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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality

This discussion is relevant to my interests.

LA hipster restaurants are distinguished by four things:

1) counter service

2) communal seating

3) expensive drinks

4) disdain for amenities

You know you're at a raging shithole if you stand in line to walk up to a bored tattooed guy who pulls you a glass of water from a tap with a fire hydrant on it when you turn down his 8-dollar IPA and then refuses to give you ketchup while you sit at a long-ass table with eight strangers all carrying yappydogs in their arms as if they were Paris Fucking Hilton. The experience is not unlike McDonald's except at least at McD's they pretend to like you (and the tables are only big enough for your party, not three they expect to mingle). And hey. McD's lets you get your own goddamn Diet Coke.

But where things get really fucking dumb is where the shithole is colocated with a "mother restaurant" that does the exact fucking opposite.

Eat at Destroyer/Pizzeria Mozza and you will wait, walk up to the counter, be dismissed, pay cash, wait some more, and be the only person there not instagramming your goddamn food.

Eat at Vespertine/Osteria Mozza and you will valet your car, tip the maitre'd, be shown to your table by a third person, be offered wine by a fourth, have your table cleared by a fifth, and probably be told something ridiculous about the chef.

    Kahn greets guests at the door and follows up regarding any notes from the reservation booking — he then ensures that the menu is adjusted to guests’ dietary restrictions: vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free. While his vision for Vespertine is ultra-specific, Kahn welcomes the challenge of adjusting the menu to the diner’s needs. “I would be super excited if someone only ate white[-colored food], that would be fucking killer,” he says. “A total white menu.”

    And when asked if he was working toward not needing to greet every guest every night, Kahn quickly answered: “No, what would be the purpose of that?”

So. If you're a prole you're given the food but nothing else. But if you're a patrician you're slavishly fawned over. The real difference between the experiences is how much they suck your cock.

Wurstkuche will sell you a nine dollar pheasant hot dog but they'll make sure you know that you're scum. Mozza will let you know that their breadsticks are made by a lady who got her own fucking episode of Chef's Table.

Much as I hate LA, it is definitely the Patient Zero of stupid food trends the rest of the country will find itself subjected to. Fucking cupcakes, macaroons, bone marrow... the ruination of pizza in the '90s is all about Los Angeles and the Bullshit that Is California Pizza Kitchen (who stole their schtick btw). Thus, if my experiences are any indicator, the future of the service industry is as follows:

- none at the low end

- too many at the high end

You can eat at Destroyer for $20 a head. Vespertine is $500. Objectively speaking, that $480 is all the people making you like your food more.

I see this in the high end travel magazines, too. What sets a patrician vacation apart from a plebian one is the number of people waiting on your whim.

Side note, it saddens me that Chrome's spellcheck acknowledges "instagramming" as a word.





ButterflyEffect  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I ate this toast outside in a sort of side yard next to the restaurant, chased with sips of milky espresso, in full earshot of the auto body shop up the street and the banda music pounding from the passing cars.

Why did you link me to this drivel. I typically don't rage against these sorts of things, but I feel...anger? Annoyance?

Cupcakes have already taken over the Northwest. German beer halls have too. Which, all of those places are more than happy to sell you "authentic" German sausages for $5 more than they should, and German beers for $3 more per 1/2 liter than I can get by going...anywhere else. It's stupid.

Do you think there would be a self correction at the high end? Too much market saturation in places like LA or Seattle, and people realizing it's bullshit? Or is the image factor too much to overcome and we end up with your prediction?

veen  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

$8.75 for a currywurst? LOL. The most expensive wurst I’ve ever had in Germany was €4, it was enormous and included fries.

kleinbl00  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Prolly wasn't made from rattlesnake or some shit either.

kleinbl00  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Trust me, I watched the cupcakes. I watched them sprout, I watched them spread, I know the guys who mix Cupcake Wars.

We left Seattle in 2009 and came back in 2015. I definitely see the injuries. However, some trends aren't sticky - the fact that the Pacific Northwest has always been competent at making $12 burgers means the burger trend missed Puget Sound entirely (Red Robin is effectively an inoculation against Umami Burger). The fuckin' proliferation of IPA? gawd, I'd skip that if I could. Primarily I think it's a "we're trendy but we can't afford floor space so we'll make the fact that our floor plan is punishing a feature not a bug."

Here's the thing: if you don't have staff, and you need to fuck up your floor plan to pay your rent, you are one sensitive establishment when it comes time for the economic downturn. Up here in Mallville where it was all chain restaurants? It's still dead. Nobody moved into the Chevy's. Nobody moved into the Alfie's. The Hooter's has been six successive restaurants and is now a barely-surviving Grocery Outlet. I don't think they're all gonna shuffle out in another recession but I think you'll definitely see the value-added businesses survive better.

