Restaurants 3.0: they are like smartphones, you go there “ also ” to eat

2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:20

Now i restaurants they are like i cell phones.

In the sense that, okay, cell phones also perform their telephone function, but it's one of many. With mobile phones you take pictures, record, make videos, chat on social media, order pizza with a click, have a chat with Siri when you really don't know what else to do and yes, sometimes you even call a friend (in flesh and blood).

So for restaurants. Gone are the days of going to restaurants essentially for a quick bite to eat or to enjoy a sumptuous meal.

Gone in times when you knew exactly what to expect from a local food dispenser, that is to say tables, chairs, embarrassing paintings belonging to the well-known artistic movement called “restaurant paintings” and - obviously - food. Food was the main attraction, the motivation for our trips and visits to those places.

Now, however, everything is different.

From what has been understood that food is a gigantic business, capable of transforming everything it comes into contact with into gold, "multifunction" places, such as telephones, are multiplying: gastro-pubs, restaurants, chic taverns, shops with an adjoining shop for the sale of all kinds of goods, from books to cups, and then again supermarkets with an adjoining refreshment point (one for all: Eataly) and so on.

Now food is flaunted, we live it, it makes us stand out from the crowd.

I am not so much what I eat, but "where" I eat it.

And if I eat it in a museum or in a room with 86 different colors of marble on the floor and furnishings and utensils that are absolutely different from each other, like The Gallery, the gallery-brasserie inside the Sketch restaurant in London that the artist Martin Creed has practically transformed it into a museum of modern art, then the rewarding function of pairing food and art reaches its peak.

By now we are almost ashamed to go out simply to eat, indeed, to taste as we prefer to say now, our vainglory is satisfied if we can post images of where we go to eat on Facebook or Twitter.

OPEN H24

And so the alternative places grow, where to eat but also to devote oneself to all kinds of other human activities, possibly artistic and fashionable. We are talking about places like Nobile Bistrò in Milan or Splendor Parthenopes and Porto Fluviale in Rome, open all day.

Emanation of classics such as the Cockscomb and Dose in San Francisco, or the Duck and Waffle in London.

RISTOMARKET EVERYTHING FOR ME

Or, still remaining in Italy, places like the forerunner Gusto, in Rome, which for years, in addition to being a restaurant and pizzeria, has also had a store space, where you can buy cups and glasses or gourmet books.

But also the new courts of taste such as the Metropolitan Market in Turin, the Mercato di Mezzo in Florence, Gourmeet in Naples.

FROM PRODUCER TO CONSUMER

In Trastevere, Buff's products are bought and consumed - cooked - and in New York the new Semilla is the symbol of the slogan "from producer to consumer", which has flourished in recent years thanks to the organic faith and hipsters.

LUNCH IN THE WORKSHOP

Another very profitable trend are the restaurant-shops, from the Quality chop House butcher in London to Damini & Affini in Arzignano.

THE RELAXING COMFORT FOOD

The pleasure of reassuring dishes returns but falls into unpredictable contexts: Cavoli a snack, restaurant, café and cooking school is located in the apartments of a historic Milanese building,) and Rome has relaunched the institution of the old milkman with Latteria Trastevere, where the meat of star butcher Roberto Liberati is found.

But pampering for the throat today is everywhere, even in L’Ov in Milan.

DIY MENU

Locations are also popular for a do-it-yourself, made-to-measure meal, such as at the Dolce pizzeria in Rome (also a restaurant, biscuit factory, pastry shop, tea room), where you can make custom-made pizza, choosing the flours and toppings.

WE ARE NEAR NEIGHBOR

It is also the moment of mini-places where the menu makes you forget the tight spaces or the sharing of the social table. Among the small addresses of attraction for large crowds, Oldroyd in London (the same chef of the celebrated Polpo restaurant) and near Chinatown in New York, Dimes, a refined vegan restaurant among the most loved by Manhattan health enthusiasts.

Intimate places with refined cuisine with trespassing into fusion cuisine, see in Milano Pacifico, by the Peruvian Jaime Pesaque.

FOOD AND ART

But the maximum for our maniacal desire for ostentation of culture and modernity, are the places that combine food and art, such as The Pharmacy 2 in London, where Damien Hirst (exponent of Young British Art) tries to repeat the success of his first Pharmacy, a place where all the international jet set met in terms of art.

Now, in his new Newport Street Gallery in London, he uses the services of chef Mark Hix to try to repeat the excellent results of the first "pharmacy", and serving traditional English, European and Mediterranean dishes, but above all delighting the hungry customer. culture with the vision of his works.

Other examples include the Untitled, the restaurant of the Whitney museum in New York, the Rex Whistler of the Tate Britain gallery in London or the Mudec Restaurant just opened by the two Michelin star chef Enrico Bartolini at the Mudec museum in Milan.

Because in the age of abundance and the appearance of the large satisfaction of basic needs no longer gratifies us: posting our photo on Facebook in front of a plate of succulent tagliatelle with meat sauce is not trendy.

Better to take a selfie with an elegant canapé in hand and in front of a butterfly by Damien Hirst. To be able to say, and document, that “I've been there”. And the food, even if delicious, takes second place.