The owner of Pecking House, Eric Huang, posted this a few weeks ago in light of NYC being shut out of the James Beard awards. What do you guys think of his remarks?
by Inter_932
35 Comments
eajacobs
Amen
vagrantwastrel
I fully agree that the restaurant situation is absurd because of predatory rent, but I also would never read into awards like James Beard, Michelin, 50 Best etc more than “this place is probably pretty good”. In the end all awards are some amount talent and some amount politics
Dkfoot
The escalating costs for both operators and diners mean that there is a premium on a “sure thing”.
hardwaregeek
I recommend reading his substack if you want more perceptive rants on the restaurant business!
Johnnadawearsglasses
I 100% agree with his remarks. The talent drain has been real. The difficulty for a smaller, more avante garde restaurant getting off the ground has increased dramatically. And the most sure fire way to quick success is social media clout driven by gimmicks. This is all a recipe for a market that values: deep pocketed restaurant groups; proven, high margin concepts; and faddish pop-up style places with no soul.
LongTallTexan69
People go to restaurants based on Beard awards?
IceCreamGoblin
Amen. Paying top dollar only to be told you have 90 min to eat is wild.
gambalore
Also, the spread of foodie culture nationwide means that you can do more interesting things in cities like Pittsburgh or Kansas City and still gain both notoriety and commercial success.
heegos
I think he’s spot on. I moved upstate three years ago, so I don’t dine out in the city as often as I used to. But when I’m back in Brooklyn, I rarely go anywhere but my old standards. The few times I have tried new places in the past few years, it’s been a real mixed bag both with quality of food and service. With prices where they are, it’s hard for me to take a risk on a subpar experience. The quality of restaurant staff has dipped significantly post covid. (That being said, Little Grenjai in Bed Stuy is amazing on both fronts. Highly recommend!)
From the business side, part of the reason I moved is because I couldn’t make enough money working in kitchens to live comfortably, let alone open my own place. It’s easier to move to a more affordable up-and-coming city or an upstate NY tourist town to make a name as a chef than trying to do so in NYC, especially if you’re not coming from a known restaurant group. He’s right about established brands being able to grow because they have the financial stability to pay for quality workers. Someone trying to break into the scene with significant backing or name recognition is going to struggle to afford reliable labor and will struggle to make it through the first year or two.
All that being said, it’s just part of the cycle. The market will be flooded with too many of the same eateries alongside empty storefronts bc no one can afford rent. The next hip new neighborhoods will start to take off and chefs will flock to more affordable spaces in a changing area. I think we’ll see another shift in the restaurant industry in the next 3-5 years with a greater focus on a quality experience vs. flipping tables
blue_doki
I’ve felt very similarly about New York. I was always told how it was the best food city in the world! It has every cuisine imaginable! Well — it’s not a super well received opinion among my friends and New Yorkers as a whole but I personally found the food scene, especially outside of fine dining, quite average.
For one, I think the ethnic cuisines that New York indexes in (naturally as a result of its makeup) are often not ones highly well regarded or where the most interesting food is coming from.
A lot of Latin American cuisine is pretty routinely criticized for being overcooked and under-seasoned. Notable exceptions include Mexico and Peru, but those are two cuisines that New York doesn’t really do all that well in. Eastern and Central European food often gets the same criticism, on top of being quite heavy and starchy.
New York obviously has very big Italian and Chinese communities too, but they are often forced to respond to price pressures in really frustrating ways as well. Italian-American cuisine often feels unbelievably overpriced for what you get. Chinese cuisine has started moving up the price ladder more but traditionally operated by mass producing using the cheapest possible ingredients, with flavors to reflect that. I feel that Caribbean food, which I quite enjoy, has been going more the cheap ingredients with bad cooks route quite frequently. While Middle Eastern/Mediterranean food seems to be moving more along the Italian food route.
Not to mention, New York classics, like pizza, bagels, and deli meats, are all good and dandy. I do enjoy them. But it’s not what I find is “interesting” food and more like comfort food.
All in all, New York indexes heavily on a lot of cuisines that frankly just aren’t that interesting. And where they could do well, they suffer because of issues Eric listed. You either have to charge an arm and a leg or you mass manufacture and have the quality that shows.
MaizeNBlueWaffle
While costs are definitely an issue here, is NYC being shut out of James Beard awards really that big of a deal? I think this is only the second year this has happened? There’s only so many awards each year and the rest of the country is catching up with NYC in terms of food and that’s frankly a good thing. I also think that there might be a motive by the James Beard Foundation to look cool and hip to not include NYC restaurants and more so promote smaller restaurants in smaller cities
mandalorian1000
A lot better places in the suburbs ,weschester and Hudson valley region , 1 hour and half to eat on a Saturday at 250 plus tax and tip ……passsssss . NYC you are history
[deleted]
[deleted]
midtownguy70
A small ruling class of landlords is charging predatory rents and are being allowed to carve the soul out of every last industry here, except real estate itself. But lets just continue to let landlords charge whatever the market…er… the giant chains…will bear.
domdog31
the ultra high end and the super affordable are the only businesses thriving right now – nyc is in a rough spot. miami is thriving right now it seems
benewavvsupreme
Holy hell what a pretentious thread, is this entire subreddit people trying to convince people the best food in the country is actually from “insert city I spent my early 20s in” and that ethnic food is overrated?
