Covid Didn't Change Restaurants, But It Did Change Restaurateurs

Some thoughts and notes from a dinner party I threw last week

As one does from time to time, I threw a dinner party last week. It was co-hosted by my friend Frank Falcinelli, one of the greats. Frank and his partners recently opened F&F Restaurant, a reimagining of a space they’ve had for many years at the corner of Court and Fifth Streets in Carroll Gardens. First it was Prime Meats, then Frank’s Wine Bar. On paper it is an extension of their incredible pizza shop, F&F Pizzeria, but actually it feels like a new thing, down to pizzas that are sized for tables not takeout. Anyway, we threw a dinner party and in particular we threw a dinner party to talk about the state of things in the restaurant industry.

I was struck by this story, published last week on Grub Street. The headline says it all: “Covid Changed the World, but Not Restaurants.” Here’s the money pullquote:

Plenty of time, energy, and money were spent wondering how the pandemic could forever change restaurants for the better. But looking around now, it barely moved the needle. Sure, reservations are more annoying and wages have risen a bit. Prices rose considerably too: $24 cocktails have been normalized, and the dollar slice is dead. But speaking with people who work in New York, it’s hard to identify anything about the restaurant experience that feels significantly changed from the era before COVID.

It’s true that restaurants today bear more resemblance to 2019 vintage places as compared to those of 2020 and 2021. There are no cocktail takeout windows and no online cooking classes paired with at home meal kids. The Amex Yurts are gone, along with those cumbersome outdoor dining sheds (“lean-tos,” according to Tom Colicchio.) Even payments, temporarily streamlined by QR codes, are back to the way they were — an incredible reversion, given that scan-to-pay QR codes are way better than waiting endlessly for a credit card to come back. Generally speaking, it does seem like restaurants are back to just being restaurants.

But, are they? For one thing, savvy chefs and restaurateurs are not randomly opening new concepts and outposts like they once were. In the 2010s, Momofuku was at one time operating more than ten concepts across five cities globally, including six restaurants all with their own branding in New York City! They have since eliminated most of this noise, shuttered all but two brands in New York—Momofuku Noodle Bar and Fuku—and devoted most of their efforts to Momofuku, the consumer packaged goods (CPG) company.

Looking at two of the city’s other standout operators, we see a similar evolution to something more purposeful and sustainable. At Grovehouse, the hospitality company born out of the massive success of Lilia, Missy Robins and Sean Feeney are thinking about vertical strength versus horizontal scale. Lilia remains a one-off nine years later – no Vegas outposts, no licensing deals on other continents, still an impossible reservation. Alongside it they have Misi, a developer-funded build close by, and Misipasta, a brand that thrived in early 2020 with meal kits and hyped up product drops but has morphed into what will become a quiet, and diversified, revenue monster. They have forged lucrative partnerships with companies like American Express (and hopefully, soon, Blackbird) but stayed asset light: instead of a new restaurant, American Express funds Governors Island x Misipasta, a seasonal pop-up. One can book a private room at Misi and take a Misipasta-branded cooking class. The shelf-stable tomato sauce is superb. Three stores, 2.5 concepts; a focused ecosystem of things that create efficiency and scale.

And then there is the trio of restaurants, Frenchette, Le Rock and Le Veau d’Or, and their duo of chef-owners, Lee Hansen and Riad Nasr. Superb restaurants, truly. Two of them have three New York Times stars and the other should have the same. Lee and Riad were at the dinner party and we talked about how different their approach is — so old school that it’s new school. They’re in the kitchen most nights, because that’s how they want to do things.

Are there operators still running on the old model of Grow, Grow, Grow? Yes, of course. In fact, Stephen Starr’s business as compared to what it was in 2019 is humongous. Not only has he continued to open his own concepts in far flung places, but he has added a content licensing to the enterprise, partnering with brands such as Pastis and Mozza to bring them to new places. Most recently, he’s acquired Lupa and Babbo, the culinary soul of Mario Batali’s fallen empire. Indeed, this ‘house of brands’ strategy now feels distinctly like an anachronism.

Back to F&F, the conversation is around more purposeful growth moored by a sober understanding of how easy it is to incinerate money in the restaurant business. The restaurant business, we agree, has gotten no easier. Still there are no tax breaks, no real basis to say that employee happiness has improved, no consumer tolerance for expensive burgers. But, the operators I’m sitting with are much more savvy as a group than they were a decade ago. If they are shackled to their kitchens, at least they are opting-in to that fate. They’re writing a new playbook, starting to take control of their own destinies.

We have work to do, but it feels to me like, even if Covid didn’t change restaurants, it sure did change restaurant operators, and very much for the better.