What does this year’s ‘50 Best’ say about our food world?
I always dislike the 50 Best but especially this year.
December 15, 2020
The restaurant award machine was noticeably different in 2020 and our questioning of accolades as reflections of a racist, patriarchal, classist restaurant system was too — just not everywhere.
Earlier this year, the James Beard Foundation announced that they would be pushing back their May awards ceremony over COVID safety concerns. Ultimately, the show went on but it was sliced in half. Restaurant and Chef categories were cancelled; the absence of Black chefs in the midst of national protests against systemic racism and police violence was impossible to ignore. Dropping the categories was an effort to avoid scrutiny of their active participation in racist systems and institutions; the award world’s equivalent of a last ditch “food was always political” letter from the editor. The foundation felt the heat in the media and across social media all the same. Its reconfiguration to a more equitable awards system will apparently require so much soul searching that they won’t return until 2022.
Michelin likely took that as a cue. They quietly continued working on a country-by-country basis depending on restaurant openings. In the United States, annual awards were postponed because as of September only 13% of Michelin-starred restaurants had been open consistently enough to fit the voting standards. The 50 Best, which is the only international restaurant award to reach this far south, made a similar decision. They did not release a global 50 Best list (which sways heavily towards European and North American restaurants) but did release regional rankings in Asia and South America. What does the absence of awards in some regions and not others say about the restaurant world?
Argentina’s restaurants haven’t been less devastated by the pandemic. Although it isn’t a contest, workers here have arguably been pounded harder. The local restaurant industry is fueled almost entirely by workers that are only partially registered or completely off the books. It is registered hours and pay stubs that determine government aid for families (little of which actually exists) and severance, which is also commonly negotiated off the books. In terms of federal relief to workers, some were eligible to receive periodic checks for 10,000 pesos. For context, as of December an average family of four needs $110,000 to make ends meet. I wrote about how this has strengthened a parallel food scene run out of private residences for Life & Thyme — this year restaurant workers innovated or starved.
Buenos Aires restaurants that appeared on the list don’t exist outside of this reality. In fact, the 50 Best website mentions nothing about what the winners did in 2020. How did they adapt or innovate? If the awards institute told that part of the story, they’d have to reveal that in the absence of tourist money some began selling hot dogs and hamburgers. Or that Chila was closed for nearly six months, Don Julio closed the kitchen and functioned mostly as a butcher shop and Narda Comedor boarded up and began construction on a different location. All that might suggest that the restaurants hailed as the best aren’t as relevant as the brand would like the food world and its consumers to think that they are.
When we do read through the bios of each winner, the common thread appears to be cooks working with small producers. But that is hardly a distinguishing feature to these particular restaurants. For the last half decade, cooks across the spectrum of the restaurant world have been noticeably seeking out more direct relationships with producers and products that are healthier for consumers, producers and the environment, and many are doing it with projects that are more inclusive, which in my opinion, is far more innovative than a tasting menu for transitory visitors with zero investment in the cultural landscape of the city.
Are these restaurants truly better than the rest? So good that they don’t even have to stay open to receive accolades? Or do they just have more economic and social capital?
When we understand the mechanisms of local food journalism and power structures of the restaurant system itself, the answer is crystal clear. Regional awards speak less to restaurant health across the world and more to the compliance of the hegemonic restaurant structure. The circle of food industry people that are typically awarded in global rankings (cis, white males that are far more likely to lead kitchens or score investors to build their own) would put chefs and award institutions at risk of being called out for patting themselves on the back in countries where the food press is more critical. In a year of such demonstrative suffering of the restaurant workforce, clear disparities of opportunity and access and the crumbling structures of the industry, awarding celebrity chefs would be so ridiculous that some in the US preemptively took themselves out of the running.
