Jonathan Nunn

Muslim tourists-friendly — Visitors spend time in a restaurant providing halal foods at Botani Square Shopping Mall in Bogor, West Java. The Culture and Tourism Ministry awarded Botani Square as Indonesia’s best Muslim tourists-friendly shopping mall for 2016. (JP/Theresia Sufa)

Only a fundamental rethink will ensure their survival in the post-outbreak world

Tue 14 Apr 2020

I’ve spent the best part of two years now writing obsessively about restaurants. I don’t just love them, I depend on them: they are where my social life takes place, where landmark events are celebrated, where I learn about the different cultures that make up my community. But the industry is on the precipice of oblivion: most restaurants in the UK are closed, and those that have switched to takeaway and delivery know it’s merely a sticking plaster. In London, the country’s food metropolis, the shutters are down from Soho to the Old Kent Road.

As this became clear, my first reaction was to go into cheerleader mode: pick up pom-poms and shout that this great industry needs to be bailed out at any cost. To go into reveries about my favourite meals: the moo krob at Singburi, the pig fat cannoli at Quality Wines, the breathtaking platter of blood sausage and fermented shrimp paste at Phở Thúy Tây. But something about this makes me uneasy, as if I’m nursing myself with nostalgia for a world that never quite existed.

The restaurants that are the most adaptable will find their own solutions that focus on community and simplicity
The pandemic offers us an opportunity to shine a light on the less visible reaches of the restaurant ecosystem. There are the landlords, whose rents are so extortionate that many restaurants in city centres struggle to break even. The developers who use restaurants like magnets to attract the “right sort” of people in gentrifying areas, transforming swathes of our cities into pseudo-public spaces of boutique restaurants, pushing working-class Londoners further away from their homes. PR companies who ensure that only those establishments that can afford their services get media coverage. Private equity funds that turn restaurants into short-term investments, relentlessly cut costs (and ultimately quality), and fuel the notion that the only way to turn a profit is to rapidly expand. It’s no coincidence that those who are clamouring for bailouts the loudest are those who have reaped the most rewards from this multi-billion dollar industry that makes money for a relatively small number of people.
Covid-19 has also shown us that the industry is on even shakier ground than we suspected: the tight cashflow, high overheads, and a reliance on tourism were all pointing in a bleak direction before the lockdown. The number of restaurants going bust was on the up, and the high number of places opening was disguising the fact that most restaurateurs couldn’t see their business model as sustainable. It’s no secret that the industry turns a profit only because it is built on cheap labour, particularly migrants and people of colour, and, according to chef Thom Eagle, “an ethos that work ranks above personal and social needs”.

We, as greedy consumers, have to accept some responsibility. In the same way clapping for nurses illuminates uncomfortable questions about their perceived value before this crisis, uncritically fuelling the demand for more and more restaurants at cheaper prices has masked the value of this labour to our daily lives. Not every fish needs to be ike jime and couriered from Cornwall, or every chicken corn-fed from Fosse Meadows, but we should accept that fish and meat need to be priced higher across the board if those behind the scenes stand a chance of being paid a decent wage.

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