It ’s Thursday dark in America ’s Hot New Food Town , and everyone wants to be in the mix . Friends textbook Friend and hops in Ubers to meet on the cool street in the nerveless neighbourhood , the one with the huitre bar with the guile cocktail program and that omakase spot with the craft cocktail program and that indie movie theater that does n’t have a craft cocktail programme , butisin an old warehouse .
Over sherry and/or mezcal cocktails , these friends talk the small talk of a Hot New Food Town : about how much the Hot New Food Town has already changed just in the past few year ; about the traffic ( worse ) ; about that neighborhood on the east side that used to be bad ( it ’s effective now ) ; about how two years ago one of them got soak right over there in broad daylight in front of that one-time nose dive , but look , now it ’s a boutique stroller - clean service ( with a craft cocktail computer program ) ; about the rocket snag and what all this must be doing to the older resident of that neighbourhood .
Just josh , that last part never came up – but anyway , have you tried that new venison charcuterie point ? Or the proto - Tiki speakeasy above that Gallic epicerie ? Did you try David Chang might be thinking about opening a Momofuku ? Also , does anyone even sleep with what city we ’re in ? And more significantly , does it even matter ?
Jason Hoffman/Thrillist
Like most things great and mildly annoying , the Hot New Food Town steamroller can be follow back to Portland , Oregon . On September 26th , 2007 , Eric Asimov of theNew York Timeswrote a story titled"In Portland , a Golden Age of Dining and Drinking . “The story check all the box that would before long become a templet of sorts : local chefs in " funky neighborhoods " ; " a cadre of farmers " supplying them with locally grown bounty ; " low-cost real estate " for chefs who " have a vision " and desire to " take risks without describe up corporate angel " ; and visibility of two of these chefs – one move from New York ( Vitaly Paley ) and the other from Northern California ( Gabriel Rucker ) .
As we love , Portland cursorily morphed into stenography for anything and everything hipster and hirsute , and it proudly wore the Best New Food Town sash until Charleston snatched it off in 2011 , thanks tothe comer of Sean Brock ’s Husk , and a slew of other James Beard - nominated , across the country proclaim eating place like Hominy Grill , FIG , and McCrady ’s . The class after that was Austin ’s turn to shine , helped along by Aaron Franklin moving his now - world - noted barbecue to a brick - and - howitzer , the explosion of bars and food go-cart on bothRainey Stand einsteinium 6th in East Austin , and universally praised chef like Tyson Cole and Paul Qui . Nashville follow , withRolf & Daughtersheadlining , hybrid ginmill / eating place / bowling alleysfrom the Goldberg brothers of Strategic Hospitality gap , and everyone outside of the South simultaneouslydiscovering hot chicken .
Jason Hoffman/Thrillist
And now , this year , it is Pittsburgh ’s time to bath in the soapy , extolment - filled water of the national food spiritualist . Zagat name theSteel City the top food townof 2015 . TheTimes ’ Jeff Gordinier followedthe Hot New Food Town templateflawlessly , managing to play in millennials , chef importune on feeding people rabbit and do as pioneers in " dingy " expanse , and deploy phrases like " other adoptive parent " and " purple - hairy gratuitous spirit . "
And around and around we go . The fact that you’re able to fundamentally drop a line each of these solid food - city stories before you even get to said urban center got me marvel : is all this less about a city doing what it does near , and more about its willingness to faithfully uphold the dogma of the HNFT playbook and join the Good Food Revival Movement ?
Also : what the hell is the Good Food Revival Movement ?
Jason Hoffman/Thrillist
Since it ’s the Golden Age of calling things the Golden Age , set aside me , friends , to put forth a possibility to avail explain why we ’re ascertain this explosion of Hot New Food Towns in America . I call it – you already guessed , but I ’m saying it anyway – the Good Food Revival Movement .
Unlike the nineteenth - 100 tent revitalization from which I ’ve steal the name , the GFRM ’s religion is not Christianity , but rather an educated view of how to work with food and drink . The movement has several prophesier , depend on the type of serious Word you ’re search , ranging from Alice Waters ( farm - to - table ) and Thomas Keller ( okay dining ) , to David Chang ( hip - casual Asian crossovers ) , April Bloomfield ( get up gastropubs),Chris Bianco(artisanal pizzas),Aaron Franklin(modern barbecue ) , Danny Meyer ( detailed tending to front of the business firm ; beautiful place ) , and Sasha Petraske ( craft cocktail bar ) . It ’s important to sympathise that acolytes need not drop meter specifically with any of the oracle . simply being amongst someone mold by their unlike empyrean of influence is enough .
Once an acolyte has learned the Good Word of Good Food ( unremarkably by spending meter working at a eatery in one of the Good Food origin cities like San Francisco , New York , or Chicago ) , they often return alter to their home urban center , or at least to a second- or third - level city with cheaper rents , less competition , and humble expectations , where they have a better chance to express themselves creatively .
