Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 91
The Great Restaurant Name Vibe Shift, The End of Alcohol, Choose wisely when picking a mortgage lender, Eric Dickerson’s Gold Trans Am, Recipe Corner, and more.
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The Great Restaurant Name Vibe Shift
There’s a reason so many restaurants have *almost* the same name.
Here’s a fun look at the reasons why every restaurant seems to have the same name.
That’s the thing about trendy restaurant names: You’ll walk down the street and notice that every third restaurant you pass has practically the same name. These days it would seem that they’re all homages to women (as in Dear Margaret in Chicago), possessive first names (Lutie’s in Austin) or irreverently wordy (Plates By the Pound BBQ in Denver). But what makes a restaurant name cool? Does the name beget coolness, or does the coolness have to establish itself first?
“Restaurants are really key in shaping cultural trends at the truly local level,” says Helen Rosner, a New Yorker staff writer and longtime food writer. “Fashion can come down the runway; we can all talk about a certain famous cerulean sweater scene (from The Devil Wears Prada). But the most direct access on a day-to-day basis to the shifting tides of trends is in restaurant culture.”
It only takes one hot restaurant to start a naming convention trend.
And just like that, every new opening had a declarative ingredient or method name, like “land & sea.” Or “stir.” They were “always self-consciously lower case, often finished with a period or broken up with a plus sign or ampersand because god forbid you use ‘and,’” Rosner says. Each decision suggested the sort of self-effacing minimalism you’d expect on the plate. Before you knew it, “airport kiosks selling garbage turkey wraps were calling themselves bread + green.”
While plus signs and all-lowercase names were printed on what seemed like every restaurant’s window, there were also other trends brewing. If it wasn’t named for an ingredient or a cooking method, every It restaurant seemingly involved a word or two in Italian or French. Compère Lapin, Tartine, Barbuto, Barbuzzo. Wait, are those last two the same?
So is there a science behind restaurant names?
“To me, a name has to roll off someone’s tongue and be memorable,” she says. “Certainly, we go for nostalgia too. But it’s also pretty random.”
McNaughton compares the process to naming a child. And, particularly if you’re an owner-operated indie restaurant on a shoestring budget, it’s no less stressful or financially taxing. Add to that the looming fear that the concept flops and you become the face of the next Fyre Festival. As Rosner says, “you don’t want to give something its own ironic headline.”
In decades past, consequential restaurants sported more functional, straightforward names. So what changed?
“I think [a restaurant] name is born out of the owner’s hopes and dreams and connections,” says Evan Kleiman, chef, author, and longtime radio host of KCRW’s Good Food in Los Angeles, who operated Angeli Caffe for 27 years. “Given that the primary driver of restaurant marketing these days is storytelling, and often the story that is told is a personal one, the name is a part of that story.”
What’s the ultimate goal?
That by simply seeing or hearing a restaurant name, we diners can grab hold of—and retain—some moment in time, and everything we loved or aspired to. Then, as we repeat the name over and over, it gradually transcends whatever it was intended to mean in the first place, instead becoming part of the language we share with friends and fellow diners.
The End of Alcohol
Glamorous influencers are blending science and superstition to help people “change their relationship to drinking.” Did I miss out by getting sober the old-fashioned way?
Sobriety is a big thing these days.
Especially if sobriety has something to do with “changing your relationship to drinking,” talking about it all the time, and exploiting sobriety’s market potential.
Instagram is fully awash in pastel George Herberts—dancing soberfluencers who soberglow while soberaf.
So how did sobriety become hip?
In 2013, Dry January launched as a branded public-health initiative in the UK, attracting some 4,000 people. By 2021, that number had jumped to 130,000. The fever for abstemiousness also caught on in the US, which will forever be known as both puritanical and hedonistic; the challenge of refraining from drinking for 31 days has seemed to energize those eager to observe secular Lents. Last January, nearly one in five American adults tried Dry January.
For years, too, there’s been a stampede of self-help books by alcohol skeptics, most of them women, many of whom once had trouble drinking not the third bottle. These books have included My Unfurling, by Lisa May Bennett; Her Best-Kept Secret, by Gabrielle Glaser; This Naked Mind, by Annie Grace; The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, by Catherine Gray; Mindful Drinking, by Rosamund Dean, Drink?, by David Nutt; Sober Curious, by Ruby Warrington; and Quit Like a Woman, by Holly Whitaker. The subtitles run together, but they make big promises. If they follow the instructions, readers of these books will break up with alcohol, emerge from the grip of anxiety, radically defy patriarchy and capitalism, and become happy, healthy, and even wealthy.
Some of the intoxication with nonintoxication may be more than a pose.
People really do seem to be cutting back on drinking. According to Gallup, in 2019, 65 percent of American adults drank alcohol; in 2021, even after the claustrophobia and worry of the plague years, that number went down to 60 percent. What’s more, Americans went from (an avowed) four alcoholic drinks weekly in 2019 to 3.6 in 2021.
To cater to these newly temperate types—that is, to get those who decline to consume to keep consuming—sober-friendly bars have shot up like crocuses in New York, Denver, Miami, Austin, and San Francisco. Some of these places serve no booze at all. Others feature extravagant mocktails alongside full bars. At these places, someone with a drink the color of rust or algae can generally pass as a habitué. Amid chic decor, mixologists lace soft drinks with sophistication-signifiers and wallet-declutterers like orgeat, tobacco syrup, and chinotto orange.
Just the way Big Food engendered Big Diet, Big Alcohol seems well on its way to engendering a new market sector with Big Sobriety.
