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In these uncertain times, everyone is pondering the future of the restaurant. Will restaurants reopen and if they do, when, and what will they look like?
These are questions posed by Esquire’s Jeff Gordinier to his panel of chefs – Amanda Cohen, Massimo Bottura and Kwame Onwuachi in a talk on the 92Y platform.
With millions of hospitality workers laid off and restaurateurs waiting for news of what government programmes will be rolled out to help them reopen, it’s a very uncertain time. This talk doesn’t paint the brightest of pictures.
Onwachi talks about the heartbreak of closing his restaurant and laying off staff, who they will now struggle to feed their families until this crisis is over.
Bottura, ever the optimists, sees the restaurant play an important ambassadorial role in terms of culture and locality, integral to local tourism. His Kitchen Quarantine series is allowing him to concentrate on home cooking and familial connections at the moment, but even he, is gloomier when it comes to the future of the mid-market restaurant that operates on thin margins. He also reminds us that he is paying 103 staff at the moment with no restaurants open.
Cohen, tells it like it is, which a very bleak outlook for many, many restaurants, who are currently feeling the squeeze without any rent relief, and with the costs and rerates accumulating in a time when there is no income, the check will have to picked up at some point.
From Italy to New York and Washington DC - different cities, but all united by one crisis that the restaurant industry is facing right now.
It’s not all grim watching though, these three chefs have some tips for people cooking on lockdown at the moment. Some unexpected ones at that and Massimo can’t help sharing his anchovies with the rest of them.
