
Paris chefs catering for diners in their own homes - Turukawa
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34581898
======
gabemart
With AirBnB, you can pretty quickly assess the quality and safety of the
apartment or room by reading about the local area, looking at photos of the
apartment, checking for e.g. smoke detectors upon arrival, etc. If there's a
problem with the apartment that the photos don't show, like mould or a
terrible smell, you can pick up on this very quickly after arrival and leave
to find somewhere else.

With Uber, I can check the car has seat belts before we depart, see if there
are any big dents in the chassis, etc. If the driver is driving erraticly, I
can ask them to stop the car and I can leave.

With a sharing-economy-restaurant, there's no way for me to assess how safe
the food is to eat. Is this person's fridge at a safe temperature? Do they use
a separate cutting board for raw meat or fish? Do they regularly wash their
hands? Did they try making their own chilli oil and accidentally culture
botulism? Did they use some mouldy peanuts full of aflatoxin?

It's much harder to pick up on these things. The first you might know about
them is two or three days later when you get sick.

These are risks with any restaurant, but with a regular restaurant they are
inspected, licensed etc. I eat food prepared by my friends, but I trust my
friends implicitly, and my friends aren't financially motivated so aren't
incentivised to cut corners.

Call me a food safety nit, but the idea of eating food prepared by unlicensed
strangers does not seem appealing.

~~~
beardicus
> Call me a food safety nit, but the idea of eating food prepared by
> unlicensed strangers does not seem appealing.

But you just said you do it all the time when your friends cook. Is the only
difference the profit motivation? As the article says, this is often more of a
hobby than a "real" business... personally, I'd sooner suspect a restaurant –
with their notoriously thin margins – to cut corners. I think with a decent
reputation system (word of mouth, or some established online source) I'd be
comfortable taking a chance at one of these establishments.

~~~
striking
Yeah, but you have cause to trust your friends. Your friends have accumulated
reputation with you, so you have reason to trust them. Not so much with random
strangers.

~~~
collyw
Maybe there is room for a service to provide that. Uber has driver ratings
doesn't it?

------
krishan711
I always try and imagine how big things became that way. We watch football in
huge stadiums, but I like to think back to a time where people would just get
together on Sunday and watch a match - and as they got more and more
interesting, people decided that we need more space and built bigger and
bigger stadiums.

It feels like this with all this 'sharing economy' stuff. Restaurants probably
started off (many, many) years ago just being people inviting others over to
eat - over time the best hosts started to charge more and more, and bought
bigger and bigger places to host more and more people. Soon there were enough
people doing this that it needed to be regulated.

It's like we're going in a circle.

~~~
xlm1717
This being the internet, you don't have to wonder about such things.

Here's a page with a lot of history on several different food topics:
[http://www.foodtimeline.org/restaurants.html](http://www.foodtimeline.org/restaurants.html)

One interesting tidbit is that oldest dining menu comes from ancient Sumeria.
They list a proper meal for the gods. Since the king was considered a living
god, this could be considered a menu for the king. (So restaurants likely
started off as a formalized meal "ritual" for the king.)

It also says that, broadly, street food can be traced back to military mess
units. It's likely that during peacetime, the people who prepared food for
military units went on to prepare food for the general public.

I also like to imagine that we have football stadiums now because of the Roman
use of the Coliseum for watching live sports thousands of years ago, and the
Coliseum was just the largest amphitheater, a structure which the Romans
borrowed from the ancient Greeks. This would significantly predate the
development of football.

~~~
krishan711
Ha, I should have thought to dive a bit deeper. I think the thought still
makes sense though - I was just using football as an example, it can be
extended to why did the Greeks build amphitheaters in the first place. It's
not like one day they decided 'huge audiences must be great' \- it must have
started with smaller audiences and iterated into the big structures designed
to hold larger audiences.

My point was we seem to be starting this iteration from scratch for a quite a
few things.

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Natanael_L
> "In the space of three years Airbnb has tripled its presence in Paris - to
> the point that there are now 50,000 flats advertised on its website,"
> Synhorcat's president Didier Chenet tells me. He says small and medium-sized
> hotels have been hit hard and over the summer they had to drop their prices.
> "If the government doesn't do something to stop the underground restaurants,
> it will be the same disaster."

What a disaster. /s

------
jon-wood
In London this has been a pretty common thing in the form of supper clubs for
at least the last five years, and I don't think anyone is worrying about the
restaurant industry collapsing just yet. They tend to be small scale,
infrequently run, events in someone's home, with a large one seating maybe ten
or twelve people.

