Restaurants
Restaurants will never be the same after
coronavirus – but that may be a good thing
Jonathan
Nunn
Only a fundamental rethink will ensure their survival in
the post-outbreak world
Tue 14 Apr
2020 08.00 BSTLast modified on Wed 15 Apr 2020 12.55 BST
I’ve spent
the best part of two years now writing obsessively about restaurants. I don’t
just love them, I depend on them: they are where my social life takes place,
where landmark events are celebrated, where I learn about the different
cultures that make up my community. But the industry is on the precipice of
oblivion: most restaurants in the UK are closed, and those that have switched
to takeaway and delivery know it’s merely a sticking plaster. In London, the
country’s food metropolis, the shutters are down from Soho to the Old Kent
Road.
As this
became clear, my first reaction was to go into cheerleader mode: pick up
pom-poms and shout that this great industry needs to be bailed out at any cost.
To go into reveries about my favourite meals: the moo krob at Singburi, the pig
fat cannoli at Quality Wines, the breathtaking platter of blood sausage and
fermented shrimp paste at Phở Thúy Tây. But something about this makes me
uneasy, as if I’m nursing myself with nostalgia for a world that never quite
existed.
The restaurants that are the most adaptable
will find their own solutions that focus on community and simplicity
The
pandemic offers us an opportunity to shine a light on the less visible reaches
of the restaurant ecosystem. There are the landlords, whose rents are so
extortionate that many restaurants in city centres struggle to break even. The
developers who use restaurants like magnets to attract the “right sort” of
people in gentrifying areas, transforming swathes of our cities into
pseudo-public spaces of boutique restaurants, pushing working-class Londoners
further away from their homes. PR companies who ensure that only those
establishments that can afford their services get media coverage. Private
equity funds that turn restaurants into short-term investments, relentlessly
cut costs (and ultimately quality), and fuel the notion that the only way to
turn a profit is to rapidly expand. It’s no coincidence that those who are
clamouring for bailouts the loudest are those who have reaped the most rewards
from this multi-billion dollar industry that makes money for a relatively small
number of people.
Covid-19
has also shown us that the industry is on even shakier ground than we
suspected: the tight cashflow, high overheads, and a reliance on tourism were
all pointing in a bleak direction before the lockdown. The number of
restaurants going bust was on the up, and the high number of places opening was
disguising the fact that most restaurateurs couldn’t see their business model
as sustainable. It’s no secret that the industry turns a profit only because it
is built on cheap labour, particularly migrants and people of colour, and,
according to chef Thom Eagle, “an ethos that work ranks above personal and
social needs”.
We, as
greedy consumers, have to accept some responsibility. In the same way clapping
for nurses illuminates uncomfortable questions about their perceived value
before this crisis, uncritically fuelling the demand for more and more
restaurants at cheaper prices has masked the value of this labour to our daily
lives. Not every fish needs to be ike jime and couriered from Cornwall, or
every chicken corn-fed from Fosse Meadows, but we should accept that fish and
meat need to be priced higher across the board if those behind the scenes stand
a chance of being paid a decent wage.
As for
restaurants themselves, chef Asma Khan tells me the biggest issue is
unionisation. “After this,” she says, “our priority should be to create a
powerful union that is the voice of the workers, not the owners and investors.”
Pressure groups such as Jonathan Downey’s Hospitality Union, made up of
restaurant owners and industry figureheads, are doing vital work in pushing for
rent holidays and debt moratoriums while trying not to scare nervous landlords
by saying “rent strike”. But this is fighting a problem caused by rampant
capitalism on its own terms. Now is the time to start having honest
conversations about food prices and supply chains, high rents and civic space,
about who restaurants – or at least the ones that get coverage – really
benefit.
Our modern
era has been partly defined by the rise and democratisation of the restaurant.
Seventy years ago almost half of UK households never ate out and restaurants
were the preserve of the rich. Today, if you live in London it’s possible to
eat out or order in a taste from almost the entire world. A side effect of this
is that we have become alienated from where food comes from and the work that
goes into making it. But restaurants can now play a new role in redressing the
balance.
Vaughn Tan,
a professor at UCL whose upcoming book looks at how successful restaurants
adapt, believes that this crisis will force the industry to “fundamentally
rethink what it even means to be a restaurant”. Some have now pivoted to
selling produce from their suppliers directly to consumers, a positive
development that will put great produce in the hands of more people, and will
help educate customers, and maybe some critics, about exactly why their turbot
costs that much. Many will now have to work out new business models that
complement eating at home, such as selling expertly made raw pastry, filled
pasta, or deli-like items that would normally be components of meals. It’s a
model that immigrant-run restaurants, from kosher delis in Golders Green to
Cypriot takeaways in north London, are already familiar with. Over the next few
months, the restaurants which are the most adaptable will find their own
solutions to the crisis that focus on community and simplicity. The
possibilities are both terrifying and exhilarating.
We are in
uncharted waters: the industry has never seen this before, and all signs point
to the likelihood that restaurants as we know them aren’t coming back for a
while. To move forward, we must start by examining what we would like to save
about the industry, giving space to the things that nourish us and our
communities, and discarding what we believe doesn’t deserve to survive. After
all, the real danger the restaurant industry faces isn’t annihilation – the
danger is that it comes back the same as it was before.
Jonathan
Nunn is a food writer based in London. He edits the food newsletter Vittles
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