Like most thing enceinte and mildly vexing , the Hot New Food Town juggernaut can be traced back to Portland .
Now , some of these chefs and bartenders are simply talented mimics , able-bodied to copy what they saw succeed within the large cities , and , for the most part , that is fine . It might even fetch them initial and/or sustained fiscal success . But the unfeignedly innovative chef and barkeeper use that knowledge as a baseline to create their own unique thing . Before , say , 2007 , if that novel thing was happening in a random city , it might be overlooked . But two factors changed that :
1 ) The rock maven - ification of chef by the 24/7 food media
2 ) Instagram , et al .
all of a sudden you did n’t need to be in a tumid city , you just needed a hot Instagram business relationship and a savvy public relations soul who could get your forward - call up culinary art in front of that 24/7 food media , which is thirst for narrative and love unexplored place doing cool new thing . Once it ’s build that you might actually be doing the Hot New Thing , you might get a visit from EaterorBon AppetitorFood & Wineor Serious Eats orLucky Peach(or hell , evenme ) . And mayhap after confirm that you are , indeed , doing a Hot New Thing , the writer will make small talk , and ask who else in your town is overspread the Good Word of Good Food .
And because you want to share the love , you will shout out the others in town stand by to the Good Food Revival Movement , and the original dojo which taught them the craft . Like the bartender down the street doing astonishing cocktails who used to work at The Violet Hour in Chicago . The chef two blocks over doing Chinese - American Riffian ( he did a year at Mission Chinese in SF ) . An artisanal donut guy who spent nine months at Blue Star .
And we will go back to our editor program and file a story , and the editor program will lick their chop , because they numerate at least three originative restaurant and bars doing Hot and Cool New Things in this city , and concord to what I commend from journalism schoolhouse , three is a tendency . And a month later , you may expect theNew York Timesto sendKim SeversonorJeff Gordinierto pop into your city for 36 hours and question you before your first service , and the week after that the Gray Lady has publishedHer Final Word , and you , friend , are now living in a Hot New Food Town .
That ’s the good thing . The maybe - not - so - good thing is just what amount after that .
Let ’s be clear : there is sure enough nothing amiss with more people use up well , using local farm , purpose for a higher level of service ; with ambitious chefs trying to invigorate their city ’s cuisines , and in turn make unexampled economies and sources of revenue for that city . Those are all good things .
But a less obvious consequence of the Good Food Revival and the birth of an increase internet of Hot New Food Towns across the country is the sense that what starts out feeling unique to each city when examined up close , finally starts to all look the same from a few steps back . And the trueness of the affair is chef / owner and eating house / measure groups are more and more incentivized and rewarded for exchanging their originality for Originality ™ , because a playbook now be mapping out on the button what you take to get Gordinier and theTimesin your town . If you build it ( using locally source reclaimed hardwood and a intention motive that pays homage to the construction ’s previous tenants ) , they will come .
And so it was for Pittsburgh .
Here is an uttermost CliffsNotes version of Pittsburgh ’s Good Food Revival Movement ( if you need more , talk to Big Burrito executive chef Bill Fuller , and David Bernabo , the human race behindFood Systems , a enthralling infotainment series about Pittsburgh ’s food vista ):
For a tenacious time , Pittsburgh was a shite food Ithiel Town . For one , you could n’t eat up brand . For two , there was no vivacious heathen scene , just a divide between , as Fuller put it , " really full-bodied people who ate in secret club , and their workers who cooked at home . Basically there was no middle - stratum dining . "
The ' 70s bring a little chip of Thai and Amerindic food , some sushi in the ' fourscore , but it was fundamentally a burgh of crimson sauce Italian restaurants , steakhouse , pierogies , and minor on sandwich / salad . ThenBig Burritorestaurant grouping came through in the ' 90s and raised the cake with locally source food ( working with farmers ) , creatively design restaurants , and a higher spirit level of avail . BB act like a culinary finish school / networking substance for sight of chef who go on to open up their own places ( Justin Severino , Kevin Sousa , etc . ) .
In 2007 , Pittsburgh aboriginal Sonja Finn came back from SF to open a modern pizza pie fleck calledDinettein the East Liberty region , five blocks from where she grow up . That same class , Legume , from Trevett Hooper , spread out with its own vivid direction on locally source food for thought . The Movement grew strong .
Then in 2011 , Richard DeShantz – another aboriginal son who ’d cooked under Charlie Trotter in Chicago – openedMeat & PotatoesDowntown . Severino openedCurein Lawrenceville . Justin Steel , Bobby Fry , Kevin Cox , and Michael Kreha launchedBar Marcoin the Strip District . And it run on from there .
If I see another thing turned into " pastrami , " I might lose my shit .
The point is this : in Pittsburgh , the template hold . A Laputan eating place mathematical group ( started by people who drop time in SF and NY ) answer as a creative caldron . Its acolytes go on to their own projects , which beget more projection from the masses make for them . Young people move to the city and color their hair unnaturally . An Ace Hotel unfold . And voilà : a granular industrial city becomes a Hot New Food Town .
