A Local Table, A Global Conversation

"Don’t ask me how this scales. Ask me how this spreads." — Dan Barber

Not long ago, every fine‑dining menu was judged by the same yardstick: How close could the chef land to the canonical duck confit, the flawless bouillabaisse, the perfect coq au vin? Today, we arrive at restaurants with a completely different hunger. We don’t want the same dish executed immaculately. We want a dish that could only have been imagined here, on this soil, by these hands.

Coffee, oddly, still lives in yesterday’s dining room. We slip into a new café, puff up our critical feathers, and decree, “I shall judge thee by the merit of thy flat white! …Ooh and may I have a cookie, too?” In response, most specialty coffee bars around the world have converged on a single, safe template: same gear, same drinks, same pale pastries, delivered with the same earnest smile.

Which leaves us with the same restless question the restaurant world faced a decade ago: What’s next?