Restaurants under communism

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Because cooking for others and resturants will exist. They are part of a social fabric that most enjoy. I suspect that the whole internal resturant dynamic will be different, but they will exist. Why would you think there will be only open pits?

Actually, I suspect there will probably be community kitchens of various sorts, with meals provided. Perhaps there will be community BBQ pits for socializing. Food itself is both needed for folks, as well as for enjoyment.

Ok, great topic. This is pretty much what I think about more than anything else when I think about communism. I love cooking for people so much and I hate restaurants and working in restaurants so much too. Food history really inspires my communist politics. For example Paella was an agricultural worker's meal derived from their leisure (hunting*) and work (rice production) activities brought together at harvest time to celebrate their productive activities (both work and leisure).

That combination of production and consumption in a symbiotic way seems to me to be natural to communism. Reading anthropological accounts of feasting and taking part in modern versions of feasting among friends are, I feel, pretty fucking communist. The work undertaken by the preparers is also a social project in which they chat about stuff, argue, hug, laugh, and everything. And then when people sit down for the feast the preparers are traditionally toasted and thanked and there is a joy for them in seeing their work turned into broader human enjoyment which they themselves are also participating in.

And there are a million and one traditions of community cooking. All the women from an extended family or a village or neighborhood cooking together is a really important historical and social trend, and just really inspiring as well from a culinary point of view. The power and social importance of that is, to my mind, a really interesting part of women's history.

But fine dining? What is that? There are working class 'fine dining' traditions that could well prefigure post revolutionary practice. For example in Basque Spain there are hundreds of dining clubs where people gather together taking it in turns to cook using the finest local produce they can find in friendly competition to outdo each other in producing the most perfect possible version of various dishes. In the US the Clam Bake the Barbeque and Chilli are communal forms of eating that have a history of extreme perfectionism to a level totally comparable to high end restaurants practiced by working class people who do it because they love it, not because they are getting paid.

In France there was a term that is still sometimes used today which translates as bourgeois food. And that is the origin of modern western high end restaurant food. And yeah, it's good fun, and I enjoy my modernist cuisine and so on, but really, the best things they are doing are just nicked from peasant and ritual cuisines centuries old or are stuff that could very easily be generalised, or already have been. For example sous vide is just extreme slow cooking and MSG, probably the most important forerunner of modernist cuisine, is already prole food.

Street food, especially outside the west, is often so much better than most restaurant food. And that's because it's someone consistently trying to perfect one culinary tradition. Not arsing about trying to entertain the well off with edible petals and pomegranate seeds and really long plates.

*originally Paella was a field worker's food that included mainly game and snails and such like. The seafood focus is a slightly later variation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langar_(Sikhism)

iexist, have you seen this? http://www.prole.info/ar/index.html

I've worked in restaurants for a little less than 8 years. I don't think the culinary industry would go away in a communist society, but I like to think restaurants as such will disappear. I've always thought their customer-service-above-all-other-considerations imperative sort of drives the logistical organization of the whole industry...usually in ways that might conflict with workers' self-management. I mean, in a socially-planned economy, wouldn't we have some upward limit of how much inessential luxury food we would produce over a given period?

All the soulless chains will disappear and hopefully relatively small eating houses will thrive based on the cooking skills of those doing the cooking. The London Transport canteen at Hendon Central was excellent when the West Indian cook individualised the menu. The Hari Krishna off Tottenham Court Road was great – here the owner imported his own spices. Communism could paradoxically open the door to a multitude of individual culinary talents.

I second the abolish restaurants link.

There wuld be communal kitchen spaces and most houses would have kitchens. In terms of restaurants they would still be provided for people who can't or don't want to cook. I'm assuming that there would be fewer of the latter as we'd have more time, more resources and better food.
And I'd love to have a proper kitchen, which I can't afford under capitalism, mind you hotplates and a mini oven can cook most meals if you think a little bit ahead.

Perhaps an interesting factoid for comrades in the West: apartments in Eastern European projects built after WW2 have small kitchens and no separate dining rooms. The assumption was that children would mostly be fed at preschool or school, and parents (both of them) in a canteen at work. In the 1990s, many people remodeled their apartments, in an "as seen in Western sitcoms" fashion, to accomodate a larger kitchen and a dining room.

I think we'd have communal dining and feasts as already described .... but that we'd also continue to have restaurants with chefs and everything. The only difference is probably we wouldn't have servers, we'd get up and grab our own food when it was ready.

I don't see why this would in any way contradict communism. I'd love to be part of a restaurant collective... I'd be happy to cook for others.