But let ’s take a deeper look . It is true the city is live its own – powerless to stop the musical phrase – Golden Age of Food and Drink . But only on a local level . What ’s happening in E Liberty and Lawrenceville and the Strip District is n’t an explosion of new estimate , per se . They ’re just new to this place .
Look . This is not the story I intended to write . I interviewed chef and bartenders and food for thought writers and presidents of cool hotel groups all over the rural area because I was essay to infer the unspoilt and bad English of being named a Hot New Food Town , and what the backlash were one , two , and five age down the route . But when I examined each of the metropolis that was being lauded in these direction , and the same templates showed up again and again , it became unbearably obvious that we in the food media are perplex to one peculiar story , and just honor a novel city every clip one does its 2007 Portland picture .
I am as guilty or more guilty than most in perpetuate this narration . Every year I doThrillist ’s 21 honest New Restaurants in America , and I am absolutely vellicate when I can write about a eating house doing something cool in a metropolis we usually do n’t cover . As journalists , we love the estimate of the underdog , of that undiscovered position no one else knows about , so we perpetuate the myth that what it ’s doing is unexampled and creative , when , at best , it’smicro - creative .
You ca n’t blame a chef in Pittsburgh or Nashville or anywhere else who just wants to make good food and be able to make a living at it , and is savvy enough to discover that the nutrient medium tends to pay the most attention to places of a certain like . And once you get the nutrient media , you getthe diners that come after said solid food media , range from the hipster millennial detail who use trendy food as their societal currency , to the erstwhile Chowhound crowd who be given to innovate themselves as " foodies " using air quote . And that means crowd , successful restaurants . So really , if , as a chef , you ’re offer a litany of fiscal and critical motivator for doing the same sort of thing that has won praise in other cities , why would n’t you do it ?
To their credit rating , the chefs I talked to in Pittsburgh , to a human being / woman , all seemed to think the deluge of national press exposure is a little ridiculous . " I do n’t think it ’s a coincidence that once some of our restaurants were capable to open to hire NY PR firms , we started to see national vulnerability , " read Bill Fuller . " There ’s a persuasion here now where people are like , ' OK , stop recite everyone how flaming great we are . ' " He conk out on to talk about how many of the internal stories just get things wrong anyway . " I saw one story praising Justin [ Severino]‘sMorcilla , and how good it was . It was n’t opening for another two month . "
" masses interpret these stories , " says Severino , " and think that when they do to Pittsburgh , they ’re rifle to dine like they ’re in SF , but way cheaper . That ’s never going to find . The food culture here is really young . "
Chef Sonja Finn ofDinette(and consult chef at the Carnegie Museums ) couch it a unlike way : " We treasure the pressure obviously . But when you may see that the narrative is written before the writer gets to townsfolk , there ’s not much to be done . "
" Plus , " she laughs , " I want to see all those citizenry hollo us a Hot New Food Town come back through here in the winter . " * * *
In the ending , I ’m not even sure if any of this issue or should count to masses outside of my own little solid food - earthly concern bubble . As I said before , if people are caring more about what they eat , and food is better , local sodbuster are being supported , and chef are encountering more receptive - minded diners in cheaper places , perchance that ’s enough and I should just be felicitous that the Good Food Revival Movement contain billet at all .
But I ca n’t stop retrieve we can all do well . That the intellectual nourishment medium can stop treating every city that goes through this revival trend as the next culinary Shangri - La. That diners can stop complacently demand and rewarding the same types of things on each and every menu ( if I see another Brussels sprouts serve with / without Francis Bacon , or a vegetable " tartare , " or another fucking matter made into " pastrami , " I might drop off my shit ) . And that more chefs see past just precede a " conception " that go well in another city , and really try and advertize the gastronomical gasbag until that envelope is fill up with all sorts of weird , coolheaded , scary foods .
In David Chang ’s unbelievable " The State of Ramen " essay from last year , he mentioned his view on why food for thought and restaurants were becoming more consistent : " It ’s because there ’s no more thirst for knowledge , no accelerator for imagery or reason to endeavor to make new and unlike things anymore . "
Until we commence searching out and celebrate new and unlike thing , the Hot New Food Town playbook will keep replicate until every city ’s 5 head , E 6th , N Mississippi , King St , and Highland Ave just becomes a more conventionalized bod of homogeneity – post - suburban America ’s solvent to the strip promenade , where the exact same mass you reckon from every other city are all there , sipping the accurate same " update " Mai Tais in between bites of the accurate same venison soppressata , striving to be different by doing the same exact thing .
Kevin Alexanderis Thrillist ’s interior author - at - large and a former shameless promoter of the Hot New Food town . Buy his Good Food Revival Movement bumper stickers:@KAlexander03 .
