057: RECESS, PLEASE

Life beyond the churn

I think we’re trapped.

Okay. Maybe I’M trapped. Ugh. Have I trapped myself?

Where?!

In the churn of never ending newness. This cycle that pushes us to keep! up! with! every! new! place! that! opens!

Even if we don’t really care. Endless like the ouroboros, unstoppable like the cyclone.

And where does being trapped (tapped in) get you? For me – at worst – leisure is work, pleasure is performance. At best, flexing knowledge is cultural capital.

I’m being dramatic, but I can’t be the only one with the same question stuck on a loop. One I can’t officially answer but continue to ask anyway:

How many new openings is too many new openings? When does the newness stop serving us?

I didn’t think there could be a straightforward quantifiable response, but I believe the answer lies amongst the 20-odd places opening in London’s Zone 1 and 2 this autumn. That’s at least 10 openings too many.

The majority are newish concepts, mostly from seasoned operators, and for the most part, they’re places you’d find out about in a Broadsheet listicle.

How is anyone meant to keep up? In fact, is keeping up even desirable anymore?

It’s unrealistic and unrelenting, especially when trying to balance our minimal attention spans (and budgets) with our maximal appetites.

Perhaps then, the more relevant question is would we be better off knowing less?

When’s the last time you passed a place you’d never heard of before, or decided to dine in somewhere without any prior knowledge. Not even from a Google review.

The media builds the momentum, and the churner keeps on churning faster.

A place opens, we visit for the must-have photo (and opinion) and never return. The place closes, and something else opens in its place. And, we go again.

When I say the media, I see Broadsheet as a key player in feeding this cycle. Since last autumn, when the Australian publication arrived in London, their trademark press release-driven pieces of non-stop newness have only added fuel to the fire.

Add to that the urgency of an industry under pressure, and the desirable social currency of being in-the-know on what to eat, and consumer awareness becomes increasingly curated yet decreasingly opinionated, as we slowly lose faith in our own tastes.

Two things might help.

The first: we don’t need to know everything in advance. In fact, we should know much less about places in general, especially those we’ve never visited. We also don’t need to know who’s behind each opening, as we’re rarely told the full story anyway. Save this info gathering for real life. The romance of dining lies in human interaction, and learning something new while you’re out and about. Speak to the team that looks after you, and pass those facts onto all your friends.

The second: we need to stop celebrating mediocrity. Or at least, start critiquing those who don’t care to do anything different. What we should be celebrating is soul. Operating a hospitality business is more challenging than ever, and the system is stacked against creative thinkers. Guests have ever higher standards and copy-paste culture becomes the default in countering ever harder targets. It’s a thrill to witness originality thrive, when it does, but we’ve got to embrace and expect more scrappiness and experimentation along the way.

I’m calling recess. Step away from the churn.

And some antidotes:

Cloud Street by chef couple Georgia Lathiff and Frank Guest is now open in the picturesque courtyard on Bouverie Road. Next door to Macintosh Ales in N16, it’s a living room-dining room, with tables pouring out onto the cobbles. A place with serious soul. When we passed by on Friday, it was full, so I can’t report back on the cooking but it already feels like the neighbourhood’s canteen.

Somewhere original opens, exceeds expectations, and has everyone writing about it. Of course I’m talking about Kismet. From this past week: Jago Rackham in World of Interiors, Heather Steele in The Standard and Rebecca Nicholson in The Observer.

In relevant reading: James Ramsden in The Fence on his decade of operating restaurants in London. “I remember the bittersweet relief we felt when we did, finally, knock our decade of running London restaurants on the head – the dissipation of anxiety, and the deep feelings of regret and loss being far surpassed by the catharsis of letting all that go.”

Even if you close your restaurant, there are ways for its essence to live on. As proven by Gaia Enria who shared how her signature Burro e Salvia pasta dish made it onto Osteria Vibrato’s menu.

Noma reopens. Few care.

Stocktake is in a different style today because I wanted to see how I’d feel riffing on my self-imposed formula. It’s also important to me that I add value, and I want my work to be enlightening, entertaining, and not overwhelming.

We exist under a daily blanketing of content with endless hot takes and myriad opinions, and every week, I share the things I deem worthy of your consideration, while connecting the dots between them.

However, I’m realising I don’t always leave enough space for why they’re worth considering. I get caught up in the range but sometimes we need focus, to encourage more thinking-after-reading, and initiate better discourse.

So, tell me what you like about Stocktake. What keeps you reading? What turns you off? Reply to this email, or reach me elsewhere.

The second half of August offers up the last delicious dregs of summer, and I see it as a time for pressing pause.

A moment to rethink and reset, refreshing ourselves ahead of the onslaught of autumn. I hope you find refreshment your own way.

And, thank you for reading The Goal is to Eat.