Adam Reiner

Nothing that you ask for in a restaurant is ever easy.

The natural state of a restaurant is chaos, and all of the people that are working behind the scenes, their job is to try to guard you as the guest from the chaos behind the scenes.

I definitely would say that the restaurant economy is struggling and probably broken in many ways that most restaurant goers can't really see.

But I think it's important to remember that whatever things that we feel as restaurant customers, the restaurants themselves also feel.

So obviously, prices are going up.

And it's something that's very frustrating for people who love to dine out because the cost of dining out is more expensive.

But

It's exactly the same behind the scenes.

Food costs are rising, labor costs are rising.

And so it really is kind of, I think, creating a dynamic where restaurants aren't necessarily, you know, as able to provide the type of experiences that they used to.

But they certainly are, I think, working as hard as they can to not let the public see them sweat.

And when they're at their most graceful, they do that well.

So right, yeah, they always say you remember, you know, you'll you'll tell 10 friends about the bad restaurant experiences, but you may only tell one about the great ones.

Well, what I find most interesting when you look back at the history of restaurants, and I'm not a historian, so I don't know if I'm going to be able to answer this question as completely as you'd like, but I can certainly give, I think, some insights on the past, let's say, 200 years.

And what you find in the United States, they're really the first...

A modern restaurant as we know it is Delmonico's in New York City, which started to serve like a a la carte menu in around 18, I think in the 1830s.

So, you know, you're looking at about less than 200 years of history when you have a restaurant that is offering choice on the menu where you're able to sit with your private party and not at a communal table.

where you're able to dine at a time of your choice as opposed to a prescribed time, right?

So before that, a lot of the places that you would find food would be like taverns or inns, and you would come to dine there at a prescribed time.

You would sit down with everybody else.