Opinion Archives | Page 21 of 22 | The Restaurant Manifesto

Trusting Your Inner Yelp

It isn’t easy to get people’s attention in restaurants these days. The waiter will approach the table to offer his expertise on the menu only to find everyone vacantly staring into the screens of their mobile phones. Are they texting someone? No. Are they “checking in” to make their friends jealous on social media? No. They are on restaurant review apps searching fan favorites and thumbing through pictures of menu items from the very restaurant in which they are currently seated.

The waiter asks if he can answer any questions. No, they say. They are ready to order. Like hordes who approach dining out the same these days, they have chosen to experience only the most popular dishes from the menu relying on groupthink rather than their own intuition. The modern diner considers preparation as integral to the act of dining out as eating. As menu prices rise, so does the price of bad choices. Restaurant guests now feel pressure to research in advance of their reservation, scouring the internet for Instagram pics and Yelp write-ups to avoid pitfalls and unearth signature dishes.

But is technology really helping us order more efficiently or is it reducing the act of personal choice to a Google-eyed algorithm? Mobile technology has disrupted the relationship that restaurant guests have with waitstaff. People trust their phones more than they do their waiters. How did we get here? The trend toward automation is not a new phenomenon. Technology has always invaded the way we consume things. The soda jerk was replaced by the vending machine. The bank teller became the ATM. It’s increasingly clear that the job of the waiter may go the way of the iPad. The less people value human service, the more hospitality jobs are in jeopardy.

At its core, dining out should be a spontaneous act. That’s what makes going out for dinner so unique from dining at home. At home, you control the elements—lighting, music, company. At a restaurant, the environment is unpredictable. No two dining experiences should ever be the same. Storyboarding your meals in advance limits the element of surprise. Ordering only popular dishes is like listening to only the greatest hits of your favorite rock band. It’s a safe choice. You know you love those old familiar songs. But, like audiophiles, diners must learn to appreciate the “deep cuts” if they want to really get into the music. Lucky for you, we provide the DJ.

Restaurants Have Become Too Important

The joy of dining out in a restaurant is based on a simple equation: You pay money to have a group of total strangers relieve you of your kitchen duties for the evening. When a restaurant lives up to its promise, its charms are irresistible. You finish your plate without having to clear it, have your food seasoned and cooked more precisely than you can achieve in your home kitchen, and—the icing on the cake—enjoy the privilege of excusing yourself from the table without having to worry about doing the dishes.

In the Age of Internet and Social Media, however, the exercise of dining out has become something greater than it was originally intended. With the proliferation of 24/7 Food TV and sudden-death kitchen reality shows, the dining public is no longer a humble audience. For most restaurant enthusiasts, sitting through a meal without passing judgment takes the fun out of it. Most people now visit restaurants with the purpose of evaluating them rather than for pure enjoyment. This new generation of foodies has a forum to broadcast its amateur opinions on personal blogs and in Yelp reviews. Restaurants—which once offered the community a gathering place to convene for the purposes of nourishing itself—are now arenas for sport. A reservation is your ticket to the rodeo. No jacket required.

The term restaurant is derived from a French word that refers to a type of restorative broth or bouillon that was traditionally served in France to weary travelers. The modern concept of the American restaurant, as we know it, is actually a somewhat recent phenomenon. The word restaurant did not become common parlance in America until the late 19th century. Historically, the growth of restaurants can be tied to the explosion of urban populations where tight living quarters forced people to seek comfort dining in larger public spaces. Political upheaval in France led to many private chefs being released from the confinements of their aristocratic households. What followed was an era of Nouvelle Cousine, a movement catering to an emerging bourgeoise class hungry for a more exciting and fresh approach to cooking. The modern restaurant experience and the elevated status of the Chef owes debt to this culinary French New Wave. Somewhere between Marie-Antoine Carême and now, we have lost our ability to enjoy the act of dining out.

foodiepicsofpics — “This smoked Uni dish is off the chain, brah!”

The modern restaurant has morphed into a perverted spectacle—where the audience delights in the sadistic pleasure of commoditizing food and kitchen professionals scramble in their quest for one-upmanship. In this new voyeuristic world, we like to watch. Social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram are saturated with food porn. Whereas in the past the restaurant would function as the pre-cursor to the evening’s entertainment, now going to a restaurant is like attending a live performance. As the price of admission rises, the consumer feels more entitled to experiencing something that transcends the plate. Your choice of restaurant is not something to be taken lightly; it’s a status symbol (“Guess who’s going to Per Se tomorrow night?”), a political statement (“Oh my god, Marea is totally overrated!”), or even an extension of yourself (“I can’t live without the pork buns from Momofuku.”) But lost in our obsession, we have forgotten how to enjoy dining out.

Any time you set foot in a restaurant, you hope for profundity and you risk catastrophe. But our experiences only stand to be successful if we approach it with the right mindset. As diners, we need to accept how our energy affects the atmosphere around us. If you make a conscious decision to observe the dining experience rather than engaging with it, you disregard your role in giving it life. Don’t just sit there as the parade marches by, grab a baton and start twirling! You won’t have nearly as much fun watching from the sidelines.