~~~
ghaff
Pop-up restaurants seems to be the more common term in the US but they range
from this sort of thing to relatively small-scale but even regulated (a la
food trucks) temporary restaurants.

~~~
tedmiston
I see pop-up shops, mostly retail, regularly, but never restaurants. The
closest I've seen are food trucks, at least in Ohio.

~~~
jon-wood
Be thankful, you can barely move in London for pop-up restaurants with "wacky"
concepts and overpriced food. Some of them are pretty good, but a lot seem to
be pop ups because they wouldn't survive building up a reputation.

~~~
tedmiston
Interesting. We also are starting to have something here sort of like a popup
where a guest chef will host in a place like a coffee shop and cook a fancy
full course dinner say one night per month. Is that common over there?

~~~
jon-wood
I've not seen a lot of that, much more common is someone renting an empty shop
front for a few weeks, doing a full service every night during that time, and
then shutting it down again.

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anon4
It finally happened
[https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4381726392_ecf7e0b162.j...](https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4381726392_ecf7e0b162.jpg)

~~~
buserror
Sounds like a good idea to me. A lot less dangerous than lending your home
away when you go on holidays!

I do a lot of cooking myself (expat french, it's survival requirement ;-)) so
I'm actually quite interested by that setup, especially to meet people who
also cook or just appreciate good food...

------
Jedd
John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter's Companion:

    
    
      > Restaurants, until recently, were places of refuge for people
      > excluded from the mainstream or seeking to escape it—poor students,
      > aging unmarried men not rich enough to have themselves fed at home,
      > richer men seeking sex not wives, and the proverbial artists leading
      > their irresponsible lives. Over the last half-century, restaurants
      > have risen in importance to fill the void left by the decline of the
      > old public celebrations. They now provide the leading forums of public
      > participation.
    

He's right - restaurants are a relatively modern convenience / provide an
arguably regrettable function, and we'd do well to not assume that their
implementation is currently ideal, or demands preservation.

Whether this approach is inherently better or worse _in totality_ is a
somewhat irrelevant question.

------
DiabloD3
Wow, they'd hate most of small town America: most people cook, and either eat
what they themselves cook, or are invited over for dinner and bring shit they
cooked.

And I don't mean "reheated frozen prepared food", a lot of people actually do
cook when other people are eating it. At least, around here they do.

~~~
SeanBoocock
Cooking for oneself, or inviting over friends for a shared meal isn't what is
at issue here. The conflict is over a new commercial enterprise - people
preparing and serving meals for profit in their homes, mediated by apps/web
services - in an industry with existing regulations. The situation has many of
the same tensions as Airbnb vs the traditional hotel industry.

~~~
dexterdog
And like ABnB/Uber the industry is ripe for disruption because of the over-
regulation that exists in many places. When people are motivated to make money
and realize that the best way to do that is not to cut corners, but to have
satisfied customers there is no need for regulation by a bloated and
inefficient bureaucracy that usually operates primarily in its own interest.

~~~
ghaff
Really? Sure, there's been IMO unwarranted hostility toward food trucks in
some cities. But I wouldn't generally put health/safety inspections and other
regulations concerning restaurants in the over-regulation "by a bloated and
inefficient bureaucracy bucket." I'm sure that if one is a restaurant owner,
there are regulatory things one finds annoying but, given the many insider
stories one can see or read, it doesn't strike me as an industry that cries
out for laxer standards.

------
rjbwork
My roommate is a professional chef that does this for a living. He seems to
enjoy the flexibility and creativity the lifestyle affords him, and often gets
to bring home leftovers for us. Maybe restaurants should get into this on the
side if they think it's such a problem.

------
renox
Journalistic exaggeration much? I live in Paris's suburb and that's the first
time I hear about 'secret restaurants'. I don't deny that they exist, just
that they are probably in very small number. Are there 'secret cafés'? If so
I'm interested: many cafés in Paris treat their customers poorly.

------
rubidium
So I want to start being a home chef once every week or two with my wife.
She's an amazing cook. I'd enjoy hosting, setting up, serving, etc...

Getting to make a great meal would be fun. And getting paid a little bit would
make the hobby even better.

How do I get started? Which one of ya'll is starting this app?

~~~
hellbanner
Just start with your friends & work connections!

~~~
rubidium
We do that already. But then you're the host and expected to eat/converse at
length. You also don't get paid (I least I'm not going to charge my friends).

