Are Restaurants Doomed?
on the end of transactional eating and how to host your own supper club
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First, the story: Are restaurants doomed?
Space-time is doomed. Or so we’re told by contemporary physicists who believe that space and time are not fundamental - aka, space-time is a product of other things happening at a level deeper than we know anything about.
When age-old assumptions like space-time are called into question, it makes me wonder what other everyday assumptions have we simply accepted as “this is how it should be”?
The first that always comes to mind is the idea of restaurants, built on the assumption that food cooked by professionals should be sold as a function of how much you eat. Don’t get me wrong. I love restaurants. I love sitting down, wrestling over the menu, looking up Yelp photos to see if the soup du jour looks appetizing, asking the waiter to bring more bread every 10 minutes, and of course, not having to worry about cleaning up anything besides the food on my plate. What I love most about going to restaurants is that getting dinner is the easiest vehicle for socializing with people you (hopefully) care about. It’s the simplest, most universally understood excuse to meet with someone at the same time, in the same place to do something everyone needs to do.
What I don’t love about restaurants is that they’re transactional, and eating should not feel like that. If the place is any good, you probably have to wait your turn, and anxiously listen for “[insert name], party of four!” to be called out by a host(ess) who only knows you as a number in line. Once inside, you’re led single file past identically set tables where you can catch a preview of what others ordered and of their reactions. Sometimes it almost feels as if you’re walking through a museum where diners are put on exhibit - see that lovely couple laughing over a plate of tuna tartare and a bottle of prosecco, wouldn’t you like the same?
What I never understood was the subjection to ordering the same quantity of food as everyone else. Everyone who orders the pasta gets the same amount of pasta on their plate, and it doesn’t matter if that quantity is too much or too little for you to eat. Restaurant dishes are more unitized than Starbucks coffee (at least you have three sizes to choose from!) or even other basic needs like clothes. We don’t all have to fit into the same size pants, so why do we have to eat the same amount of food? You could always ask them to doggy bag the leftovers, but sometimes lugging around a bag full of cold pasta all night before you return home is not ideal. I don’t know about you, but I usually end up stuffing myself full for the sake of not being wasteful, and oftentimes because the food is so conveniently there so it’s hard for me to just stop eating.
…and don’t even get me started on fast food chains. Quite the definition of transactional eating if you ask me.
If the experience of dining in a restaurant feels transactional, I imagine it to be paralleled in the kitchen. There’s a rigid hierarchy between dishwashers, line cooks, head chefs, managers, and owners, which means that creative reign shrinks as you go down the chain of command. There’s nothing wrong about division of labor in a kitchen (some people are better at chopping onions than others), but it’s silly to assume that the best way to prepare food is by sending it down a line of cooks stuck churning out plate after plate of uniformly made dishes. And because we never see what goes on in the kitchen (for better or worse), there’s a disconnect between chef and guest. Every plate of pasta that comes out of the kitchen that night is robbed of a creation story and a happy ending. The guest doesn’t get to see the pot it came from, and the chef doesn’t get to see the guest enjoy it.
What if we could eat in a space better designed for, well, eating? A space where you are free to eat intuitively, stopping when you’re full, and where it doesn’t feel like you’re just paying for a transaction. The social element of eating deserves to be celebrated communally by both chef and guest alike. Enter the supper club.
The first supper clubs in the US became popular in the Midwest during the 1930s and 40s as a product of the democratization of fine-dining experiences during the Great Depression. There, guests could spend a few hours enjoying a multi-course dinner, drinks, and entertainment all at an accessible price. Supper clubs were very much a social institution as guests were encouraged to socialize with others who they may not know.
Modern day supper clubs allow a private chef or two to host dinner guests in their home or in other cozy venues. It’s the perfect way for strangers to bond over a shared meal and to form a personal connection to the food they’re eating. For the chef, it’s a chance to reject the stuffy rigidity of commercial kitchens in favor of making quality dishes more accessible to their community. The pandemic gave rise to a surge of private pop-up dinners and beautiful supper clubs as people sought other ways to dine outside of sit-down restaurants. A few of my favorites to drool over on social media are @sanditasworld, @srishti.jpg, and @thebaodega.
I tried my own hand at this supper club thing since nothing brings me more joy than making others feel appreciated by cooking for them. My dear friend Sarah (who thankfully is a much more talented cook than I) and I hosted a couple pop-up dinners in college. Dinners by Kesa brought six randomly selected students together for a five course meal where they could intimately exchange thoughts and experiences. I remember the first time we hosted, three hours into the pumpkin rolls, tomato carpaccio, ricotta stuffed sage eggplant, mint jelly lamb, and fig galettes, our guests, now friends, were sharing hearty laughter and emphasizing how loved they felt. At the core of our existence is the desire to belong, and where better to provide that than at the dinner table?
Are restaurants the right structural choice for facilitating the kind of eating experience we all deserve? It’s hard to feel like you really belong when you sit down in a restaurant, much less feel connected to the people around you. The entire restaurant industry is built on the antiquated assumption that food should be sold as a function of what plate you order, rather than as a function of how much time you want to spend eating, how you’re left feeling, who you’re sharing your food with, or any other factors that make this quintessential human experience more human. If we want to reject transactional eating, restaurants may be as doomed as space-time.
The Recipe: How to host your own supper club (and matcha margs!)
A few weeks in advance: Decide why and for whom you want to cook dinner for. Maybe it’s a few neighbors you hope to get to know better, new people you just met on Instagram, or friends of friends. Keep it small at first and make sure you have the time, energy, and capacity for however many people you host so that you don’t get burnt out (seriously, dear reader, you can’t pour from an empty cup, so take care of yourself before you serve others). Also decide if you want to set a price for guests or if you want to use a sliding scale donation model.
A week in advance: Design the menu around a few key seasonal ingredients - for instance, our dinner series in the fall featured dishes with pumpkin, sage, and pomegranate which helped set the tone for a unified flavor palette and tablescape color theme. Depending on your plate inventory or personal preference, you can either serve each course on individual plates or family style.
Speaking of tablescapes, the simpler the better. We thrifted vintage porcelain plates for just about $2 each, and scavenged for slightly mismatched wine glasses. To tie everything together, set out a few bunches of flowers in mason jars along with handwritten menus and candles which are a must.
Day before: Once you have your menu and grocery list outlined, plan out a logistical schedule for the day of. Sketch out which dishes you need to prep first, what time you need to cook each one, all working backwards from when you plan to serve each dish. Also plan out which specific plates/bowls you want to serve each dish in.
Day of: Go time! Invite a friend over for an extra helping hand and get cooking! Once guests arrive, don’t forget to actually spend some time with them at the dinner table in between plating the mushrooms and putting the cake in the oven.
Day after: Take a day for yourself since it can be exhausting prepping, cooking, and entertaining for 12 hours the day before. Personally, Saturday is my ideal day to host so that Sunday can be spent resting and cleaning up.
Matcha Margs
This was the cocktail of choice during our dinner series, unique but easy.
- 3 parts tequila
- 2 parts triple sec
- 1 part fresh lime juice
- 1 part matcha syrup (simmer equal parts sugar, water, and matcha powder for 5min until a thin syrup forms)
The Playlist: The perfect dinner party tunes
Ready to host your own supper club? Share it with us by tagging @matchaandmoi on Instagram:)