In 2007, for a book on the world’s luxury restaurant economy, I undertook what I called the high-end Super Size Me. In the 2004 documentary, Morgan Spurlock ate McDonald’s every day for a month to see how it would affect his body. The high-end version involved me eating in a Parisian Michelin three-star restaurant every day for a week. Back then, talking about this stunt felt like a boast; now, it feels like a confession.
I will not pretend it was all terrible. There was an extraordinary pea dish at Restaurant Guy Savoy, which elevated the humble legume to god-tier status; at the tiny L’Astrance, there was the most spectacular chilled tomato soup.
For all these bright spots there were also disasters: langoustines on sticks wrapped in brackish seawater foam at Ledoyen, an appalling artichoke creme brulee at Le Grand Vefour that was split.
What really stayed with me from my grotesque endurance feat was the unreality of this kind of high-end restaurant: It is grim, preening, massively unenjoyable artifice. If a meal out is not enjoyable, what is the point of it? My love affair with the finest of fine dining began to crumble.
Last week, Rene Redzepi, the much-lauded chef of the three-star Noma in Copenhagen, where dinner costs more than ￡400 (US$487.27) before wine, announced his restaurant would close at the end of next year.
“It’s unsustainable,” he told the New York Times. “Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.”
I ate at Noma in 2009 and had a lovely time. Its commitment to Nordic regionalism was intriguing. Its rejection of ingredients such as olive oil and lemons because they came from far away was cheering. Even so, I cannot mourn because Redzepi is right. A certain type of luxury dining experience really ought to be put out of our misery.
First, as Redzepi admits, the financial model no longer works. Dinner in these places might easily cost ￡500 or more a head, but too often that is not enough to pay for the ludicrous amount of work that goes into preparing them. Too many have long survived on battalions of unpaid interns, or stagiaires, who are expected to be grateful for the opportunity to do menial tasks for free so they can list it on their resume.
After the Financial Times wrote about Noma’s unpaid stagiaire system last year, they announced they would now be paid. Perhaps that is simply added to the lack of financial sustainability.
Then there is what might best be described as the “vision” problem. Redzepi and Noma were celebrated for their apparent commitment to sustainability, because they refused to fly in their ingredients.
Ethical values became a watchword among high-end chefs wanting some of Redzepi’s seeming moral credibility. They would turn up at international symposiums to deliver papers on regenerative farming or foraging and the like.
In 2011, in a breathtaking display of self-importance, a bunch of them, including Redzepi, Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in New York state, and Ferran Adria of El Bulli, in Roses, Spain, released the “G9 chefs declaration” at a conference in Lima, Peru.
“We dream of a future in which the chef is socially engaged, conscious of and responsible for his or her contribution to a just, sustainable society,” it began, somehow failing to acknowledge that their job was making dinner for rich people.
In truth, however hard you attend to your restaurant’s sustainability, it is pointless if most of your customers are flying business class to get there or traveling in chauffeured limos from Manhattan because those are the only ones who can afford it.
The carbon footprint of the people you attract becomes part of the carbon footprint of your business.
Then there is the experience itself. The sort of people who can afford ￡500 a head or more for lunch tend to be so grossly entitled that the service becomes extremely mannered to suit their perceived expectations.
At Le Cinq in Paris, that includes menus without prices for women, regardless of whether they booked the table or not. At Manresa, a Californian three-star restaurant that has also recently closed, I was treated to the bizarre spectacle of waiters drilled to march to our table in a column, one arm pinned behind their backs, to serve us. As if that ludicrous display really improved dinner.
Finally, there is the food itself, or, to be more precise, the volume of it. Restaurants such as Noma long ago abandoned a la carte choice. Servicing such unpredictability at such a high level is impossible. So it is tasting menus all the way: nine courses, or 12 courses, or even more.
A chef once served me 26 courses, then came out and barked: “Did I win?” I suspect most of the chefs who serve these meals have never sat through them. They have no idea what it is like being pelted with tweezered morsels of varying quality for hour after hour.
I have long argued that there is nothing wrong with spending chunky sums on eating experiences if it is something to which you attach value. It is no different to paying for tickets to the opera or Formula One. We each make our memories in different ways — but it has to be worth it.
Obviously, whining about the torture of a 26-course luxury tasting menu in the depths of a cost-of-living crisis is hardly reading the room. Then again, is that not just another reason for welcoming the demise of these places? They once made a bonkers kind of sense. They functioned economically. They were enjoyable. Along the way much of that seems to have become lost. So farewell, Noma and friends. It was fun for a while, but it really is not anymore.
Jay Rayner is the Observer’s restaurant critic.
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
The international community was shocked when Israel was accused of launching an attack on Lebanon by rigging pagers to explode. Most media reports in Taiwan focused on whether the pagers were produced locally, arousing public concern. However, Taiwanese should also look at the matter from a security and national defense perspective. Lebanon has eschewed technology, partly because of concerns that countries would penetrate its telecommunications networks to steal confidential information or launch cyberattacks. It has largely abandoned smartphones and modern telecommunications systems, replacing them with older and relatively basic communications equipment. However, the incident shows that using older technology alone cannot
RSS