It may sound like the standard set-up for a high-end restaurant of a particular Nordic bent, but it isn’t. Ilis is part of a crop of restaurants across the country eliminating the barriers between cooks and clientele, redesigning the workflow, changing the way dishes are created and making new demands of diners, too.
At Ilis, this view into the intricate inner workings of the kitchen doesn’t end when service begins—a small revolution in itself. There was a time when the average diner didn’t know or much care what happened in the kitchen. But after the publication of Anthony Bourdain’s 2000 tell-all book “Kitchen Confidential,” a working knowledge of restaurant-trade secrets became de rigeur for diners. Meanwhile, the Food Network was packaging chefs as stars of a magnitude never before seen in the food world.
By the time Fox launched “Kitchen Nightmares,” starring the famously irascible Gordon Ramsay, in 2007, the shouting bad-boy chef was a familiar figure. Then came a reckoning with workplace culture that extended far beyond restaurants. Even as kitchens cleaned up, however, and the movement toward a livable wage for all employees took hold, the division between front of house (dining room) and back of house (kitchen) remained entrenched. At Ilis and other restaurants, that’s shifting, fundamentally. Diners, too, are being asked to play by a different set of rules, even as new technology helps court their loyalty.
Don’t Say ‘Front of House’ and ‘Back of House.’
Most of Ilis’s 4,800 square feet is occupied by a massive open kitchen that makes the labor of producing meals transparent to diners in a way so-called open kitchens of the past did not. On one side of this kitchen is a smoker, two wood-burning ovens and a pair of wood-fired grills; on the other, a cold bar. (“Ilis” is a portmanteau of the Danish words for fire and ice.) Customers sit on three sides of the wide-open workspace.
“I wanted to build a restaurant inside of the kitchen,” explained chef and co-owner Mads Refslund, a handsome Dane who co-founded Copenhagen’s Noma, another game-changing restaurant, back in 2003. Even more unusual: how complete the dissolution is between front and back of house is. There are no servers; only cooks, who also serve. The teams work on alternating two-week schedules. “I thought it would be easy,” Refslund said. “But it wasn’t. It’s really f—-ing hard to be a good waiter.”
Co-owner Will Douillet has the job of optimizing service to compensate for lack of serving experience. Sparkling water, for instance, goes into handblown glassware, readily identified by bubbles in the glass; tap water, into clear glasses. Titanium consoles in the tables hold silverware for the entire evening. “Those little changes have made a massive difference,” said Douillet.
Refslund locates the seed of Ilis’s one-house philosophy in the egalitarian experience of his early career. “In Denmark…everyone gets paid the same,” he said. “The whole tipping system is so stupid.”
Other restaurants, too, are erasing the distinction between front and back of house. At Lita, an Iberian restaurant that opened last year in Aberdeen, N.J., chef David Viana and co-owner Neilly Robinson don’t hire cooks or servers: “We hire hospitality professionals,” Viana said. Two teams of five cooks work one-week shifts, alternating between front and back of house. These employees are salaried and paid equally. Robinson estimates compensation—salary, tips and overtime—between the high 70,000s and low 80,000s. According to Viana, it’s about building careers, even beyond this restaurant. “So many chefs never get a chance to meet customers,” he said. “But those customers are their potential investors.”
At Che Fico in San Francisco and the newly opened Che Fico Parco Menlo (in Menlo Park, Calif.), chef David Nayfeld maintains a nominal distinction between front- and back-of-house workers but adds a 10% “dine-in” charge to all checks as well as suggesting gratuity, all of which is then split between the two groups. “We’ve tried to align the incentives of the entire team, from the landlord to the porter,” he said. “Everyone benefits from higher sales. This seems like the only fair way to run a business like this.”
At Ilis, it means that some of the finer points of service are missing, Douillet allowed: “Yeah, you might see the back of their hand, but who cares?” The payoff is a passion for, say, surf clams that can only be summoned by someone who has spent hours sealing them with beeswax.
Don’t Send Compliments to the Chef.
An enduring restaurant-world myth holds that all dishes are conceived and executed by the chef. Commonly, only a chef’s name graces the menu; sometimes, the chef de cuisine’s. But a few restaurants are extending the credit.
For years, Amanda Cohen, the New York chef behind Dirt Candy, followed tradition at her high-end vegetarian restaurant. But during the pandemic, she began doing things differently. “I had this great staff,” she said. “And I thought it was only fair that if they were going to take the time to create a dish, they should get credit.” Now, her menus bear not only her name but also the names of the cooks who originated the dishes.
At Sap Sua in Denver, married chefs and co-owners Anna and Ni Nguyen draw inspiration from Ni’s Vietnamese upbringing. But that doesn’t mean he is the sole creator. Guests at Sap Sua—and followers of Nguyen on Instagram—are told that the cold vermicelli dish with crab broth was created by a young Vietnamese cook named Kenny Doan, and the fried tofu in tomato stew was made by the restaurant’s chef tournant, Theo Bodor. The menu lists Doan and Bodor along with every other employee at Sap Sua, from the host to the dish-washing team, in alphabetical order. “There’s no hierarchy,” Ni said, “because we’re all one team.”
Don’t Slip a Fifty to the Maitre D’.
Once, a maitre d’ could make the difference between getting a table or not, a bad table or a power table, VIP status or the Joe Schmo treatment. It didn’t always involve a large bill discreetly offered. With the investment of time, eye contact and many meals purchased, restaurant regulars were afforded certain privileges and perks.
Today, no matter how restaurateurs try to incentivize stability in the front of house, hosts often come and go. Now a new industry is selling technology to maintain relationships between diners and restaurants. Blackbird Labs, founded by Ben Leventhal—former CEO of the restaurant-reservation service Resy—recently raised $24 million in funding for its turbocharged loyalty program. The Blackbird app allows guests to check in to participating restaurants and earn perks such as secret courses and free Champagne. The company has plans to convert “regular” status on the app into blockchain-backed fungible tokens called $FLY that can be redeemed at participating restaurants.
At Principe, a new restaurant in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood that signed on to Blackbird in September, there are four tiers of regular status, starting on the fifth visit and increasing every five check-ins thereafter. Perks range from chips with your drink to bites from the raw bar. “The perks increase in intensity and generosity,” said Tony Carson, the restaurant’s general manager. Blackbird identifies where and who a customer is to facilitate personalized treatment. “When you have a turnover of managers, there is a digital record of a regular on which I can train them”—a brave new world indeed, Carson acknowledged. “Back in the day, you became a regular because you went to a restaurant and the same person greeted you,” he said. “They didn’t need a piece of technology. But those days are gone.”
Don’t Miss the Drama Over at the Grill.
The open kitchen has entered a new era. At Ilis, in Brooklyn, every night is a complex ballet with no backstage. All aspects of cooking and service are on display, and diners observe with avid curiosity.
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