Jeff Jarvis (via NYT) is twittering and blogging about an open source restaurant:
“I twittered that I was having fun writing the chapter in my book about what a restaurant run on Googlethink might look like (besides being decorated in gaudy primary colors)…
…I have lots of ideas about an open and transparent restaurant operation, experience, and community. If you have any ideas you’d like to share, please join in.”
I reckon we’ve had open source and transparent wine lists in Australia for sometime. It’s called BYO. And it is coming back. For example, BYO is available every night at Esposito at Toofey’s and Thursday nights at Libertine for a bargain $10. St Jude’s Cellars is doing something similar with its attached bottle shop where $15 is added to the retail price of the wine drunk at the restaurant.
Wine lists cause a lot of confusion with restaurants charging roughly 2.5 times wholesale price sometimes for the very stuff we drink at home. In Nobu’s case the mark-up is three times.
What about an open source menu? Could that work on a BYO model too? Diners turn up with ingredients, possibly home caught or grown, and leave it to the chef. Diners pool ingredients with other tables.
Perhaps, the restaurant has an iphone app which will identify what all the other diners are bringing to the table at the request of the chef. Each diner simple pays $10 for each course for preparation.
As with the internet the chef has to deal with a lot of crap.
Personally, I’ll turn up with a locally sourced Perigord truffle, some Tuna (but unlike Nobu I can’t source otoro direct from Port Lincoln), eggs from my neighbours hens and beets and salad leaves from my inner city veggie garden.
What will you bring and what do you want your open source restaurant to be like?
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
How would you control food quality? What if there’s something wrong with your neighbour’s eggs, or the fish you caught today was off by the time you got it to the restaurant? I like it in theory, but I think health risk would kill this idea.
Isn’t an “open source restaurant” just a fancy name for holding a barbecue?
I’d wonder if diners would put up with arriving a few hours early in time for prep – it would really limit the sorts of food that could be served.
In certain Hong Kong fishing villages, you visit the market and tell the fishmonger you’re buying from your name and to which restaurant you’re going to. They send the seafood to the venue and you discuss how you’d like it prepared. When you’re fussy about quality this is the ideal way to go. It also means that the venue does not need to worry about ordering fresh seafood and with that, about their stock spoiling.
I noticed that the New York Times Blog have also run an article on the subject, entitled ‘Google’s Ethos, Applied to Dining’. Last time I looked there were about 13 pithy comments on that post.
BTW I’ve just posted that TasteSpotting is back online – so now’s the time to unleash those porny shots you’ve been accumulating.
How about this? Everybody’s welcome. If you bring no ingredients you pay restaurant prices. The more “chef approved” ingredients you bring, the less you pay, maybe down to $0.00. For standard fare like tomatoes etc you get a little off the price, but for the Perigord Truffle you eat free and get to come back and eat the next night for free as well.
Sounds like a fun dream but health requirements have burst the dreamy bubble quickly for me.
It will never happen, and if there was some why to get the food approved etc (storage temps are always the issue) then the time for prep and all the organisation involved in coordinating back of house would kill any money the punter might save.
What about a communial chef and butler, but we would all need to move into a hippy commune and share everything…
Jack
Sound’s like fun to me, but I luv cooking. Luv BYO’s -Tetsuya’s is BYO. Who remebers Let’s Eat, where Vital Ingredient is in Prahran now? Buy your produce downstairs & go upstairs to eat. Remember??
Yes, I remember Let’s Eat, agood idea ahead of its time perhaps.
How about we buy some cheap land in Tassie and start our community and commune for food bloggers. The weather can only get better with global warming. The Gobbler can be chef.
Sticky – Come to think of it, the HK model is similar to what I did at a few beachside places in Sihanoukville and Kep in Cambodia – there were some great cooks there, but they were limited by their own ingredient budget. I’d either buy some crabs/fish that were destined for elsewhere earlier in the day and drop them in (or give them some cash to do it for me) and then turn up for dinner later.
LOL Image poor Gobbler, the chef to a whole lot of food bloggers… what a nightmare!
Jack
Hi Ed,you had better be quick with buying the land, its gone up heaps! In fact much has bee bought be ex-mainland farmers chasing the rain, they either go to far North Queensland or down here.
Would love to cook for all youse bloggers, hope everyone likes bacon & eggs.
I like the idea of this open source restaurant, particularly the theme of bartering where no money changes hands. However like some previous comments, the issues of appropriate food handling woukld be a major hurdle to overcome & police. Just look at how community fundraising stalls seem to make the headlines for poisoning dozens of people with innocent looking but toxic cupcakes.