YoungProsciutto
Am I wrong here or did a bunch of NYC spots make the semi and final rounds? The chef at Clover Hill in Brooklyn won best chef New York. Or are we talking overall awards?
manzanillo
Regulatory costs have gotten out of control. The City Council passes a multitude of new costs that restaurants – and other small businesses – pay every single year. It’s death by a thousand cuts. Water bulls alone going up 8.5% – forget about electric, gas, insurance, transportation/delivery costs, food prices, new DSNY regulations, property taxes (of which businesses pay a proportionate cost of in their building), etc etc etc…
BigBoyGoldenTicket
While I don’t personally take those awards into consideration this analysis is pretty accurate imo
Jaybetav2
On the flipside, this has helped “b-tier” places like Portland, Maine and Cincinnati attract so many talented chefs, bartenders, etc, transforming those cities into world class food destinations. Same goes for places like Glasgow, which was hell on earth food-wise until London became too expensive and a bunch of its talent flooded up that way and opened some truly amazing restaurants.
Hell, I’m finding excellent food in Albany, NY now.
Meanwhile, though NYC has a few stellar upscale joints, my most disappointing experiences lately have been here. Service in particular, which has become an afterthought. Shockingly so.
Kevin-L-Photography
It’s sad because in NYC there was the concept restaurant that’s called what happens when… The concept is to fillip the restaurant from decor/menu every month or quarter and create a new dining experience for patrons and hopefully repeat customers but unfortunately I as only able to experience this twice with my wife before NYC rent or something made it shut down forever. Cost of living and food should not be at the marker… unsustainable…
Dead_Trend
Any creative industry in general. Capitalism is organized crime.
meatandcookies
He’s not wrong about COVID. I worked in NYC fine dining (both FOH and BOH) for 20 years until COVID hit. The vast majority of my industry friends left NYC for places like Philly, Portland, and Detroit. Many (myself included) left the industry altogether. Lots of people went into service-adjacent jobs like wine sales. The ones who stayed, especially BOH, work for corporate groups, because that’s where they can earn enough to meet the COL in NYC.
Dantheking94
The high cost of rent, the high cost of living, the high cost of a freakin liquor license, it’s all stifling the growth of the city. It makes no sense how policy makers keep allowing this nonsense. We need MORE of everything except shuttered business due to high rents and low profit margin
warfighter187
I can’t take anyone saying derivative seriously. What the fuck does that even mean. Literally a cliche from movies of some uptight fart sniffer
good2goo
I’m consistently finding great places to eat, I dont care about James Beard awards
cookingandmusic
All I know is since the pandemic I’ve bartended for two amazing programs that barely lasted a year, and that probably has something to do with the $100-$150 pp expected check average in order to be sustainable. It wasn’t
MaTheOvenFries
James Beard is a national foundation. This is like being upset a specific studio didn’t win any Oscars
Dragonix975
The ability for New York City to shoot its lifeline (innovation, business, and building) in the foot is unmatched.
panzerxiii
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows this.
Rent is too damn high. I’m firmly of the belief that if we could get rent costs under control, every other issue we have in this city just works their way out.
And yeah, at a certain point you just stop giving a shit about awards because they’re largely bullshit and politics.
LoriJayneNYC
A lot of this hits home, we opened our restaurant in a bar because costs/rents are just completely insane for a first time small biz, even still, it’s a real struggle. Eric posts good shit.
brooklynite
New York’s dining scene is mostly tired right now. Not much new, exciting or different. Then you have Pete Wells who seems to find no pleasure at all in fine dining, rather choosing to highlight small neighborhood ethic spots which typically have many equivalents in those particular neighborhoods (Jamaica, Sheepshead Bay, etc.) Cosme was the last restaurant brining new things to the table in the city but even now they’ve felt stale. Maybe it’s the rent, maybe it’s the staffing, or maybe, just maybe, NYC doesn’t have anything to add to the lexicon right now. Sad but true.
laughingwalls
The points about costs aside, I think it says more about the James Beard Awards than it does NYC. I’ve eaten at many James Beard Award winning restaurants, while many were good meals, most places with Michelin stars were much better and interesting meals than what I’ve encountered at James Beard winning restaurants.
