The hidden costs of fine dining

The year had hardly begun when the news reverberated across the world of fine dining: Noma, “the world’s best” restaurant, is closing at the end of 2024. “What does this mean for the future of fine dining?” an astounded audience pondered.

Having listened to what food makers, thinkers, and critics have to say, and reflecting on my own experiences, I can’t help but wonder if it really should have been such a shock. After its closure, we are told, it will pivot from a high-end fine-dining establishment to an e-commerce-based production line, with a focus on developing products which, I’m sure, if they come from chef René Redzepi’s brilliant mind, will be next level and in keeping with Noma’s narrative.

Momofuku — a restaurant chain founded by chef and Redzepi’s longtime friend Dave Chang — for example, has for several years been building an online pantry store and media company. Others will follow. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Redzepi revealed that Noma had not made him a wealthy man, because revenues simply could not keep up with the expense of high-quality ingredients and fair compensation for employees. Our unsustainable economy has long been a place where inequality lives and breeds, especially in fine dining.

Various publications highlighted unfair labour practices when reporting on the Noma closure, but low wages, long hours, and unpaid internships have been the industry standard for ages. As a former restaurant owner, I must agree that if you want to buy the best ingredients, pay your team fairly (and on time), and make cover for your monthly overheads, you need cash flow. The priority is creating a margin on the food you sell. If you’re a chef owning a restaurant, you must spend as much time (if not more) with spread sheets as with pots and pans.

When I had my restaurant (Beijing Opera in Cape Town), I heard more than once from fellow restaurateurs that, “if they [staff] can get a taxi home and a McDonald’s burger, then it’s fine”, with the often-unexpressed subtext of “there’re plenty out there looking for this job, so you better overwork yourself to prove your worth”. For this reason, my vision of creating a space that was a cultural institution that used food as a vehicle to teach — making the establishment more than just an eatery — became more complex than I’d expected. I faced a conundrum: I had to pay fairly, as kitchen staff deserved more — they literally held my products in their hands. Of course, waitrons were also important in delivering the sales pitch every night, but I often wondered why waitrons could rent lovely, shared apartments in Tamboerskloof while kitchen staff had to take an hour-long taxi ride back to Khayelitsha late every night.

In applying this thought to action, I paid kitchen staff more, and was criticised for “not knowing how it works” and told that “it’s not a charity, it’s a business”. Countless hours of doing what I love in the kitchen were lost, and instead I was in front of a computer, running that business, balancing the books. But they did not balance. What I had created was unsustainable. Noma, as Redzepi told The New York Times, became unsustainable “financially and emotionally as an employer and a human being”. Both he and Chang have had to seek external support for their mental health. So did I. Burnout seems par for the course to modern restaurant people. But is the ideal worth it or did someone sell us a pipe dream instead? Does this calling require one to either be a trust-fund baby or have the kind of love that can endure an industry that values hard work, not wellness?

Redzepi was candid about his conflicting thoughts on a world where Michelin stars are held in the palms of a few who would have the world believe that their palates can decide for the masses. In Redzepi I see a chef, a culinary artist, navigating a world with systemic issues that run far too deep and complex to be shifted easily — and the more he was a part of it, the more he became the problem.

In an essay in Lucky Peach magazine he tried to express this sentiment, but I also saw a sense of disappointment with the world of fine dining — a disappointment with those who are sustaining the culture, the sheep-like audience, and the general sense of there not being sincere respect for the craft. Food preparation is an art, and he wants to return to that. We’re not unfamiliar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If one were to apply it to dining culture, one would go from eating to satisfy hunger to eating for taste (sensory experience) to eating for wellness to “food as edible art”. Costs increase at each level.

As a consumer, depending on what you value, you may want to have an experience. Perhaps to be exposed to the work of a great chef or culinary artist. Or because it’s hype- or Instagram-worthy. You may then say it’s worth the money. And art is an expensive experience, often the product of its maker’s hard work over many years of accumulated experiences and thoughts. At the same time, you could also say art should be accessible, easy to understand, and affordable.

In this world, criticism flows as freely as praise — and Noma is no exception — but because most critics have not run, let alone worked in, a restaurant, the focus of these debates has largely been on the culture itself, rather than what this closure has highlighted. The industry continues to face the inescapable issue of how to transform a system where only a few benefit, and how to create dignified livelihoods.

I’m a mother now and find myself more and more concerned about the future and how we can build a better world, not just on paper but also tangibly. The deep pain of Covid taught us vital lessons about this important industry and what it means to really support and sustain people and the economy. In facing these lessons, I see an opportunity to rethink dining culture and, more importantly, food security.

• Yang Zhao is a Wanted food columnist and former restaurant owner.

• From the March edition of Wanted, 2023.