Hello, and welcome to the CulinaryWoman Newsletter! A special greeting to new readers, especially members of the Krewe of Themis, the Mardi Gras organization of which I’m a member.
Today, New Orleans and many places around the world are celebrating the feast of St. Joseph, the father of Jesus. Here, it means church altars over flowing with food and appearances by flamboyant Mardi Gras masking Indians.
Wednesday marks the start of Ramadan. Wishing an easy fast to our Muslim friends and delicious Iftar gatherings. Ramadan Mubarak!
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Restaurants Are Retrenching - In A Mindful Way
“Close. We’re going to close.”
That scene in You’ve Got Mail always broke my heart. In it, Kathleen Kelly, played by Meg Ryan, says she has decided to shut the adorable Upper West Side bookshop founded by her mother, Cecelia.
Its sales have been devastated by the neighborhood arrival of Fox Books, a megastore owned by Joe Fox, played by Tom Hanks. It’s ironic that 25 years after the movie was made, independent bookstores are on the rise and well-known chains from the late 1990s have vanished.
But running a business is a challenge for any owner, and the business climate we are in past pandemic has made it even more difficult in the food world.
This past week, my favorite gelato shop in Chicago, Black Dog Gelato, announced that it was condensing from three shops to one. It is keeping its original store on Damen Avenue in Ukrainian Village.
Black Dog was a pop up that evolved into a storefront while I was living in Chicago in the early 2010s. It heralded the wave of artisanal gelato, which is now widely available but which was unique a decade ago. You saw Black Dog make “best gelato” lists, and owner Jessica Oloroso competed on the Food Network.
We happily stood in line on the tree-shaded street to see the interesting flavors that Jessica concocted. Eventually, Black Dog added a stand on Lake Street in the West Loop and another store in Logan Square.
But given the pandemic, staffing struggles and supply chain issues, Jessica says she’s exhausted, and she is not alone.
We’re seeing retrenchment happen all across the food world in the post-pandemic era, even among well-known chefs such as public television’s Vivian Howard.
People aren’t throwing in the towel completely, but they are cutting back to what is more easily manageable, and concepts that might better meet customers’ lifestyles than traditional restaurant formats.
Family and financial stresses
In a lengthy post on Instagram, Jessica explained that her decision to close in the West Loop was a no-brainer. In the past decade, the area exploded with popularity, attracting chains that once considered the neighborhood too remote to attract commerce. “Rents were crazy stupid, and so was trying to keep up with every large brand that set its sights on Chicago,” she wrote.
Closing the shop in Logan Square was tougher, because that neighborhood was the original place she wanted to put the gelato shop. But Covid hit small businesses everywhere hard. Both those locations lost money last year, and though demand is returning to normal, Jessica herself has not.
“I’m not the same person I was three years ago, and I don’t have the bandwidth/hustle to fix the problems that need to be fixed,” she wrote. “The Covid fatigue finally caught up to me. I needed to take a step back to focus on my health and my family for a while.”
A celebrity chef regroups, too
Hundreds of miles away, in the Carolinas, Vivian Howard faced her own existential crisis. She got enormous attention - and business - when she was featured on the public television program, A Chef’s Life.
It focused on her Kinston, N.C., restaurant, The Chef and the Farmer, run by Vivian and her then-husband, Ben Knight. They met in New York City, and moved home to the South to live in a property owned by his family. As The Chef and The Farmer took off, Vivian opened a second restaurant and oversaw a third in Charleston, S.C. She produced a second TV series and a cookbook.
In a candid conversation on The Sporkful podcast, Vivian said she felt enormous pressure to expand in order to be considered a food industry success. That was at odds with her goal, and that of many chefs, to be creative and delight customers. “We want the experience to be magical, memorable and enjoyable,” Vivian recently told Dan Pashman.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sporkful/id350709629?i=1000602952589
During the past few years, the underpinnings of Vivian’s world began to crumble. She and Ben divorced, leaving them to co-parent their twins. The Chef and the Farmer closed in 2022, with staff and owner burned out from Covid and its accompanying crises. While viewing the closure as temporary, she hit upon a concept called Viv’s Fridge.
