My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?
“The work itself — cooking delicious, interesting food and cleaning up after cooking it — still feels as fresh and honest and immensely satisfying as ever. Our beloved regulars and the people who work so hard at Prune are all still my favorite people on earth. But maybe it’s the bloat, the fetishistic foodies, the new demographic of my city who have never been forced to work in retail or service sectors. Maybe it’s the auxiliary industries that feed off the restaurants themselves — the bloggers and agents and the “influencers,” the brand managers, the personal assistants hired just to keep you fresh on “Insta,” the Food & Wine festivals, the multitude of panels we chefs are now routinely invited to join, to offer our charming yet thoroughly unresearched opinions on.”
This is an amazing essay, about so much more than one restaurant, but about what our culture around restaurants has become, about how they can survive in this world. I've read it so many times, because it's beautifully written and so much of what's said needs to be said over and over again.