------
ghaff
My sense is that families having cooks--at least in some locations and for
some levels of income--used to be more common than it is today. I suspect that
some combination of changes in lifestyle and availability of prepared food
(e.g. takeout, frozen food) in various forms has made it less common.

The basic idea written about here isn't unreasonable. However, I'd posit that
most of the people who want to eat well but don't want to spend the time
cooking would also have trouble with the planning for someone to come over to
their house at a specific time.

~~~
pjc50
_for some levels of income_

Absolutely. In the past times of high inequality it was routine for the
comparatively small number of "middle class" people to have at least one
member of domestic staff, often a woman who would cook and clean. This
absolutely relies on high income inequality and low tax overhead of having an
employee, who themselves would not have a pension or social security.

~~~
ghaff
Income ranges definitely play a big role. That's at least part of why full-
time "help" is more common in some areas of the world than others.

This is admittedly a bit different as it's more like bringing the restaurant
experience to the home and doesn't seem to really be intended as a day-to-day
thing but rather an alternative to going to a restaurant for a nice meal out.
It's really not that far removed from a caterer although caterers tend to
focus on larger parties. (Though, when I worked part-time for a caterer back
in school, we did handle more modestly-sized groups like Thanksgiving dinners
in a house.)

------
manuelflara
I recently spent a few months in Buenos Aires, and these sort of "illegal"
restaurants (in the chef's home) are common and have been for years. In fact,
they're amazing. Of course, it doesn't happen EU and the US for regulatory
reasons, which in a way understand. But it's so sad that great chefs that
could be making a living and providing some great food (like in BA), can't
because it requires a ridiculous amount of money and licenses to open and
operate a legal restaurant. I understand why those laws are in place, but it's
still sad. After all, most people cook at home and people rarely get sick or
die from not following thorough best practices. Mind you, these illegal
restaurants are usually quite small, so they don't really cook at an
"industrial scale" like a lot of restaurants do. At one I went we were just 8
random people sitting around a table, and the meal (and company) was amazing.
More info: [http://munchies.vice.com/articles/argentinas-best-
restaurant...](http://munchies.vice.com/articles/argentinas-best-restaurants-
are-illegal)

~~~
griffinkelly
I was down there recently and did the exact same thing with a friend of mine.
Probably one of the best meals I ate at while there, and the vibe was awesome.
We were the only group there, so service was great as well. There's a
Brazilian startup that connects these underground restaurants, that you would
usually need to know by word of mouth, with interested parties: cookapp. Its
pretty popular in BA and I think trying to make it to NYC, but has regulatory
hurdles to get around.

------
beat
Anthony Bourdain has observed that the only way to cook like a professional is
to be a professional cook. If you aren't doing it full-time, you just won't
have the same chops. (By comparison, imagine if you only wrote software a few
hours a couple of times a week. Think you'd be as good?)

But really, this turns on a grey line. If someone is doing a weekly or semi-
monthly meal in their own home, for a handful of people, is that a
"restaurant"? If I invite a friend for dinner and they bring a date, am I now
a "restaurant"? On the other hand, if someone is doing this three nights a
week and turning a real profit, that's kinda different. A regulatory line
should be set.

The cleanliness issues, I think, are totally overrated. No one is going to be
serving something they haven't tried making before. If they poisoned
themselves, they'll learn. Cleanliness is harder cooking at scale.

~~~
collyw
A good proportion of the food we eat is served hot, which will kill of most
bacteria.

------
altoz
This is absolutely fascinating. Is there a website like airbnb.com where you
can read reviews and book something like this?

~~~
exhilaration
From the article: [https://www.vizeat.com](https://www.vizeat.com)

------
Mikeb85
As interesting as this is, its more just a way to have a 'local' eating
experience - see how Parisians cook at home. It doesn't really supplant the
restaurant experience, its just a different eating experience...

------
guiomie
Interesting phenomena we are seeing here.

Am I the only one who found this sentence awkward?

"According to Jaime, the Mexican, there are growing numbers of "secret
restaurants" in Paris"

------
bionsuba
> He says small and medium-sized hotels have been hit hard and over the summer
> they had to drop their prices

The horror.

Creative destruction is a bitch when you're the one getting destroyed.

------
byron_fast
Disintermediate your own employer! Marry a gardener, and cut out your
suppliers as well.

Pretty sure restaurants will survive this, though their service may have to
improve.

------
PaulHoule
We used to have one of these in our town that was run by the Situationist
International and would move from house to house.

