De-Americanizing the Dining Experience

Looking at the national food scene, there’s one thing we can see fading faster than America’s moral fiber and that is the family run, local restaurant. Too often, America’s concern when dining out is finding their social media moment that perfectly creates the illusion of living well or absolute convenience with no care for nutritional value. When we do want to spend a little money, the focus is always minimalist plating, working with negative space, small portions, and ingredients that should never be consumed together (here’s looking at your wagyu and caviar). And let’s be honest, food quality has taken a nose dive in the last several decades. Remember how good a choice ribeye used to taste 15-20 years ago as compared to today; well that’s not an illusion. In the scientific journal, Foods, a 2024 article published by Bhardwaj et al. reported:

“In the last sixty years, there has been an alarming decline in food quality and a decrease in a wide variety of nutritionally essential minerals and nutraceutical compounds in imperative fruits, vegetables, and food crops. The potential causes behind the decline in the nutritional quality of foods have been identified worldwide as chaotic mineral nutrient application, the preference for less nutritious cultivars/crops, the use of high-yielding varieties, and agronomic issues associated with a shift from natural farming to chemical farming.”

If high-yielding varieties and big agriculture are making our food worse and we know it, how are one third of Americans still eating fast food (The CDC’s analysis shows that on a given day during August 2021 to August 2023, 32% of American adults over the age of 20 had fast food). It all about convenience, perception, and good ol’ American corporatism. On one hand we have a country that’s a nose hair away from recession, stretching the working class to new lengths. The average American would rather pay for the convenience of fast food delivered to their door than cook at home. And if one is to go out and loosen the purse strings, we relish the perception of luxury and high-end cuisine. Oh and remember all those chains like Ruby Tuesday’s and Applebee’s that replaced some of our favorite neighborhood restaurants in the 90s and 2000s? They’ve all closed down and are now being replaced by whatever is the food industry’s newest idea for fast casual dining.

These are the people we want to keep in business!

Take a trip to any international city and casual eateries with decades of business are the norm, in some cases they’re widely known as the best places in eat. Massive restaurant groups and “slash and burn” restaurants that come and go with the trends are simply not that common. Outside of major cities, they’re basically non-existent. Despite American delusions of European refinement, the reality is that most of the world, including Western Europe, is enjoying their special moments at their local neighborhood eatery. Newark deftly falls into this category, a city where fine dining may be difficult to find but the norm is great food, casual settings, and prices that reflect various demographics in the community. What may be lost in plating and molecular gastronomy, is preserved in exceptional flavors and authenticity that pass the litmus test of even the most scrutinizing diner. In essence, Newark has done a great job of “de-Americanizing” it’s food scene by shying away from the abundance of fast food and fine dining that we see right across the Hudson. Newark understands the system well; patronize the restaurants you want to keep in business or they’ll get phased out by private equity. We just hope it’s not too late to save our food from the likes of McDonald’s and Sysco.