Gosh, now there’s a surprise.
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Do I detect a slight note of irony there?
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When the unpaid labor at Noma reached a noticeable fraction of Denmark’s GDP…
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I went to the Fat Duck, near London, for my 60th . It was then rated as the third best restaurant in the world. Had a wonderful evening at ludicrous prices (for then). Never felt the need to return.
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This is an outstanding article. Somewhat similar things are going on in the world of wine, where many (but not all) producers of the most sought-after wines are embarrassed by what people pay on the resale of their wines. In the words of one of them to me: “I want to make wine, not objets d’art.”
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It’s the normal pendulum swinging back and forth over time. High-end restaurant with tasting menus won’t disappear and the same critic will write in a few years about the importance of such restaurants as the expression of chefs. Every part of an economy is in constant flux/change and there are always adjustments and the same is happening constantly in the restaurant industry.
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For the uninitiated, the kind of theater provided at many of these restaurants may be worth the effort and money. But at a point, much becomes (from the linked aticle) “grim, preening, massively unenjoyable artifice.” Tediously long, unevenly delicious. The cost necessarily based on “the ludicrous amount of work that goes into preparing them”. Channeling Goldilocks, I have often felt like calling out, “Someone’s been playing with my food!” And occasionally seated where we could catch a glimpse into the kitchen, the embarrassing number of white clad young people tweezering and anointing my upcoming plate, looking more like brain surgeons than cooks.
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Last night I was watching an episode of “The Hairy Bikers Go Local”. The theme of this series is that, each episode, they try to help a restaurant find new very local suppliers. In this one, the featured restaurant is a pub. A pub serious about its food but a pub nevertheless. And, yep, there’s the chef carefully using his tweezers. On pub food, FFS! It just looked silly.
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