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I was talking to five top Twin Cities chefs for a feature coming out in print, (Subscribe!) and in the course of conversation, I asked everyone where they’d been lately, and to a one they replied: Martina.
Martina is the new restaurant by Daniel Del Prado, who was Isaac Becker’s right-hand man for eons, and so knows everyone. Plus they’ve got Marco Zappia at the bar, which is a sure way in the Twin Cities to draw a crowd. There’s a good reason for everyone in town to be at Martina (I liked it quite a bit from my one visit—don’t miss the carrots with farro.)
However, I was slightly dismayed with how this confirmed a trend I’ve been seeing more and more lately: We eaters stampede, and I do mean stampede, in a herd, to every new restaurant, until the herd moves on, and we move on too. People constantly ask me one thing: Where have you been that’s new? What’s new? WHAT’S NEW?!? I’ve now taken to pushing back: What have you gone this year?
Because I’ve now realized that another horrible thing also happens, which is when the eaters miss the first window of a restaurant opening, we often think it’s old news and never go at all. I am tired of writing obituaries for terrific restaurants and then hearing from people, Too bad, I never made it in. I’ve heard that about restaurants open five years! Talking casually to a chef recently, he told me the warning he gave to his opening staff, We’re going to be flat-slammed for the first six weeks, and we’ll never be that busy again.
Is this any way to run a restaurant scene?
Let me tell you who I’m jealous of. Artists and art critics, and playwrights and theater critics. Yes, I do mean the classic paint-and-canvas, sculpture-in-a-gallery kind of artists, and then also the people with the curtains and spotlights. As near as I can tell, those artists get to pursue a set of concerns. Learn. Grow. Invite the public. Rest. Pursue a new set of concerns. And then the critics in those forms get to identify the artists’ concerns. Watch and admire an artist over a lifetime as they pursue those concerns. When I became a restaurant critic, I modeled myself on the legendary art critic Clem Greenberg: pay attention to artists, follow their work, articulate their ambitions, question and make the artistic community more vivid and truly itself. This isn’t possible if we’re all stampeding around like drunken club-goers looking for the next hot dance floor.
Meanwhile, we’ve boxed chefs into amassing a great quantity of debt (or a great number of investors) to pay for plumbing, HVAC, stoves, chairs, and so on, and then trying to make it back plus profit in tacos or pasta or whatever while also pursuing their artistic concerns. If the restaurant is a hit, then they are stuck/blessed with making the tacos they fell in love with 10 years ago, forever. If it’s not a hit, there’s a good chance they’ll be saddled with so much debt that they won’t get a second bite at the apple. Now obviously, the restaurant industry has a great number of advantages over the fine arts, because we have all the chocolate, most of the gin, and throw the best parties. But what if we stole some of those other artists traditions?
Imagine this: You’re a chef. You open a new restaurant, let’s call it Blithe Spirit (because I always liked that name, and it’s a Noel Coward play opening at the Guthrie next fall, and he’s a genius). You announce to all the world: I am opening Blithe Spirit, and it serves pancakes, and will run for only 700 days. Or maybe two calendar years. Whatever. When it’s done, Blithe Spirit will close for 100 days, and reopen—same HVAC! Same chef!—as the next thing the chef is interested in.
Why do this? I maintain this could do a few useful things for both restaurant staff, customers, and the state of the industry generally. Firstly, it would organize customers—if we’re going to have the stampede, why not guarantee everyone gets it a few times? Customers who aren’t early-stampeders can have their time organized for them. Go now, or don’t. You’d get an organized and methodical bump before closing, too—only 100 days left! You’d capitalize on the ‘what’s new’ cycle, the ‘best new restaurants of the year’ cycle, the media attention that necessarily follows 'news.' For chef owners, you’d get to amortize all the HVAC you paid for the first time over a number of different restaurants. You’d get the chance to make bolder experimental choices without feeling like you have to be tied to it for a thousand years. You’d get to experiment with price points, you’d get to correct mistakes or tweak using the information you got in the space and the neighborhood the first time. You’d get to rest. You could plan your 100 days to travel, to stage with a chef you’ve admired, to recharge and refresh. As a critic, I feel like I’d be reviewing artists working from a more creative, more risk-friendly, more financially secure place. As a city, I feel like it would give our chefs a chance to grow and develop, to be more themselves and more unique.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t this like great Chicago chef Grant Achatz’s Next, where they change the menu entirely every four months? Yes and no. First, though, I’ll ask you to direct your eyes to Next’s website, where they tout: “an unprecedented fifteen 4-star reviews from the Chicago Tribune.” How do you think that happened? Achatz made “news” and “new” work for him, not against. I think Achatz is on to something big, the way Picasso was on to something big, and the rest of us should think deeply about how it might energize all our work, our lives, and of course, our restaurants. He was absolutely right about ticketing for restaurants.
From a Minneapolis perspective, it seems like Travail customers went from finding tickets strange to finding them wonderful in about three months. It evened out Travail’s customer flow, and made life better for guests and owners.
Is it possible that restaurants have been more like repertory theater, or more like gallery exhibits, this whole time, and we’re just now getting around to seeing it?
Discuss among yourselves. For me, I can promise if you do decide to try this out, I’ll be rooting for you.