There seems to be fundamentally different philosophy to how the foundation chooses awards and I feel like their tastes tend to skew towards New American farm to table , but then again most of my exposure to James Beard is in the South East United States. New York’s most interesting restaurants and Chef’s aren’t usually focused on American cuisine.
MarkedNet
It’s insane how much cities are held back by ridiculously high rents. No one will do a fucking thing about it
OrchidSubstantial481
Wasnt this posted by the legendary Eric Hung of pecking house
35 Comments
Amen
I fully agree that the restaurant situation is absurd because of predatory rent, but I also would never read into awards like James Beard, Michelin, 50 Best etc more than “this place is probably pretty good”. In the end all awards are some amount talent and some amount politics
The escalating costs for both operators and diners mean that there is a premium on a “sure thing”.
I recommend reading his substack if you want more perceptive rants on the restaurant business!
I 100% agree with his remarks. The talent drain has been real. The difficulty for a smaller, more avante garde restaurant getting off the ground has increased dramatically. And the most sure fire way to quick success is social media clout driven by gimmicks. This is all a recipe for a market that values: deep pocketed restaurant groups; proven, high margin concepts; and faddish pop-up style places with no soul.
People go to restaurants based on Beard awards?
Amen. Paying top dollar only to be told you have 90 min to eat is wild.
Also, the spread of foodie culture nationwide means that you can do more interesting things in cities like Pittsburgh or Kansas City and still gain both notoriety and commercial success.
I think he’s spot on. I moved upstate three years ago, so I don’t dine out in the city as often as I used to. But when I’m back in Brooklyn, I rarely go anywhere but my old standards. The few times I have tried new places in the past few years, it’s been a real mixed bag both with quality of food and service. With prices where they are, it’s hard for me to take a risk on a subpar experience. The quality of restaurant staff has dipped significantly post covid. (That being said, Little Grenjai in Bed Stuy is amazing on both fronts. Highly recommend!)
From the business side, part of the reason I moved is because I couldn’t make enough money working in kitchens to live comfortably, let alone open my own place. It’s easier to move to a more affordable up-and-coming city or an upstate NY tourist town to make a name as a chef than trying to do so in NYC, especially if you’re not coming from a known restaurant group. He’s right about established brands being able to grow because they have the financial stability to pay for quality workers. Someone trying to break into the scene with significant backing or name recognition is going to struggle to afford reliable labor and will struggle to make it through the first year or two.
All that being said, it’s just part of the cycle. The market will be flooded with too many of the same eateries alongside empty storefronts bc no one can afford rent. The next hip new neighborhoods will start to take off and chefs will flock to more affordable spaces in a changing area. I think we’ll see another shift in the restaurant industry in the next 3-5 years with a greater focus on a quality experience vs. flipping tables
I’ve felt very similarly about New York. I was always told how it was the best food city in the world! It has every cuisine imaginable! Well — it’s not a super well received opinion among my friends and New Yorkers as a whole but I personally found the food scene, especially outside of fine dining, quite average.
For one, I think the ethnic cuisines that New York indexes in (naturally as a result of its makeup) are often not ones highly well regarded or where the most interesting food is coming from.
A lot of Latin American cuisine is pretty routinely criticized for being overcooked and under-seasoned. Notable exceptions include Mexico and Peru, but those are two cuisines that New York doesn’t really do all that well in. Eastern and Central European food often gets the same criticism, on top of being quite heavy and starchy.
New York obviously has very big Italian and Chinese communities too, but they are often forced to respond to price pressures in really frustrating ways as well. Italian-American cuisine often feels unbelievably overpriced for what you get. Chinese cuisine has started moving up the price ladder more but traditionally operated by mass producing using the cheapest possible ingredients, with flavors to reflect that. I feel that Caribbean food, which I quite enjoy, has been going more the cheap ingredients with bad cooks route quite frequently. While Middle Eastern/Mediterranean food seems to be moving more along the Italian food route.
Not to mention, New York classics, like pizza, bagels, and deli meats, are all good and dandy. I do enjoy them. But it’s not what I find is “interesting” food and more like comfort food.
All in all, New York indexes heavily on a lot of cuisines that frankly just aren’t that interesting. And where they could do well, they suffer because of issues Eric listed. You either have to charge an arm and a leg or you mass manufacture and have the quality that shows.
While costs are definitely an issue here, is NYC being shut out of James Beard awards really that big of a deal? I think this is only the second year this has happened? There’s only so many awards each year and the rest of the country is catching up with NYC in terms of food and that’s frankly a good thing. I also think that there might be a motive by the James Beard Foundation to look cool and hip to not include NYC restaurants and more so promote smaller restaurants in smaller cities
A lot better places in the suburbs ,weschester and Hudson valley region , 1 hour and half to eat on a Saturday at 250 plus tax and tip ……passsssss .