These are a series of 10 grab and go smart refrigerators scattered around locations in North Carolina. Each is stocked with side and main dishes that feed four people, ranging from $25 to $85. To access them, a customer swipes a credit card, opens the door and picks out what they want.
Revamping the original idea
Vivian says the fridges have allowed her to grow her revenue “significantly” and think about the next iteration of Chef and the Farmer. She is reorganizing her business so that some employees can work during the day preparing fridge dishes, and others can work at night once the restaurant returns, presumably this year. It will only be open about three days a week, she says.
“The restaurant is going to exist to serve the people working in the restaurant, rather than me trying make enough profit so that I can open another restaurant,” Vivian told Dan.
In Chicago, Jessica decided she did not want to give up completely on the gelato business. “I love making gelato too much,” she wrote. Instead, “I will pour everything I have into the one shop, and will try to make it better than ever.”
Retrenching “feels like a bit of a failure,” she admits. But it is also a new beginning, like the one Vivian is getting, Jessica wrote. “I’m choosing to hold onto that, especially because not every business got a second chance.”
We are seeing chefs and businesses going through similar metamorphoses all over the country. Expect more stories of reinvention including one underway here in New Orleans. More on that soon.
Highclere Castle Cancels Its Big Weddings
Lest you think problems exist only on our side of the Atlantic, a crisis is underway in Britain, too. The departure of the U.K. from the European Union, known as Brexit, has been crippling for the restaurant world and especially for events venues.
One of those feeling the punch is Highclere Castle, the aristocratic center piece of the Downton Abbey television series and movies. The show transformed it into a destination for tourists and attracted lucrative business for weddings and corporate entertaining. In a typical summer, it hosted 25 weddings of more than 100 guests.
Not any more, says Fiona, Countess of Carnarvon, who operates the castle with her husband, the eighth earl. “We have stopped being able to offer any weddings of any substantial size because of Brexit,” she told CNN. “There are no staff.”
One big factor is the restriction that Britain placed on college students from abroad. Enrollments of international students at U.K. universities have fallen by 50 percent, and applications are down 40 percent. Students were a favorite source of staff for the castle, many of whom were drawn by its history and familiarity from TV.
Now, dozens of chairs and tables sit in storage, while adjustments have been made all across the 5,000 acre estate. It echos the belt-tightening that the fictional Crawley family had to do themselves a century ago.
But while big weddings are finished for now, there are new streams of revenue, such as gin, selling for around $30 a bottle. Americans are among its most avid customers, she says.
A New Host For The Great British Bake Off
In England, the effervescent Alison Hammond is a popular figure on morning television. Now, she is joining the cast of the Great British Bake Off.
Alison is replacing Matt Lucas as one of the show’s two co-hosts, joining goth actor Noel Fielding. She is the first person of color to play a role as host or judge, although Bake Off has regularly featured a diverse group of bakers.
Alison competed as a contestant on a 2020 celebrity version of the show. She was memorably flummoxed by the configuration of the ovens and thought the door of hers was missing.
Matt will not be missed: his humor often caused some head shakes, especially during the ill-fated Mexico Week last year. It will be fun to see how Alison’s peppiness plays off the seriousness of judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.
Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman
Next Sunday afternoon, I will be joining bakers, chefs and authors at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum here in New Orleans. Please come by for demos, panel discussions and book signings. I’m looking forward to meeting newsletter readers.
Up in Michigan, you are welcome to attend the Night for Notables sponsored by the Library of Michigan in Lansing on April 22. I’m looking forward to meeting my fellow honorees and seeing readers. Hopefully, the snow will be gone by then.
Thank you so much to the Krewe of Themis for featuring me last week in a post for International Women’s Day or in our case, month. It was truly an honor.
I can be reached at culinarywoman at gmail dot com. Follow my main Instagram account at michelinemaynard and my New Orleans adventures at micki_in_nola.
Allergy season has definitely arrived here. I hope everyone is staying healthy, wherever you are and whatever weather you are dealing with.
I will see our paid subscribers tomorrow with Red Beans and Advice and everyone else next week.
Re GBBO (which I have been binging on Netflix):
Paul has been a regular guest on Alison's morning show, and they get along famously -- lots of giggles -- she's going to fit right in on GBBO. Can't wait for the new season!
Noel grew on me, especially because he was so nice to the bakers. Matt just had no purpose.