Food & Wine USA - (07)July 2020

JULY 2020 77

SIX WEEKS INTO ISOLATION, it is impossible for me to envision

the future. So many colleagues in the hospitality industry are

devastated that the restaurants they passionately built are closed,

perhaps permanently. At The Alinea Group, which celebrated its

15th anniversary this May, we’re working hard to reinvent our

five restaurants and reemploy our team. Looking past next week

is difficult, next month is uncertain, and next year? Well, that’s a

lot farther off than it usually is.

But I’m hopeful in the long term. Whatever people build is

never as strong as the people themselves. The hospitality we are

missing during our national quarantine was invented by people

who wanted to serve others and make them happy. The desire to

create those connected experiences is not going away.

Three days after Chicago was mandated to shelter in place, Alinea

began serving to-go meals. Instead of ordering in a steak plus

sides and dessert for upward of $50, for $35, you could get beef

Wellington with mashed potatoes and crème brûlée from Alinea,

What’s Next

For

Restaurants

Alinea co-owner Nick Kokonas forecasts the way forward.

or handmade rigatoni alla vodka with Caesar salad and cheesecake

from Next. Within three weeks, we were serving over 1,250 dinners

every evening. Something wonderful happened: Our social media

feeds filled with posts of families together around their kitchen

tables, thanking our team for making their night special. The way

we connected was equally powerful and personal, though different,

and entirely unimaginable eight weeks ago.

In the past, personalized hospitality meant a jovial host with a

mental Rolodex of regulars and their preferences. Now, it means

meeting diners where they live—on social media, email, and

infrequent, timely text messages.

Moving forward, restaurant teams will be more important than

restaurant real estate. Pop-ups, pop-ins, and touring restaurants

will be reinvented. In the same way that musicians play in venues

around the world and theaters stage productions that move from

city to city, great restaurant concepts might want to adopt these

practices to create fluid brand experiences in flexible spaces. A

ghost kitchen one night might become a unique pop-in another.

Everyone knows about private dining rooms, chef’s counters,

and kitchen tables. Expect to see more of those, as well as new,

creative offerings that highlight a restaurant’s individual cuisine,

one table at a time. The Aviary, the bar I own in Chicago with

chef Grant Achatz, offers a seven-course kitchen table experience,

three- and five-course drink flights with paired food, à la carte

menus, and our speakeasy, The Office, all under one roof. Offering

experiences, not just menus, allows us to serve different types of

customers at different price points and to vary those choices by

days of the week, times, and seasons. What was once a high-end

solution may become the norm as restaurants are forced to have

fewer tables and fewer patrons in the same physical space.

At the beginning of 2020, asking the question, “What will

‘restaurant’ mean in five years?” was usually an exercise in looking

for hot food trends or tracking an up-and-coming chef. Today,

amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, that discussion is existential. We

haven’t even started to lay the new foundations, but somewhere

there is a young chef dreaming of opening her own restaurant.

She has a clear vision of how it can work, and she will find new

ways of connecting with customers. Leases are attractive. People

are slowly dining out again. And that’s how our restaurants will

come back to life: new, vibrant, more diverse, and, yes, different.

Nick Kokonas is the co-owner of The Alinea Group in Chicago and the founder

of Tock, a restaurant ticketing system.

toward more local farming, self-

sufficient food systems, and friends

gathered tightly around tables to

dine on foods that comfort. Yes, in

the very near term, we will need to

be physically distant, but when we

have a treatment or a vaccine, or

herd immunity, or at least a true

measure of the risks associated with

COVID-19, we will want, more than

ever, the intimacy that only food and

dining can provide.” —Josh Kulp, chef

and cofounder of Honey Butter Fried

Chicken, Chicago

NOW THAT THEY’RE EXPERIENCING

first-hand that it’s a two- to three-

day process to make good bread,

I think [people] will have an even

deeper respect for the profession.

So much of what goes on behind

the scenes of a restaurant has been

forgotten or taken for granted, and I

believe that with more people cook-

ing at home now and doing the work,

it will be a nice reminder.” —Michael

Schulson, chef and restaurateur of

Schulson Collective, Philadelphia

I SEE THIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY

to fight for food-system workers’

rights and to educate the public on

the societal dangers of artificially

low-priced food. I look forward to

benefits packages for workers that

include health care and PTO pack-

ages and a public that is willing to

pay for it.Ó —Mary Sue Milliken, chef at

Socalo and Border Grill, Los Angeles