The Covid Diaries – Vol. 8 – The Shape of Things to Come

robot serving GIF by The Venture Brothers

Day 31, Wednesday, April 15, – What’s Next?

Assuming any are around a month from now, restaurants surviving this coronapocalypse will face a strange new world of less customers. freaked out diners, intense public health scrutiny, and a depleted workforce.

All this while trying to resurrect their economic lifelines and deal with supply chains in ruins.

When it comes to Las Vegas, there’s really two conversations to have here: one about off-Strip dining scene (You remember it don’t you? The scene that was starting to boom over the past three years?), and the Strip, with its hundreds of food outlets serving (primarily) our tourist economy.

For purpose of these predictions, let us concentrate (mostly) on trends which will affect both.

There are no crystal balls at work here, and some of these are beyond obvious, but they bear reminding to brace yourself for the brave new world in eating out that’s right around the corner.

And for the record, it would please us no end if we are proved totally wrong on all of them. Well, almost all of them.

Fewer Diners

Everything’s about to shrink: customer base, restaurant seating, booze consumption, and profits. Those people you see dancing in the streets? Bankruptcy lawyers.

Shorter Menus

Every menu in America that isn’t a Chick-Fil-A has just been cut in half. Many will stay that way. Shorter menus are great for many reasons, but mainly because you can spend less time ordering and more time worrying about that cough from four tables away.

Close tables

Cheek-by-jowl jostling with strangers over a plate of steak frites has gone from good to gauche. Huge Strip restaurants will reduce capacity (e.g. 300 seat places (like Mon Ami Gabi) will suddenly find themselves with a third less tables. Tiny neighborhood joints will feel the pressure too. Guess which ones will be hurt the most?  A fifty seat mom and pop cracker box can’t make a profit if it’s cut in half. No word yet from the epidemiologists on the disease-catching horrors lurking in back-to-back booths.

Buffets

MGM to temporarily close Vegas buffets as virus precaution

Put a fork in them, they’re done. Deader than Julius Caesar. Forget about sanitary masks and table-spacing — after this world-wide freakout, no one’s going to want to stand in line with hundreds of strangers while waiting to eat….much less handle a serving spoon that’s been touched by fifty filthy kids.

Opposing view: Death by calories will not dissuade these eager over-eaters from their orgies of excess. Buffets and Covid19 have a lot in common: both are vaccine-proof and impervious to common sense — always ready to stealthily reinsert themselves into our defenseless body politic as soon as our sneeze guards are down. The same credulous fraidycats  who bought the coronavirus scare wholesale will be only too eager to resume shoveling AYCE into their pie holes, as soon as some authority figure says it’s “okay”. Catching a virus may have terrified them in the short-term, but government can stand only so long between a man and his third dessert.

Loud and Crowded Goes Kaput

A corollary to “close tables” above. Three-deep bars and people screaming to be heard will be seen as toxic. In well-spaced, too-quiet places, expect people to start yelling across tables just for old time’s sake. Baby Boomers, mostly.

Communal tables

No one will want to dine next to strangers anymore. From now on, people will let public health doctors tell them how they should sit and socialize —  in the same way we let dentists tell us what food to chew, and gynecologists dictate who we should sleep with.

Smaller Plates

Here’s one we’re on the fence about.  Will portions shrink to reflect tougher times? Or will the good old “blue plate special/meat and three” make a comeback? In other words, will gutsy food replace preciousness? One thing’s for sure though, there will no longer be restaurants centered around…

Share Plates

Shared plates (and/or everyone picking off a central platter) will NOT be a theme of most menus coming out of this. You might as well ask your friends, “Let’s go infect each other over dinner.” Even though it’s not true, you’ll get a lot of “Ewwww” at the very thought. If you want to eat communally, you’ll have to go Chinese. Possibly in a private room. Probably with a bureaucrat standing over your shoulder.