It is obvious why cooks and restaurants want to be on these lists and spend considerable money in the form of publicists, events and comped meals to remain on them. Foreign accolades and awards elevate status. Status is power and impunity. Status is the great trick of capitalism: we fight for our own well-being rather than for everyone’s because capitalism teaches us that everything is infinite except access and privilege. Accolades and awards don’t only turn into more reservations, they can help lead to lucrative book deals, tv gigs and corporate sponsorships. They can land you an exclusive spot on Netflix. They can help you get onto expert panels, conferences and cross continental events. All of this obviously adds up to a creative and economic quality of life that likewise is treated like a prize and not a common right.
Those with their hands on the prize are sure to insulate them. When Phil Rosenthal came to Buenos Aires, four of the seven guest chefs on the show had appeared on the list. When Gelinaz, a worldwide collective of chefs, announced an event at Don Julio earlier this month, it featured a line up of 7 white male chefs, all of which had appeared on the 50 Best (6 of which are on this year's list). Chef Julieta Oriolo was eventually added to the line-up after women across the food industry spoke up. The restaurant defended their decision by noting that they had far more women than men on staff, ignoring the fact that most of those women work front-of-house. It was Gelinaz that ultimately decided to extend the invitation. The scandal played out across social media rather than in newspapers and food publications. Despite a handful of writers being catalysts to the critique, traditional media systems and influential journalists were largely absent from the conversation or chimed in only after the changes had been made to the line up.
The scandal proved that the discourse around restaurants in the media is limited by other interests. In Argentina (I assume it is similar across the southern continent) food journalists working in traditional journalism systems are afforded little autonomy. Restaurant review, which makes up the bulk of food journalism in Buenos Aires, has no budget. Journalists are dependent on handouts or pay out of pocket; pay is so low that out of pocket expenses could mean paying to work. The result is that most reviews are like a movie trailer — carefully edited experiences that work to sell the restaurant rather than analyze it. That coverage is dependent mostly on invites is automatically exclusionary; writers are bound to the projects with the luxury of finance and time to seek coverage out. And no one is going to bite the hand that feeds it; any critique in the wrong direction means putting your lifeline at immediate risk. So it is hardly surprising that a best restaurant list was greeted with applause and chef and restaurant features.
This is all to say that the 50 Best List isn’t the sickness, it is a symptom of a system that roots itself in inequitable power structures. A rotten restaurant system isn’t unique to Argentina, but the absence of critique from institutions that have the power (and responsibility) to spur a public discourse makes those structures more powerful. Corrupt systems never benefit no one. Someone always stands to gain; they wouldn’t exist otherwise. It’s time to ask: who benefits and how? At what cost?
The cost to change it won’t come cheap. Like any rotten system, the only way out is to bury it and plant something stronger. Journalists must demand better pay and budgets; to do that they must admit that they have more in common with the dishwasher whose subjugation we are taught to normalize than the celebrity chef we are taught to fawn over. Owners and chefs, even well-intentioned ones, must vocally reckon with their participation in a broken business system. The restaurant world is legislated to force business owners to cut corners and disenfranchise workers. When more people work as equitably as possible within the confines of an inequitable system, it becomes harder to deny that an alternative is both necessary and possible. If anything, this fanzine is demonstrative of lots of people with little acknowledgement doing just that. And the more those peoples’ stories are acknowledged, the clearer it becomes that others take advantage of the system by choice and because they can. And what if the latter was what we awarded? Imagine a prestigious international award that was voted for exclusively by restaurant workers. Imagine an award that contemplated a chef or restaurants participation across the entire chain. How quickly would the industry change if accolades were based on commitment to inclusivity and equity?
This year, the ground shifted beneath us. The old guards want those tectonic plates to realign to their old positions but the ground has broken. Going back to business as usual would be putting a bandaid on a broken arm. How scary and wonderful, right? What could a new system look like? What would food writing be with more freedom to ask questions? How could that freedom change the motivations of cooks to create and restaurants to be better? How might the city’s foodscape transform? Plenty of cooks at the base are already talking and rebuilding but how many of us will accompany them?
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