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Creating a culinary paradise


Stigand

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We know there are good places to eat in and bad ones. But can you turn a culinary wasteland into a gastro-paradise? And if so, how?

In most cases great eating neighbourhoods, towns or regions evolve organically over years or decades. They require a lot of factors to be aligned. It’s hard to have a great restaurant without good suppliers. But there’s little incentive to grow great produce if consumers care more about price than quality (q.v. this discussion on the ‘rubber tomato’ phenomenon on the website of the economist Brad De Long). Equally, if diners don’t care much about good food, setting up a great restaurant is going to be an unrewarding business (see herefor Paul Krugman using this logic to explain why British restaurants have historically been so bad).

I’m curious about whether you can deliberately improve things, and if so how.

I can think of a few cases where this has worked, but in each case, it’s worked differently. Marylebone in London is a great example of central planning. This district changed from an ho-hum stretch of central London into a foodie heaven because of a long-term campaign by the De Walden estate, which owned many of the leases. They encouraged a farmer’s market, great vendors (the butcher the Ginger Pig, cheese overlords La Fromagerie, the cookshop Divertimenti) and restaurants (Providores, Orrery) to open up with attractive rents, and have both created a cluster and made themselves rich in the process (the value of their real estate has skyrocketed). In Berkeley in California, by contrast, a lot seems to have been driven by the singular energy of Alice Waters, who transformed not just the restaurant scene but also her supply chain and her customers’ expectations. And this is one of the things that Slow Food seems geared to doing.

So my question is – has anyone had experience of an area making a rapid and intentional transition from culinary mediocrity to excellence? If so, what made it work? And can it be replicated?

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If you have enough money, you can make it happen. You don't need local anything -- you just bring in excellent chefs and FedEx whatever ingredients you need from anywhere. Las Vegas is the prime example of this formula working, and similar things are happening in other gaming destinations as well as in places with petrodollars to burn.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Leith and the Grassmarket are two areas in Edinburgh that seemed to become transformed in the space of what? 20- 30 years? When I lived there in the early 70's those were two areas of town you did not go to at night. When I visited the city a few years ago, both areas were sizzling hot: great restaurants, lots of buzz. Completely different feel. Perhaps as food has become sexy over the past decade, people with vision and backers have been confident to pursue their dreams.

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