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It is a lot easier to be new than it is to be good. The criteria for being new is only based on the past few years, but the criteria for being good is based on everything we have learned since the beginning of time.
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Fortune magazine presents Brand Smackdown.
Hotels in the afterlife.
Seattle vs. Dubai
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When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
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The restaurants George Orwell described in his 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London were not places you’d want diners to see. A wall separated the dining room’s calm ambience from the chaotic grime of the “cold, filthy kitchen.” Architecturally, the wall between these two interconnected worlds was a good thing, and important for both sides. For the restaurant, it concealed the ugly frenzy behind the scenes. For the diners, it preserved a shinier belief in what they were buying.
The model that Orwell experienced persisted for six more decades before restaurateurs and their architects in the early 1990s—mostly in the Bay Area—did something unexpected: they brought the “back of house” front and center, putting chefs and line cooks on display to diners. This was done primarily as a means of demonstrating spotless kitchens and the use of fresh ingredients. Arguably, this design decision also set the table for the celebrity chef craze that began shortly thereafter. With open kitchens, chefs and their staffs were transformed from obsessed, cantankerous artisans to obsessed, cantankerous, celebrity artisans. But more importantly, making kitchens and patrons visible to one another created a transparency that enriched the experience on both sides of the now-non-existent wall. Chefs got better visibility into the dining room, providing an instant feedback loop. Diners got better visibility into the kitchen, seeing firsthand the collaboration, technical skill and artistic inspiration responsible for their gastronomic experience. The “culinary arts” were finally on display to its patrons. Seeing the kitchen enriched the eating experience in the same way seeing a symphony orchestra enriches the listening experience.
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Don’t covet your ideas. Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.