But more than that, I think there's been a structural change. If you're trendy at all, you now accept that you'll pay more for good service but you won't pay moremore for good food and good service and given the choice, you'll pay for food. Not only that, but in the land of $15 minimum wage every server is an essential server.

My favorite burger joint is run by a city councilman. One of his servers is his wife. Another one is his daughter. Another is his sister-in-law. Another is his daughter-in-law. They're all making $15 an hour and it works but I don't think they'll expand their staff beyond their genepool. And at this point? 40% of their business is Uber Eats, which charges them 40% of their take. Their kitchen is plenty busy and they have enough staff.

user-inactivated  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You sound like you need to be even angrier. There is a hipster hole here that serves sliders, sushi style. I grew a top-knot and Silicon Valley douche beard just entering the place.

kleinbl00  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You're adorable.

1) Three sliders and fries is gonna cost me $11.50. That's a buck or two off Red Robin pricing.

2) Their name is conventional: (proper noun)'s (food) (locale). Bob's Steak Shack. Mary's Burger Hut. That shit is not kosher.

3) They have $3 Coors Light on tap.

You wanna come, come correct, mutherfucker. You know what $3 gets you at Plancheck? A fucking pickle. Fuck, dude, you don't even have KETCHUP LEATHER™.

yes there's a fucking Atlantic article about fucking ketchup leather.

Oscar's? I mean yeah they charge you 50 cents for ketchup which is pretty douchey but at least they don't prohibit you from having any.

Fuckin' slider bar. Mutherfucker. Oscar's uses BeerMenus.com, which is also used by my local (proper noun)'s (food)(locale), Big T's Moonshine BBQ. Know what Big T serves? Moonshine. And barbeque. They got fuckin' Rainier on draft.

ButterflyEffect lists some legit hipsterish joints up here but oh holy fuck dude you have no idea.

Maybe I needed to be even angrier.

user-inactivated  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    You're adorable.

I've been called many things in my life, this is a first.

Red Robin. I had to look them up. (I don't go out to eat much, sue my adorable ass.) They look like a higher end Homerun Burger in a sit-down setting. Double Bacon and rings is my go-to about once a quarter-ish depending on if I am stuck in town or now. I like them better than 5-Guys.

Normally if I go out to eat I go to some of the Amish places where the food was herded into the back of the building slaughtered and shoved into an oven or onto a grill. Grizzled old women with gnarled hands stir pots of sometimes questionable ingredients that taste amazing. If I could find a way to make an Amish costume and recreate the "ambiance" I bet we could make the new hipster hangout in a place like L.A.

    ButterflyEffect lists some legit hipsterish joints up here but oh holy fuck dude you have no idea.

I'm kinda cool with that statement. I go out to eat something I don't want to/can't make at home. I'm not there for the "experience."

kleinbl00  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Red Robin is, for all intents and purposes, Chili's or Shoney's or Applebee's but without the pretense of making much more than burgers. They're solidly okay.

And while I would deeply enjoy some Amish hilarity in the middle of LaLaLand, the charges of cultural appropriation would be funny at first and then downright fucking terrifying.

    I'm kinda cool with that statement.

I'm hoping you could hear the jealousy.

user-inactivated  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So looking at the website they look like a Cheddar's which I did not enjoy when the friends drug me out to one about 2ish years ago. Maybe I will let them take me to a Red Robin when they demand I go out.

kleinbl00  ·  2205 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Dude make them take you to that amish place.

Red Robin is where you go when you've convinced your mother in law that you're never going to Applebee's and you just can't handle the f'n Spaghetti Factory.

If you're off on a business trip in a strange city and you're meeting at an office park across from the mall and you have an hour for lunch, Red Robin is a safe bet.

snoodog  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The Prost local pub chain has been around probably for a better part of decade so its not exactly new. Not all the great or German but that's another problem altogether. Cupcakes... also not a new trend probably started 3-5 years ago actually probably started before the pie trend, 20 dollar burger, now the ramen trend, and I think the new hot thing is poke. I dont really understand the hate though, its nice to get some verity and many places dont last more than a couple years.

A lot of these foods are very labor intensive and can really only be done on a large scale, making sausage , croissants, mini pies, ramen are all things best left to someone who has economy of scale. Ive made all these things and its at least a 4 hours of work probably more, but all of them can be fantastic and worthwhile.

Now cupcake, poke and burgers. That stuff is super easy and worth it to DIY. I was able to grind a burger and make hand cut fries in less than an hour the other day and it tasted as good or better as the $20 ones, and poke is my go to meal when i dont feel like cooking literately 10 min of prep.

Espresso is super easy too, but unfortunately requires about $600-700 worth of equipment.