Gastronomy is a complex reality that resists closed definitions. That is what makes it particularly attractive, but it is also at the origin of many of the misunderstandings that arise around it. That liquid character that overflows any limit we try to impose on it is also its main weak point.
The gastronomic fact is food, but also business and economic engine; It is culture, a reflection of social realities and the character of a time and a place. We tend to see only one of these facets, what reaches the table, when we approach it, ignoring the fact that gastronomy is a two-way street that is also built in the other direction.
Gastronomy is also, and I would dare to say above all, what happens on this side of the plate, what we diners build around it: customs, rituals and behaviors; meetings, conversations, forms of use and knowledge that define us culturally because, let's not forget, we are how we eat.
Some of those elements with which we have been loading the gastronomic reality throughout our contemporary history are disappearing. It is logical: the prices of raw materials change, the pace of life changes, the way we relate changes and, with all that, our way of using and approaching gastronomy also changes.
But beyond the logical changes of any format with the passage of time, we are in a moment of transition that is surely born from the succession of crises of recent decades, which have been giving shape to a new context that has to do with substantial changes in the ways of use.
In recent times we have seen how in some cases a whole series of policies and measures have been implemented that limit our way of using the different gastronomic formats: shifts in food services, difficulties in making a reservation when it is for a only diner, time limitations in the premises or on the terrace if no more drinks are made, references that are not served on the terrace because they are not profitable enough, etc. Costs have increased and this implies that the use of spaces and available service time must be optimized.
However, although this policy works on a theoretical level, it encounters the complex nature of gastronomy when we bring it down to reality. Gastronomy as a business thus collides with gastronomy as leisure, as culture and as a reality embedded in our daily lives. Bohemian cafes as a refuge for those who could not afford anything else – from the Parisian Montmartre of the last century to Camilo José Cela's La Colmena or the Viennese coffee gathering – could not exist today.
Gastronomy is -it can be- a business, but it is much more than just a business. If we only see it as such, it loses much of its power. Currently, gastronomy moves in a complex and delicate balance that forces us to choose: understand it as a simple service, a market good, or assume it as something that represents us. The problem is that the changes that are emerging in recent years in the interest of greater profitability tip the balance and cause, without us realizing it, the relationship to change and with it, perhaps, the affections.
When three years ago we faced the closures forced by the pandemic, a movement of support and sympathy emerged towards a reality that we understood as something of our own, something that had to do with us, with our way of life. I wonder if, with the changes we are witnessing, which in some cases lead gastronomy to become a mere transaction, a movement like that could take place within 10 or 20 years; If we will continue to feel a reality so close that it makes us leave the table if we do not have a new drink after an increasingly shorter time or that we only serve half a liter of beer if it is on the terrace because if not it is not worth it.
When 75 minutes are established for eating, the way the restaurant is used is changing, but also the relationship that the diner establishes with it. Resources are being optimized, surely, but also changing the dynamics that were built around the table.
Our way of using gastronomic businesses was different from the way we used, for example, a hardware store or a button store and, with these policies, that difference is erasing. In English, the term hospitality is used both to talk about hospitality or friendliness and to refer to hospitality. It is significant and, at the same time, it is something that in the framework we are seeing being born is gradually losing meaning.
We live in complex times, in which economic tensions have been shaping an unprecedented context in which gastronomy must find a way to remain economically viable. However, it should be able to do so without breaking the balance that has made it such a particular element within our culture.
Probably, one of the great gastronomic questions for the coming years will be to reconcile these apparent opposites, to see how gastronomy/market coexists with gastronomy/culture, if it manages to do so, or in what way we relate to it and what role the attachment that has made the hospitality industry what it is today from the moment we become aware that the first of these vectors imposes itself, as it seems to be happening slowly but inexorably, on the second.