NYC you are history
[deleted]
A small ruling class of landlords is charging predatory rents and are being allowed to carve the soul out of every last industry here, except real estate itself. But lets just continue to let landlords charge whatever the market…er… the giant chains…will bear.
the ultra high end and the super affordable are the only businesses thriving right now – nyc is in a rough spot. miami is thriving right now it seems
Holy hell what a pretentious thread, is this entire subreddit people trying to convince people the best food in the country is actually from “insert city I spent my early 20s in” and that ethnic food is overrated?
Am I wrong here or did a bunch of NYC spots make the semi and final rounds? The chef at Clover Hill in Brooklyn won best chef New York. Or are we talking overall awards?
Regulatory costs have gotten out of control. The City Council passes a multitude of new costs that restaurants – and other small businesses – pay every single year. It’s death by a thousand cuts. Water bulls alone going up 8.5% – forget about electric, gas, insurance, transportation/delivery costs, food prices, new DSNY regulations, property taxes (of which businesses pay a proportionate cost of in their building), etc etc etc…
While I don’t personally take those awards into consideration this analysis is pretty accurate imo
On the flipside, this has helped “b-tier” places like Portland, Maine and Cincinnati attract so many talented chefs, bartenders, etc, transforming those cities into world class food destinations. Same goes for places like Glasgow, which was hell on earth food-wise until London became too expensive and a bunch of its talent flooded up that way and opened some truly amazing restaurants.
Hell, I’m finding excellent food in Albany, NY now.
Meanwhile, though NYC has a few stellar upscale joints, my most disappointing experiences lately have been here. Service in particular, which has become an afterthought. Shockingly so.
It’s sad because in NYC there was the concept restaurant that’s called what happens when… The concept is to fillip the restaurant from decor/menu every month or quarter and create a new dining experience for patrons and hopefully repeat customers but unfortunately I as only able to experience this twice with my wife before NYC rent or something made it shut down forever. Cost of living and food should not be at the marker… unsustainable…
Any creative industry in general. Capitalism is organized crime.
He’s not wrong about COVID. I worked in NYC fine dining (both FOH and BOH) for 20 years until COVID hit. The vast majority of my industry friends left NYC for places like Philly, Portland, and Detroit. Many (myself included) left the industry altogether. Lots of people went into service-adjacent jobs like wine sales. The ones who stayed, especially BOH, work for corporate groups, because that’s where they can earn enough to meet the COL in NYC.
The high cost of rent, the high cost of living, the high cost of a freakin liquor license, it’s all stifling the growth of the city. It makes no sense how policy makers keep allowing this nonsense. We need MORE of everything except shuttered business due to high rents and low profit margin
I can’t take anyone saying derivative seriously. What the fuck does that even mean. Literally a cliche from movies of some uptight fart sniffer
I’m consistently finding great places to eat, I dont care about James Beard awards
All I know is since the pandemic I’ve bartended for two amazing programs that barely lasted a year, and that probably has something to do with the $100-$150 pp expected check average in order to be sustainable. It wasn’t
James Beard is a national foundation. This is like being upset a specific studio didn’t win any Oscars
The ability for New York City to shoot its lifeline (innovation, business, and building) in the foot is unmatched.
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows this.
Rent is too damn high. I’m firmly of the belief that if we could get rent costs under control, every other issue we have in this city just works their way out.
And yeah, at a certain point you just stop giving a shit about awards because they’re largely bullshit and politics.
A lot of this hits home, we opened our restaurant in a bar because costs/rents are just completely insane for a first time small biz, even still, it’s a real struggle. Eric posts good shit.
New York’s dining scene is mostly tired right now. Not much new, exciting or different. Then you have Pete Wells who seems to find no pleasure at all in fine dining, rather choosing to highlight small neighborhood ethic spots which typically have many equivalents in those particular neighborhoods (Jamaica, Sheepshead Bay, etc.) Cosme was the last restaurant brining new things to the table in the city but even now they’ve felt stale. Maybe it’s the rent, maybe it’s the staffing, or maybe, just maybe, NYC doesn’t have anything to add to the lexicon right now. Sad but true.
The points about costs aside, I think it says more about the James Beard Awards than it does NYC. I’ve eaten at many James Beard Award winning restaurants, while many were good meals, most places with Michelin stars were much better and interesting meals than what I’ve encountered at James Beard winning restaurants.
There seems to be fundamentally different philosophy to how the foundation chooses awards and I feel like their tastes tend to skew towards New American farm to table , but then again most of my exposure to James Beard is in the South East United States. New York’s most interesting restaurants and Chef’s aren’t usually focused on American cuisine.
It’s insane how much cities are held back by ridiculously high rents. No one will do a fucking thing about it
Wasnt this posted by the legendary Eric Hung of pecking house