The restaurant critic’s topic sentence says it all: “Yes, financially viable restaurants are about nice meals out. But, as it happens, they are about much more besides.”
Jay Rayner goes on to explain, and I love Jamie Dornan’s testimony about bartending: “It’s great for learning people skills, communication and dealing with wankers. All very handy in entertainment.”
Note that there is no pay wall. The Guardian and its sister paper The Observer (source of Rayner’s piece) are among the more reliable sources of information currently being offered from a global perspective. Click the link, take a moment, and think about the hospitality sector in a cultural context.
When pubs and restaurants close, our culture is a casualty, by Jay Rayner (The Observer)
Before Stanley Tucci was Stanley Tucci, he was just another out-of-work actor striving to make ends meet by pulling front-of-house shifts in a restaurant. “Like so many people in the arts, without the income and flexible hours that restaurant work affords,” he told me, “I would have struggled to support myself until I was able to do so as an actor.” The theatre star Anna-Jane Casey says she needed that work to sustain herself through gaps between jobs. Likewise, the Sherwood and Dear England writer James Graham says working in restaurants enabled him to take in shows and make contacts through numerous Edinburgh festivals. Or as Jamie Dornan says, about his barman years before his big break: “It’s great for learning people skills, communication and dealing with wankers. All very handy in entertainment.”
The hospitality sector, which provided all these brilliant, creative people with vital employment in the early years of their careers, faces unprecedented challenges. At least five British restaurants closed every day in 2023, up 45% from the year before. About 50 pubs closed every month in the first half of 2024
Photo credit: Toast.
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“Edibles & Potables” is Food & Dining Magazine’s Sunday slot for news and views that range beyond our customary metropolitan Louisville coverage area, as intended to be food (and drink) for thought.
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