That could mean hefty payouts for opportunists who are more entrepreneurial than sober. Already, an 8-ounce can of Katy Perry’s De Soi Purple Lune drink, a fizzy tea with rose and myrrh that comes with outlandish health claims about balance and stress relief, can be yours for $6. This is nearly five times the price of a can of Bud.
Choose wisely when picking a mortgage lender
Remember the CEO who fired 900 employees via zoom a while back? Well, that company is at it again, with its third mass layoff in less than five months. The company has effectively reduced its headcount from about 10,000 in December to less than 5,000 now.
Obviously, I'm not celebrating anyone losing their job. Stories le will be increasingly common over the next few months. The online outlets are shedding staff and that means you and your loan will get passed around and handed off, jeopardizing your closing.
Real estate professionals: don't let this happen to your clients. You know these companies cannot be trusted. Deceptive marketing creates unrealistic expectations, and poor service kills deals.
What does this mean for you? It's all further evidence that picking the right LOCAL lender is essential. Go to Google and Yelp. Find a reputable company with a track record of service.
I'm a Certified Mortgage Advisor and my company has been a leader in Texas for more than 20 years. We're not going anywhere, in fact, we're growing! Get the support you deserve for your largest purchase.
Let's talk. DM me to schedule a call today or visit micahwiener.com to get started.
SMU Turned Eric Dickerson’s Gold Trans Am Into a Recruiting Image
Long a symbol of SMU football’s 1980s rule-breaking, the flashy car has become an edgy marketing strategy, and Dickerson loves it.
SMU’s football team, sprinting onto the recruiting trail with a new coaching staff, has embraced the most infamous symbol of its checkered past on social media. Earlier this week, the Mustangs tweeted graphics with the words “All Roads Lead to Dallas” and photos of the coaches alongside Eric Dickerson’s gold Pontiac Trans Am. Or, as it was known during SMU’s late-seventies era of excess, the gold Trans A&M.
Seriously, look at the swagger in the tweet below.
I love it. So does Dickerson
He pointed out that the very things SMU once got into trouble for—paying players—is now legal after NCAA rule changes that allow athletes to earn money from NIL rights. “I’m glad to see these kids get paid,” he said. “I’m all for it because they deserve it. The school makes all this money, and the NCAA makes all this money, and they’re like God on a throne. It’s like they’d drop all this money right in front of you, and you couldn’t touch it.”
Those old double standards still get under Dickerson’s skin. “You’re telling me no one else was doing anything?” he told me. “People wanted to blame the players. We became the scapegoats. I was a young kid. I had no money. Well, they blamed me, they blamed our class.”
Recipe Corner
We’re eating healthy this week fam.
Warm Chicken and Swiss Chard Salad
3 Tbsp. raw skin-on almonds
4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs (about 1¼ lb.)
Kosher salt
2 large bunches Swiss chard, preferably rainbow (about 1 lb.)
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
½ tsp. cumin seeds, crushed
5 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for drizzling
6 Medjool dates, pitted, coarsely chopped
⅓ cup kalamata olives, pitted, coarsely chopped
Preheat oven to 350°. Toast almonds on a rimmed baking sheet, tossing once, until darkened slightly, 6–8 minutes. Let cool, then coarsely chop.
Meanwhile, season chicken with salt; set aside. Remove ribs and stems from Swiss chard leaves. Tear leaves into 3" pieces. Cut thicker ends of stems on a diagonal into 1" pieces; discard thin ends.
Combine shallot, lemon zest, lemon juice, vinegar, and cumin seeds in a large bowl; toss to coat. Season vinaigrette with salt.
Heat 1 Tbsp. oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Cook chicken thighs, undisturbed, until golden brown underneath, about 5 minutes. Turn and cook until golden brown on other side and cooked through, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board; reserve skillet with pan juices. Let chicken rest 5 minutes, then cut into 1" pieces. Whisk pan juices and 4 Tbsp. oil into vinaigrette.
Cook Swiss chard stems in a large pot of generously salted boiling water until slightly tender, about 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer stems to bowl with vinaigrette; toss well. Working in batches if needed, cook Swiss chard leaves until just wilted and bright green, 15–30 seconds. Drain leaves and let cool slightly. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Separate leaves and add to vinaigrette along with dates, olives, and chicken; toss well.
Transfer salad to plates; drizzle with oil and top with almonds.
Spicy Beef Lettuce Wraps With Oyster Sauce
Here’s a quick weeknight meal on the table in 20 minutes. And it’s healthy. Win-win.
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
1 pound 85-percent lean ground beef
2 medium poblano peppers or 1 large red, yellow or orange bell pepper (about 8 ounces), stemmed, seeded and chopped
5 scallions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon chile-garlic sauce, such as sambal oelek
1 tablespoon minced or grated fresh ginger
1 head Bibb or Boston lettuce (about 8 ounces), leaves separated
Make the sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together the water, oyster sauce and Shaoxing wine or sherry until well combined.
Make the beef: In a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, cook the beef, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the beef to a medium bowl.
Add the poblano or bell pepper and scallions to the fat left in the skillet and cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes. Push the vegetables to the side in the skillet and add chile-garlic sauce and ginger and cook, mashing the mixture into the skillet, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the beef and oyster sauce mixture and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 1 minute. Serve with lettuce leaves as wraps for the beef.
Did Micah practice yoga this week?
Yes. 60 minutes Sunday at Putnam Yoga with Christine.
That’s 15 in-person weekend classes in 16 weeks this year. Namaste.
More Micah
Podcasts: Mind of Micah, Back Door Cover, Too Much Dip
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