Despite the restrictions due to the pandemic, there are still not many certainties; even tough, something is moving in the restaurant sector.
In spite of bad weather and restrictions, the reservations arrived conspicuously in outdoor space restaurants. There were a few cancellations, but most kept and satisfied the desire to sit at the table, to enjoy a pleasure they had not experienced in a long time. Comfort food dishes are the most requested, simple dishes, either to compare the cooking skills that many have been applying at home in these months, or because it is not yet time to think, to experiment. Or maybe because the air in your face right now is the best food in the world.
Or maybe because the concept restaurants aren’t open yet as many of them don’t have outdoor spaces. The point remains that curiosity is not so much about the food as it is about other things. At the table next to mine, the conversation with the waiter or the owner focuses on topics such as welcoming, hospitality and the desire to feel good. One guest even asked where the term dehor comes from, catching the person handing out the menu off guard. Out of curiosity, we went to search for the term on the Smartphone discovering that the name comes from its first inventor, Count Philippe Dehor (1718-1792). Since the chimney of the dining room of his house was causing him several problems, he decided to have lunch sitting in the open air sheltered by a tent, which later became what we all know today.
In short, the variety of conversations is relentless and few of them are about food or dish composition. This is one of the many striking changes that we will observe as soon as all of Italy returns to the full dining experience.
One thing is certain from these early beginnings: catering does have a future! The pleasure of cooking at home for friends was a temporary solution, just as food delivery will be. A phenomenon that will last, for sure, but that can never replace the real pleasure of sitting at a restaurant table and enjoying all its elements: the other people, the elegance, the lights, the music when it is perfect, and the service. The restaurants, trattorias and pizzerias that will pay the right attention to these details will be rewarded. And customers will choose just the restaurant professionals that have endured these months, creating new understandable menus, making adjustments and training staff.
These are the few certainties we have in a world that will be different, in which, hopefully, the gestures and actions of those who have understood that before it was too much will assume value. Too much superficiality, too much appearing, too much storytelling not supported by truth.
Why did we write understandable menus? Because whoever sits at the table of a restaurant has only one goal: to feel good! Feeling good means not having to go crazy to understand the name of a dish; it means being able to decide what to eat without having to undergo a dish description that sometimes is so long that what is inside it muffles, deflates. Storytelling is an art and that art must become the stylistic code of the restaurant, along with the main tool available: the menu! It must be beautiful when you can still hold it in your hand, and it must represent and announce the pleasure of the evening, whether it is on paper or digital. And in order to do so, it must contain as much information as possible, leaving the waiter or patron not the task to describe the dish in a monotone voice, but to take care of the guest with joy.
Because that’s what you’ll need most for a while, mending relationships! At any point in life; and the restaurant will be one of the favorite places to do this. Examples in the first few days after reopening? There are many! In the restaurants we’ve been to you could feel this need, the background noise was a constant chatter of people talking, with no end in sight. Suddenly we noticed that there were no more couples sitting at the tables and looking into void all the time. And restaurant owners wearing the smile of those who have just come back to do one of the most tiring jobs that exists, but which is life for them! Feelings of course, nothing statistically relevant but with a firm conviction: the restaurant is no longer something superfluous in the daily routine of things.
