Those Tasting Menus Will Never Taste the Same
Elite restaurants are selling burgers and bottled sauces to survive. After the lockdown, it will be even harder to get a table.
Don’t try this at home.
Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Bloomberg Opinion will be running a series of features by our columnists that consider the long-term consequences of the crisis. This column is part of a package on how the pandemic is altering the business of eating and drinking. For more, see Amanda Little’s interview with the CEO of Beyond Meat, Adam Minter on how sanitized street food will hurt the world’s poor and James Gibney’s interview with Daniel Okrent and Wayne Curtis on the future of bars and cocktails.
I never liked being called a foodie. The label smacks of self-indulgence and elitism. I will gladly cop to the lesser sin of gluttony: I love to eat, and eat a lot, that’s all. “I’m a gourmand, not a gourmet,” I’ve protested when friends mocked my fondness for fine dining. If my Instagram account is a catalogue of gorgeous creations from the world’s best restaurants, it also features appropriately grubby images of street food.