Many pubs have tpyed with a communal barbie where one purchases their meatage of choice to cook it the way they like. Interestingly the idea is not dissimilar to the hot pot shops of old Europe, the village bakers oven or the curry bucket of India.
Phil, remindscme to go back to Cambodian beaches before it’s to late.
Gobbler, Perhaps the current financial crisis will drive the prices down. I can hope…
I’d bring ….. a few mates. If they couldn’t contribute the ingredients then thy would certainly be able to contribute to some conversation.
For something along this line, there is a place in Surry Hills in Sydney. It’s called Table for 20. Not necessarilly BYO ingredients, but they probably wouldn’t mind if you did.
http://www.tablefor20.blogspot.com/
Hello Ed
Happens all the time here, an abalone diver [legal] has about 100 credits here from years ago after doing a class on seafood and bringing his own. The last seafood class a couple of weeks ago had some blue fin tuna caught by a participant from Warnambool, fisherman often drop off stuff they think is unusual. There was a time when all the crabs caught in the old craypots were discarded in Lorne. Windfall and in excess produce comes in the door even after 8 years of being closed. Its ideal and sensible, not an “open sourced” new age concept but a time honoured logical consequence of being local and seasonal. All restaurants do this to some extent.
Steve, Sounds great.
George, it sound swonderful old-fashioned way of doing business that few do nowadays. When do you next have a couple of spare seats?
Next free table is a 2 on August 17 then a 2 or the private room for 10 on August 17 after that its less tight . We will also be doing Saturday lunches from Sept 7 which should be a lot less frantic. Last minute bookings are also worth a look as there are sometimes late cancellations.
Barter is the only way I can put the local truffle on at our price point so its like a dream. I have ordered 50 innoculated trees which arrive this week. Winemakers bring wine we have secured a parcel of Pinot from Pollocksford that will never be made again as the vineyard has beeen sold, beef producers alert us to special carcasses its so simple if you have a menu thats flexible. This is what makes a restaurateurs life rich anyone can do it.
Thanks George. Could you clarify that last sentence please. Anyone can do what? Not become a restaurateur?? Surely you aren’t suggesting that???
Hopefully barter for space at your tables? I could do that.
Anyone can encourage growers/producers to bring their products to restaurants in exchange for cash or services. Vegetables and fruits are great as there are no food police laws about such produce yet. Also no GST. BYO is especially good if the O part is indeed your own work. Small parcels of wine say 10 boxes.
Its a bit like a farmers market, in that small producers that have say 20kg of garlic can get a fair price from a restaurant as opposed to having to discount to a 50% markup that a retailer may have to charge.
Proffesional foragers do this well with fungi but this is a bit dangerous and I would not encourage it.
And yes anyone can become a restaurateur no licence needed yet [C.O.W]. How long they last would be up to them.
Barter for a table yes if its your work/windfall/fits the menu?
btw now is the time to hang the piggy bits on the balcony but that would not be a barter item. We all know why.
George, I’ll check with the missus etc but already there seems to be a group forming for the room of ten.
My mum and dad used to provide bay leaves in return for coffee at a place in Apollo Bay. I thought that was wonderful.
But back to the idea of how an open source restaurant would work – what about just an open source menu, as in the menu being fluid and allowing suggestions from the punters? Dishes, or perhaps even recommendations for changing the dishes? Would that work in practise? More of a restaurant 2.0 than an open source idea…
To Adam’s point, many Chinese restaurants already offer this. My father for example will just ask ‘what’s fresh?’ and in response to what is on offer will nominate dishes that all Chinese Si Fu have in their repertoire. The chef then will play around with it and put his own spin on the classics. The same goes for banquets, you phone ahead and discuss options.
For the Chinese it is more about what’s just come in – being the freshest – combined with the flair of the kitchen brigade. They are suspicious of any fresh produce that has been in storage. That’s why in Asian wet markets they buy their goods live and have it attended to immediately, before going home to cook it. It’’s a healthy approach which sadly in HK is currently being undermined by the latest outbreak of Bird flu.
Adam Please? restaurant 2? where are you coming? from. Are you so in love with I.T that you cant tell the difference between virtuality and reality?
Bay leaves for coffee great swap? something gathered for free in exchange for tradeable comodity with labour and hospitality.
I suppose you would also ask the chef to cook your favourite little special? Gee that would be soooo cooooool.
I saw a version of a restaurant 2 in Steve Martins’ LA story, when you make your booking,after checking your profile the restaurant lets you order the chicken…. I like that.
Hey G Biron,
Just playing with the metaphors. Open source being an IT phrase, I just ran with it.
2.0 is so yesterday. What about restaurant 3.0?