Tweezer Food

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Can’t die a moment too soon. As Julia Child once said (when looking at a nouvelle cuisine creation): “You can just tell someone’s fingers have been all over it.” The absurdity of molecular cuisine will also perish in a sea of silly foam.

Unfeasibly Long Tasting Menus

Once the dust settles, the 1% will start flocking back to destination restaurants. Or will they? Something tells us all the “chef’s vision” malarkey — which has powered the World’s 50 Best for the past decade — will henceforth be seen as decadent. Simple, local cooking with good ingredients will replace three hour slogs through some overpraised, hipster chef’s fever dream.

Linens? Sanitary or Un-?

Personally, many who dine out often long for the days of real cotton napery and tablecloths. We prefer them to wet, slimy, cold, hard surfaces where who-knows-what has been smeared on it. Unfortunately, it’s a cinch the health Gestapo will mandate the constant wiping down of tables, and human comfort and civilized dining will one of the casualties….at least in America. We can’t imagine the old-school, haute cuisine palaces of France serving dinner on bare-bones tables…although some already do. The smart set will bring their own cleaning supplies….because nothing says “night on the town” like handi-wipes and a personalized spray bottle.

Sommeliers

Sad to say, but somms will be an endangered species in this new economy. Wine lists will shrink; prices will come down; and choosing a bottle will be between you and your wine app. This will save you money (on tips), and gallons of self-esteem points by no longer being humiliated because you don’t know the difference between a Malagousia and a Moscofilero. Idiot.

Wine/Bars

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Expect wine in general to take a hit, especially the expensive stuff. Especially in America. The health nuts will try (and fail) to turn bars into fully automated spaces with all the charm of a DMV waiting room.

Celebrity Chefs

Their popularity has been shrinking for a while now. Is anyone dying to go to a Bobby Flay restaurant anymore? Even if Shark in The Palms is pretty good? El Gordo’s shtick will start (start?) looking stagey and superficial in the culture of asceticism to come. Not to mention the idiocy of $$$s being thrown at him/them by clueless casino accountants, just to see a famous name on a door. And because the cache of chefs has shrunk…

Bad Boy Chefs

…are probably a thing of the past, too. Ditto their tattoos…and tatts on waitstaff and barkeeps. In this hyper-hygienic, monochromatic, new world order, anything that smacks of personal expression and pirate rituals will not be a good look when it comes to selling vittles. Imagine a world where everyone looks like Barbie and Ken, right down to the lack of genitals, and you’ll get the idea. Sexy.

Asian food

Specifically Chinese food. Face it: America is racist, and many blame the Chinese government for this debacle. While the blame may be justified, this isn’t fair to Chinese-Americans or Chinese restaurants in America. But fairness has no place in post-Covid society. Once the tail starts wagging the dog, don’t expect the bull to go easy on the China shop.

More Plastic!

The world’s fear of viral infection will make clean freaks out of everyone. And this means more single-use plastic: gloves, Styrofoam, containers, take-home boxes, utensils, etc.. Germaphobes are going to have a field day “protecting” us from cooties….even if it means ruining our long term health and the environment. This is known in public health circles as saving your life by killing everything around you.

Take-out food 

Every operator thinks this whole pick-up/delivery thing is here to stay.  Doesn’t matter that all food tastes better when eaten right after it’s prepared. (The only exceptions are cold sandwiches and burgers…and even fast food burgers suffer from remaining too long in the sack.) Good food doesn’t travel well. Good food needs to be eaten as soon as it’s done. Human beings have known this for thousands of years. But because of this shutdown, restaurants will try in vain to prove otherwise. Eating take-out from a good restaurant is like watching a blockbuster movie on an iPhone.

Automated food prep – robot chefs!

robots cook GIF

To those promoting AI cooking, conveyor belt sushi, automaton waiters, and  computerized everything, this Covid crisis has been manna from heaven. The only thing that will suffer from this automation will be your dignity and good taste.

Home Cooking….