I mean, I imagine all of these things would be possible depending on where and who and what and how they are eating. possibly apartment buildings or houses with many families (by which I do not mean anglo-capitalist "nuclear families", certainly) would have communal kitchens as well- maybe its a bit William Morris of me, but I just imagine the kitchen in a medieval castle- somebody wants to be on the kitchen detail today, mealtime comes and everybody who wants sits down in the dining hall together to toast and eat, there's entertainment probably, traveling skomorokhs or a band or maybe somebody borrowed the neighborhood television for the night, who knows...
I think there would still be a place for restaurants with chefs and "high cuisine"- yes, it's a product of bourgeois ideology of classed-up eating, but at the same time it *is* an art form that some pursue because it's beautiful and they feel validated by expressing themselves in this way, and after the revolution this sort of "art food" won't be taken away from people by extreme prices and social snobbery. It will be a sensory experience that can appreciated for it's flavors, colors, textures, and other beauties, without having to resent it because it's considered "above" your everyday food, or because the portion is too small to merit what you payed, or because you see it as food for your demon CEO or something.
It also occurs to me that, even if the modern restaurant is a place of furious wastefulness in needed food and resources, there's no need to do away with such usage every once in a while. An artist chef maybe would set up a restaurant (as opposed to a communal dining hall or canteen) as a "pop-up" for a period of a few months or weeks, expending a rather greater and more luxurious set of food resources than the usual communal food spots, a nice change of pace for everyone in the local commune. And after all, in the modern restaurant business, the profit margins are so tiny, most of the non-corporate restaurants only exist for a relatively brief time anyway (a few years), so it's not like this would be a huge shift (except it wouldn't mean financial ruin).

I am a chef myself so can probably offer a few insights on the contradictions of modern restaurants and the possibilities which may exist in a communist society.

Although capitalism on a whole does undoubtedly create a lot of waste, the above users assertion that high end restaurants produce in a wasteful manner does not line up with my own experience at all. In most restaurants the profit margins are so thin that it is part of your job to be create as little waste as possible, often under conditions of extreme pressure and fatigue. I once had a head chef give me a bollocking for wasting a few slices of onion, after I had just filled an entire 10 liter bucket with sliced onion. The waste more likely comes from the customers than from the chefs.

Working conditions in the hospitality industry are about as brutal as they come. The sous chef at my restaurant has done 18 hour shifts, 88 hour weeks... Last Saturday I worked for 14 hours and took a 15 minute break. The previous Saturday I cut off the end of my index finger and, after wrapping it up with electrical tape, had to keep working. These are the realities of life as a 'culinary artist' (my job is not an art, it is entirely about following orders).

My current head chef considers himself to be an artist... this involves leaving half finished projects to rot in the chiller, taking over half the kitchen during a busy service, giving me a range of dishes to prepare which are totally impractical for my section... Nevermind sleezing onto waitresses, shmoozing with other chefs and brown nosing the owner. Under communism I would hope the material basis for this sort of hierarchical structure would be abolished, and with it the ability of 'culinary artists' to force others to work under brutal conditions in order to help them realise their creative goals.

I don't see restaurants existing under communism. As soon as you scratch through the facade of the lights and the music and the totally fake service its pretty clear that restaurants are a miserable place for the people who actually create them. What I do see is areas containing stoves, knives, chopping boards, fresh food, tables, chairs, plates and so forth which can be utilized by all of us to collectively satisfy our needs.

Bootsy's restaurant description sounds very similar to George Orwell's in Down and out. My daughter is also a chef and the hours she works are terrifying. The pay is shocking as well. That said, she spends most of what little spare time she has cooking - communism or not, a lot of chefs are always going to want to cook for other people.

I am sure people who love to cook and stage parties will have much greater scope to do so without the burden of the money system. I have always loved working in small kitchens and even enjoyed working in big teams on banquets... I love the work, have had great people to work with ,enjoyed the punters having a good time but have hated the crap wages and shit head bosses. Cooking (for some of us) aint work when it is for for friends and loved ones. Capitalism makes everything sordid.

Loved this.

The Head Chefs in the kitchens I worked in was exactly the same, what a surprise!

Does it have to be only for friends and loved ones though? I wouldn't mind cooking for strangers most of the time in a communist society. Just knowing that people were enjoying my food. That's why I think restaurants could still exist, just in transformed form. A more relaxed pace in the kitchen, and no need for servers, people just get their own food.

It seems mostly to be a question of definitions- what counts as a "restaurant", what does it mean to be a "chef"- is it still a restaurant if there are not servers and "service", or a chefly hierarchy? Or is it just a kitchen where somebody with a vision is doing some cooking?