1 All hourly employees
were paid through
March 20; those with
five years or more
with the company
were paid through
April 3. Many
salaried employees
were also let go
and paid through
March 27. Those who
remained are being
retained with a
pay reduction as long
as the restaurants
are closed. Health
insurance continues
until April 30.2 The most recent
version of the federal
stimulus proposal
included more than
$350 billion for
small-business loans
and an amendment
to the tax code
that is intended to
benefit restaurants
and other retailers.3 According
to a tweet from
the MSNBC
correspondent
David Gura,
a White House call
on March 17 also
included participants
representing
Domino’s, Chick-fil-A,
Wendy’s and other
large corporations.4 The restaurant
group includes Ssam
Bar, Noodle Bar and
Ko in New York, as
well as restaurants
in Los Angeles,
Las Vegas, Toronto,
Washington and
Sydney, Australia.5 Meyer’s Union
Square Hospitality
Group, to cite one
example of industry
hardship, laid
off 2,000 workers
after closing its
restaurants because
of the coronavirus.6 Chang’s experiment
with a delivery-
only restaurant,
Ando, closed in 2018
after two years
in business.15that out. There are so many restaurants
in diff erent scenarios, from ones that do
$70 million a year to $5,000 a week, and
every one of those restaurants is going to
need help because the burn rate per day
is astronomically high. We have ingre-
dients that if you don’t sell, they liter-
ally deteriorate. It’s the most exposed
business. There’s a lot of successful chefs
I know who have fi ve to nine days left
of money. And then what do you do? I
don’t know. Lastly, I think every hospi-
tality worker should get universal basic
income of $1,000 a month or minimum
500 bucks or whatever to stay afl oat. On
top of that, they all need to have some
kind of health care assurance. Something
like that probably has to happen. But I
don’t expect the government to actually
come through on any of that.
I saw that the White House had a call
with representatives from the restau-
rant industry, and it was McDonald’s,
Papa John’s^3 — All of Trump’s [expletive]
that he eats on a daily basis.
Do you have any reason to believe the
White House will be responsive to inde-
pendent restaurant operators? This is
why it matters what you eat! I get really
mad about this because of how Trump
talks about immigrants, Mexicans, Chi-
nese — anyone that’s not in his circle, why
would he care about them? If he doesn’t
care about them as human beings, why
would he care about the food that they
make? But listen, if he decides to actual-
ly help out everyone, it may be the only
time in my life I want to give him a hug
and a kiss. If Momofuku^4 and restaurants
like Le Bernardin and Daniel Boulud’s
and Danny Meyer’s^5 are exposed and in
high-trouble situations, I cannot imag-
ine the fear of someone who just opened
up a restaurant or some immigrant who
came to this country fi ve years ago who
just opened up a pizza shop and this is
their American dream.
What about people who want to help the
restaurants they care about? Is there any-
thing they can do? Call your representa-
tives. We’re going to need to have our lead-
ership make decisions for people whose
vote they might not always represent. And
support any restaurant that’s doing deliv-
ery. The short-term solution is to buy as
much as you can from a restaurant. If this
thing goes as bad as it’s going, the land-
scape is going to be forever changed. It’s
Opposite page, from top: Gabriele Stabile; from Netflix. This page: from Netflix.going to be a whole new world.
Is there a sustained move toward deliv-
ery and away from in-restaurant dining
in that new world? Yes. Not to sound
callous, but that’s it. I thought that shift
was going to happen over the next 10,
15 years, and no one would have noticed
because it would’ve happened gradual-
ly. This change is now going to happen
instantaneously. I’m not sure what that
looks like. The same issues of delivery are
going to remain: who delivers food and
what kind of food is delivered.
You’ve talked on your podcast about
how food delivery is already changing
insofar as more people are trying to
deliver good-quality food that’s not
just pizza or Chinese. What would that
change being accelerated mean for the
restaurant business? I see the complete
destruction of the midmarket restaurant,
the mom-and-pop restaurants. If deliv-
ery can be a model that is viable^6 and
people can work fewer hours and have
better balance, then it is something that
we should explore. I’m really worried
for this industry. Sometimes cooks have
gotten into this being sold a false bill of
goods. No one’s told you what’s going to
happen at the end of the rainbow. There
is no rainbow. It’s like glamorizing being
an oil-rig worker or a coal miner. Yes,
there is beauty and success, but for the
most part cooking is a hard job, and it
bothers me that there’s not a better way
to do it.
What could be better? With delivery, you
have two completely diff erent worlds: the
tech world and the restaurant world. The
tech world is all about scaling and throw-
ing money at something. But you can’t
fully automate cooking. Maybe someonewill. I’m worried about what that looks
like. Would I like to be at home and be
like boop, press a button and get some-
thing delicious delivered? That would be
amazing, but it also scares me. We’re not
supposed to live this way.
You mean with the expectation of
near-instant gratification? Yeah, if
we just think about meat — maybe it
needs to be extremely expensive, and
if it is expensive, we’re probably going
to treat it how the Japanese cook their
beef. Very thinly, very delicately, and
eating it is a celebration. As humans,
we don’t want to suff er. It’s not in our
DNA. It’s natural that we want to enjoy
immediate gratifi cation, and that has
[expletive] everything up. Even steak-
houses today, they’re getting the aging
room removed because people don’t
want to see the meat. They used to trol-
ley out the meat to people. Now that’s
gone. We don’t want to be reminded of
suff ering. Just bring me the food. Peo-
ple don’t even know where their food
comes from, and that is a metaphor for
a lot of our problems.
What food is giving you comfort? Snow
pea shoots with garlic and some chicken
broth and a bowl of rice. I put a little
MSG in it, and it was great. So right now
it’s been a lot of snow pea shoots and it’s
a lot of oxtails with broths and soups. I
just cook like a grandma now. I would
love to have a restaurant where it feels
like you’re at home. How do you open
a restaurant where you’re just giving
people that?Th is interview has been edited and condensed
for clarity from three conversations.