The Restaurant Manifesto, Part 1
Imagine a restaurant that considers the aftermath of the meal as much as the meal itself. Maximum enjoyment, minimum bloat; integrated gastronomy. This will keep people really coming back.
The farm and the restaurant are businesses of the past. But they are also businesses of the future. Combined, they are in the timeless business of food creation … the business of life, presence, and integrated gastronomy.
Imagine if this were a stripped down version of your coveted dish.
You keep the real recipe secret but you release this seed of a recipe out into the wild to spread knowledge of the basic taste and texture profile.
Imagine the wonder that would spark.
Engage the sense of smell.
Various coloured & textured seaweed and seafood. Combined with fire and water.
Table with the aroma of sea.
The real reason to show calorie counts on the menu is to give the customer an insight into the satiety level of the dish.
Gastronomy and travel are one continuous circuit. You want that natural restaurant-hotel duo. Or an Airbnb host who knows the best local spots. New terrain, new ingredients, and thus new perception, on multiple levels.
If a city can adopt the universally-loved French & Italian gastronomies while also combining them with its own ingredients to create novel things ... that's some smart innovation.
We need more companies like Mud Scone. Local wheat and oat scones handcrafted with pure ingredients … creative & stunning flavour pairings.
Dessert is the universal craving and it transcends culture. So that you generally expect to feel bad/guilt/heaviness after dessert is an abomination that should be solved quickly.
A delicious meal teaches you that striving is basically futile. Things are literally handed to you on a platter.
Korea restauranteurs tend to have great respect for ingredient quality. They are clear and quick to say what is local/seasonal/organic in the traditional dishes. In Southeast Asia, contrarily, this is rarely done for traditional dishes. Only for the hipster brunch bowls.
A restaurant with no set menu, but just a set of ingredients. And the customer can design their own meal.
Suppose you can 'build your own' cheesecake from wholesome ingredients and a robot arm prepares your custom-made order in seconds.
Different base options:
buttery shortbread date, coconut, almond, fig, etc
Different cream layers:
blueberry, lavender, chocolate, pumpkin, etc
Mix and match.
Breakfast is exciting, lunch is cozy, and dinner is up for grabs.
A delicious meal is the epitome of presence and peace.
Southeast Asia transformed and never looked back after it acquired sourdough and learned the ways of the colorful bowl.
We need not another plant-based cafe but a plant-and-dairy-based one.
What's stopping you from becoming a three-ingredient magician?
Fine dining generally plays it safe with dessert. Cheesecake, tiramisu, ice cream with the usual flavours. Artisan street shops have novelty.
But there's much potential here. A local/seasonal ingredient not designed to be sweet, like mustard leaf or lotus root. Or scope out something bitter and zesty and transform.
The simple + stunning things that a restaurant can conjure with technology and taste.
You can pour 75% of the hot chocolate in, add whipped cream, and then pour the remaining 25%, effectively sandwiching the cream, allowing it to integrate rapidly and create a richer hot chocolate.
In the coming decades when the native-born culinarily-skilled population of Korea/Japan/Europe/SEA collapses to zero, so too will the ancient & traditional recipes. However ... as long as the fertility of the *Earth* remains, and ingredients are plentiful and diverse ... novel food innovations will emerge. The world will continue spinning.
One of the few things that will not only survive AI but go on to explode in significance is the growing, making, pairing, and eating of delicious food in a cozy and vibrant environment. Office buildings will be uprooted and trees will be planted in their place … and any city that does not follow suit will fade in relevance.
The end game for impeccable restaurant & cafe service is emotionally intelligent robots.
Encapsulating childhood food memories into an edible product with pristine ingredients is always a smart idea.
Imagine if this were a restaurant where the food was cooked and served on different kinds of stone.
Farming is about to become so huge. I don’t think you realize. AI will render white collar work obsolete for a human. Blue collar work like stacking boxes is for the robots. Farming is physical but also soft and nuanced. You can’t automate everything nor can you code everything. It’s the final boss but the irony is, it was the first boss … that we thought we’d defeated. No. Food and nature is life. There’s no defeating this. There’s only harnessing it to the fullest degree.
A city must do everything it can to become natureful and gastronomic. Farms, cafes, restaurants, as much as you can comfortably fit. Invest in sound internet. Solid transportation but also walkable. Clean air. With AI taking care of the white and robots taking care of the blue, this is really not a big ask.
Industries come and go but agriculture is one that will never die. It just gets reimagined and revitalized. Music is another. In fact food and music make a great pair. Taste is the common thread here. It’s the maker and the glue of everything.
Imagine a restaurant where the menu vividly described each item. "Each almond carries a gentle floral essence—vanilla-like and warm—brought to life by the slow roast. The caramel, rich and golden, clings to every curve, laced with sea salt that sharpens and deepens the sweetness." Fun eating.
A restaurant gets repeat customers by taking care of not just taste, satiation, and experience but also digestion. Digestion is overlooked.
Imagine a restaurant that prioritized the transformation of food as much as the taste of it. Delicious food that your body wholly accepts and flawlessly transforms. Food that is so perfect that you are fully present while eating.
A restaurant with modern but elegant architecture.
I'd love to sit in a restaurant with ~20 mini courses where each course is accompanied by carefully chosen acoustic melody that plays loud enough to enhance the aura of the specific dish but soft enough to allow for meaningful conversation.