was a person,’ Giuffre told [host TaraPalmeri]. ‘Even if I was standing naked in front of him, he wouldn’t be there ogling me… he would be looking directly at my face. And we had wonderful moments together.’” Lang and his lawyers insist they’re cooperating fully with all investigations, but Giuffre is still hoping he’ll help her corroborate specific facts for her suit against Alan Dershowitz. “Giuffre hoped that with Epstein dead and gone, Lang might finally share with the world—or at least her lawyers—what he knew. She said that when girls in Epstein’s orbit lounged nude indoors or by the pool, Lang served them iced tea and jugs of water or fruit. ‘He saw us all naked, all the time,’ Giuffre told Palmeri.” Haven’t listened yet, but the audio you’re looking for is in Season Two of Broken: Seeking Justice…

And that’s it for today!

I’ll see paying subscribers here Tuesday, and everyone else on Friday for next Family Meal. Promise I won’t make a habit of slipshod rants like the one below. Well, mostly promise.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or a temporary COVID-19 recovery charge 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!

Tuesday’s Family Meal starts here. If you want to receive Tuesday’s on Tuesdays from now on…

Long Live the Celebrity Chef

Hello Tuesday,

And hello to paying subscribers only!

Not a traditional Family Meal this morning, I apologize. What follows was supposed to be my usual pithy opener, but I’m getting more and more frustrated by the discourse around restaurants lately and couldn’t stop myself on this one point. There’s a lot more to say – feels like I have contrarian takes on almost every think piece lately – but bear with me while I use the newsletter format to put out a brief rough draft and solicit feedback from… you, my new editors.

Might polish this up for the Friday crowd once I’ve heard back, so please do let me know what you think. If it’s, “You read too much food media,” you’re right.

Here goes…

I was searching around for reviews of Dave Chang’s new memoir, when I found this opening line in Rien Fertel’s WSJ take: “The celebrity chef is dead.”

You guys. First, the celebrity chef is not dead. The celebrity chef is not dying. “The chef” as a creative / leadership concept is not going away anytime soon.

And second, I think that’s a good thing!

Re that first point, the celebrity chef is obviously not dead because the obituary of the celebrity chef is being written in a review of a memoir of a still very much active and alive celebrity chef who just started a media company and has a podcast literally called The Dave Chang Show. The chef as a creative leader or “auteur” or whatever is obviously not going away because the two most cited articles written along those lines recently (“The Death of the Chef” from Alicia Kennedy and “The End of Chefs” from Tejal Rao) end by…. asking the chef for their opinion on all this. Kennedy’s piece goes full-swing from suggesting restaurants be treated as prosaically as hardware stores and criticizing the idea that chefs have “all responsibility as the representatives of their restaurants” to (some poetic license here), “And now, let’s ask some chefs what’s going on with their restaurants.” Rao’s essay makes the case for spreading the credit for a restaurant’s success around to the rest of the team, but when it comes time to cite an example of doing it right (a staff list on the menu at Somni), her kicker goes to – where else? – the chef for comment.

If you need more evidence, look no further than David Kinch closing out his congrats-and-disdain Beard Awards rollercoaster by welcoming the debut of a feature-length documentary of (checks notes) a team trip to France — announced in the NYT, of course. In fact, a quick scan of the NYT Food home page right now shows seven write-ups on male chefs / somms / writers before the digital jump, with a picture of Clare Reichenbach for balance and nary a dishwasher’s name in site. (Someone please tell Daniel Boulud he’s dead and should stop posing for pictures for an article about the naming of his next restaurant.)

And on the second point, that all this is just fine and we don’t need the chef to die, I obviously don’t mean there’s no problem there, I just mean: The problem isn’t the spotlight. The spotlight is a fantastic tool! The problem is both where it’s shining and the results-may-vary nature of what happens once you’ve been shined on. And while discussions of the former are everywhere, not least around the James Beard Awards and their lack of black winners this year (hence the inclusion of at least one woman’s photo on the NYT Food home page today), the latter — what different people get out of their fifteen minutes — deserves some focus too. This thread from Dr. Cynthia Greenlee explains how she was both barely buoyed by a James Beard Award, and at the same time seriously undermined by some people thinking “they affirmative actioned” the awards. (Side note: Would love to read a piece on applying lessons from affirmative action fights / results to what is going on in some corners of food media and awards if you’ve seen one.)

But even with those problems in mind, let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good just yet. Yes to all the talk about new gatekeepers. But I also want those new gatekeepers in part to make some new people famous! Put new people on TV and call them the chef if that’s what they are! Give them an award and put a “winner” sticker on their books! Throw them softball interviews about frivolous non-events! I want to hear what these new celebs have to say about the choices they made in making their restaurants. If I like their taste, I’ll follow it from restaurant to restaurant, article to article! And if the dishwasher or captain or whoever chose a design element or has an interesting story to tell, I’ll read that too!

And then let’s definitely keep up the reporting on disparities on who gets investment and opportunities, famous or not. (And possible solutions to that mess.)

Long live the celebrity chef, different though some may look (and, yes, operate) from celebrity chefs past! Rock stars! Magazine covers! They’ve waited for it and fought for it and I hope they get a chance to enjoy it!

Babies, bathwater, etc. etc. Let me know how far off I am. All caps replies welcome. Use of vulgarities directed at me fine, though I’m partial to a simple, “moron.”

And P.S. – A note on a fellow newsletterer: I disagree with Kennedy’s takes on some things, including (maybe obviously) her latest on awards, but if you’re not already reading it, her newsletter usually hits on restaurant / food media themes and is definitely worth getting.

And that’s it for today. Apologies again if you were hoping for something different this morning!

I’ll see you here Friday for a more traditional Family Meal.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or “moron” 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!