…will NOT have a resurgence, Neither will bread baking. Why? Because cooking is hard and bread baking is even harder. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Less late night/less bars/less luxury spending

Bottle service > dead. Ginormous nightclubs > toast. Dayclubs > history. Lounge acts and supper clubs (circa 1975) will be replacing them. You heard it here first: Once  Mel Tormé impersonators get rolling, Elvis imitators will seem cheesier than a Velveeta fondue.

Hygiene Obsession

MUCH GREATER EMPHASIS ON HYGIENE – of customers,  restaurants, and their staffs. Will everyone have to be tested before entering? Will your waiter be wearing a mask? Will all of these ruin your enjoyment of eating out by turning restaurants into the equivalent of hospital food being served by prison guards in a boarding school mess hall? Does the Pope wear a beanie?

Coffee and Cocktails Will Conquer

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The first businesses to revive after this nonsense subsides will be coffee houses and cocktail bars. They will be the easiest businesses to ramp back up, and will provide a quick, cheerful respite from the misery that has enveloped society. Restaurants, especially mid-tier, independently-owned restaurants will have the hardest time of it. The catchwords will be comfort over creativity. And nothing is more comforting in trying times than a good cocktail…or a cup of coffee.

Critics get Cashiered

Reports of critics’ demise have been greatly exaggerated for over a decade, but this could be the final nail. The last straw. The icing on the funeral potatoes, if you will.

Image(You got what you wanted, restaurants: no more critics! But just think of the cost. Cheers!)

 

Grape Expectations – Las Vegas’s Best Wine Drinking

http://images.medicaldaily.com/sites/medicaldaily.com/files/2014/04/24/drinking-straight-out-bottle.jpg

(ELV note: The following article appears this month in Desert Companion magazine. Continue reading below or click here to see it in its original format. Unfortunately, to read it in the magazine, you’ll have to muddle through all sorts of drivel about whiskies, cocktails and beer — inferior liquids that exist only as weak(?) substitutes for the beverage you ought to be drinking.)

GRAPE EXPECTATIONS – Las Vegas’s Best Wine Drinking

Las Vegas isn’t really a “wine bar” sort of town.  Wine bars generally require (and promote) a certain level of contemplative thought, and Las Vegas generally is about as contemplative as a UFC cage match. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t fabulous places to indulge in your taste for fermented grapes. What it means is that you have to go to some of our finer restaurants to find wines (by the glass or bottle), that will blow your socks off. Below are my 13 favorite sipping venues – places where our town’s great sommeliers take enormous pride in pouring vintages from around the globe – wines you can drink, or think about, to your grape’s content.

ESTIATORIO MILOS

Greek wines may be unpronounceable, but they’re also delicious. They’re also substantially under-priced compared to similar seafood-friendly wines from France and Italy. Don’t even try to master the odd lisps and tongue rolls of Assyrtiko, Moshofilero or Mavrodaphne. Just point and smile, or ask the staff for help. (I promise they won’t make fun of you.) Anyone who orders anything but Greek wines with this food should be sentenced to a year of drinking nothing but Harvey Wallbangers.

RESTAURANT GUY SAVOY

The list is as thick as a dictionary, and, at first blush, not for the faint of heart or parsimonious of purse. But look closely and you’ll find a surprising number of bargains for under $100. Or ask sommelier Phil Park and he will happily point them out to you. The champagne bar is where you’ll find serious oenophiles perusing the list a full half hour before their reservation, just like they do it in France.

CHADA STREET/CHADA THAI

These two sister restaurants are a few miles apart, but connected by a love of white wines that owner Bank Atcharawan has successfully brought to Chinatown. Both lists are deep in Rieslings and chardonnays, and the champagne selection at Chada Street puts most Strip lists to shame, at decidedly gentler prices. Not for nothing does every sommelier in Las Vegas treat both of these venues like their personal after-hours club.

