
My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore? - petewailes
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/magazine/closing-prune-restaurant-covid.html
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defterGoose
This made my heart pretty heavy. I learned about Prune and Gabrielle from
"Mind of a Chef", and her cuisine just seemed absolutely fascinating. It was
definitely among the most intriguing of that series. I had planned to make a
beeline there the next time I was in New York.

Who knows exactly why the restaurant was unable to transition to the takeout
model that many are now subsisting on (at least here in LA). Maybe it's just
that NYC has been hit particularly hard by the virus and peoples' habits have
been too-far eroded there.

In any case, I hope she is able to continue at a later time. It's sad to think
of all the truly good small restaurants with visionary chefs going under and
leaving us with very little other than mega-conglomerates to serve us food
outside the home.

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_curious_
Does anyone in the restaurant industry honestly feel as though their
establishments are necessary?

~~~
t3wggs
People need food to live.

Not everyone can cook. Not everyone has a big kitchen or a place they can
store food.

Good food is important to people's quality of life. It provides comfort. It
brings people together. It's a cornerstone of culture.

People need "third places". Places to gather, meet with friends, meet new
people, discuss things. Revolutionary ideas in art, science, and politics
started in coffeehouses.

Yeah, I'd say restaurants are necessary. Not all restaurants of course. But I
don't want to imagine a world without restaurants.

And what's not necessary? 90% of the "uber for x" VC pump and dump schemes
that we spend all our time on.

~~~
_curious_
Not restaurants as in the entirety, simply any one given establishment.
America could certainly carry-on and be fine with a double digit reduction
however.

"90% of the "uber for x" VC pump and dump schemes that we spend all our time
on."

Who is we?

~~~
t3wggs
Sure, one restaurant going away won't change anything (though it would mean a
lot to the regular customers, and to the employees). That's true for anything
though. We could close one hospital, or shut down one power plant, and life
would carry on.

Who is we: Welcome to Hacker News! A sizeable portion of the HN audience works
in unicorn startups, or startups that aspire to be unicorns. Some turn into
mature businesses that provide value to many people. Most fail fast and
disappear. A few of them, like WeWork, subsist on VC cash infusions and hype
fumes while providing little value, or negative value. I'd be more sad if
restaurants disappeared than if these did.

~~~
_curious_
So to answer the question posed in the article title "Does the World Need It
Anymore?" we all know the answer: Nope.

Thanks for the welcome!

~~~
t3wggs
You're welcome!

I don't think the answer is supposed to be "Nope". I don't think you are
supposed to answer the question posed by headline. I think it's one of those
articles where thinking through the question is more valuable than the answer.
Makes me appreciate what my favorite restaurants have meant to me, and what
role they play in life, and how they are changing.

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xhkkffbf
I'm sure it was wonderful, but the reality is that automation is rapidly
changing this business. Check out the restaurant Spyce up in Boston. The
orders are taken by iPads and then robots mix the food. There's only one
person who takes it from the robot and hands it to you. They give the person a
fancy title (garde manger) to make the job seem important, but I'm guessing
they could easily replace the human with an extra bit of robotics. The
person's real job is to call the police or the owners if something goes wrong.

~~~
ac29
Automated restaurants are more or less a gimmick right now. They might serve,
what, one out of hundred thousand meals? A million? The widely written about,
heavily financed semi-automatic pizza company Zume stopped making food before
covid-19. The restaurant you linked to is currently closed as well, indicating
it isn't any better at providing meals during crises (ironically, many
entirely human powered restaurants are still open).

Automation is absolutely useful in mass producing things like canned soup, but
we are a long, long way off before it can replace the sort of meals that make
going out to restaurants memorable occasions.

