Opportunism

Jonathan Nunn London-based food writer:

The pandemic offers us an opportunity to shine a light on the less visible reaches of the restaurant ecosystem.

Oh? And what would that be, then?

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.

Ah. Sounds a lot like a litany of the usual suspects' lists of 'enemies' of the glorious socialist revolution, doesn't it?

We, as greedy consumers, have to accept some responsibility.

Yup, the principal enemy always being the people who just won't do as their betters want them to...

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.

Is there anything stopping 'those behind the scenes' finding better-paid work, then? What next, a call for unionisation?

As for restaurants themselves, chef Asma Khan tells me the biggest issue is unionisation. “After this,” she says, “our priority should be to create a powerful union that is the voice of the workers, not the owners and investors.”

*sighs*

We are in uncharted waters: the industry has never seen this before, and all signs point to the likelihood that restaurants as we know them aren’t coming back for a while. To move forward, we must start by examining what we would like to save about the industry, giving space to the things that nourish us and our communities, and discarding what we believe doesn’t deserve to survive. After all, the real danger the restaurant industry faces isn’t annihilation – the danger is that it comes back the same as it was before.

I hope it does. Just to annoy grubby little scocialist opportunists like you...