MARCHÉ BACCHUS

A pinot noir wall, lakeside dining and the gentlest mark-ups in town ($10 over retail) make MB a must-stop on any wine lover’s tour of Vegas. Jeff and Rhonda Wyatt are always there to help you choose a glass or a case of whatever mainstream cab or off-beat syrah suits your fancy. Or do what I do: just stick with Burgundy and go nuts.

FERRARO’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT & WINE BAR

What I love about Italian wines is what I love about Italians and Italian food – they are friendly, passionate, fiercely regional and confusing, in a good way. Don’t know your Montelcinos from your Montepulcianos? No problemo, Geno Ferraro is always there to help you parse the Barbarescos from the Barolos. One of the greatest Italian lists in America at one of our finest Italian restaurants.

BAZAAR MEATS

I don’t understand Spanish wine any more than I understand how José Andrés can have so much energy and so many great restaurants. But the next best thing to knowing a lot about a country’s wines is knowing a sommelier who is eager to teach you. Chloe Helfand is that gal in Las Vegas, and she is always there with a smile and a lip-smacking wine you don’t know made with a grape you’ve never heard of. Which is one of the reasons we love sommeliers. And Chloe.

LA CAVE

Mark Hefter’s wine program is a lot like Mark Hefter: Fun, interesting, intelligent and all-over-the-map. Hefter has poured wine from Le Cirque 2000 in New York to Spago and Circo in Las Vegas, and needless to say, the man knows his grapes. With over 50 wines by the glass, he can dazzle anyone from the novice drinker to the dedicated oenophile. But what we love about his list is its eclecticism. Here is where you can dip your toe into the world’s most interesting wines at very friendly price points. Curious about those orange and pink wines that are all the rage these days? Here’s where to start.

CARNEVINO

If your measure of a great wine bar is the number of wines by the glass offered, look elsewhere. If you rate your wine tasting by quality – of the breadth and depth of the list, the bar snacks, the staff, and the mixology (should you stray into creative boozy territory) — then this is your place. The list is conveniently located inside the (massive) menu, and the mark-ups are not for the timid. But the excellence of everything – from the steaks to the pastas to the Super-Tuscan verticals – will take your breath away.

LOTUS OF SIAM

Robert Parker (yeah, that Robert Parker) calls Lotus’s wine card the greatest German wine list in America, and we have no reason to argue with him. It’s also shoulder-deep in sake, Alsatian whites, and Austrian Grüner Veltliners – all of which match (in surprising ways) Saipan Chutima’s fierce and fiery country Thai cooking.  This is where you’ll find almost every wine professional in town on their day off, usually at a table groaning with Riesling bottles.

SAGE

The trouble with Sage is the food is so good sometimes you forget about the wine,  and the wine list is so good sometimes you forget about the food. I like California pinot noir and chardonnay with Shawn McClain’s innovative fare, but the list covers the world in all areas of consequence. Choices like this are a happy conundrum to have, whether you’re dining in the main room or hanging out in the stunning bar.

 HEARTHSTONE KITCHEN & CELLAR

Great wine drinking in the ‘burbs is harder to find than a corner without a fast food franchise. Hearthstone deserves props for actually having a wine program, and for a list that breaks down according to varietal character – “Big Reds,” “Crisp, Clean & Lean,” “Voluptuous But Light,” etc. The by-the-glass selection is solid, but what really gets our attention is the ½ off Monday night specials, that allows for some serious drinking of some serious bottles. That discount only counts for bottles under a Benjamin, but if you’ve got the coin, $2,500 for a bottle of ‘o5 DRC Echezeaux, or $2,800 for some Screaming Eagle, are also flat out steals.

BIN 702

Downtown Las Vegas is so wine-challenged it makes Summerlin look like Napa Valley. Amidst all of the bars and hipster hangouts, though, this teeny tiny space in Container Park holds forth with small selection of interesting reds and whites from around the globe – most in the $30-$60 range. Wine snobs will be underwhelmed, but for those looking for a break from craft cocktails and exotic coffees, it’s an oasis.