When we go out to eat in restaurants we are all looking for something similar. Although we think it is for good food, we go back when the service is exceptional. We are looking, as Danny Meyer would say, for an emotional experience. We are eating out to be a part of something.
As a professional cook I would like to believe diners sit in the dining room of where I work because they want to eat my food. The food I help create, prepare, conjure and plate. When I go out to eat I am looking to be inspired by other chef's visions. I'm always on the lookout for delicious food, and like a Chowhound, I will look harder for it than the average person who may only follow what one or another restaurant critic likes or doesn't, or what the latest trend-setters say is fabulous. Of course I like to know what's new, I want to see who's cooking for whom and where they last worked.
In an era where chefs are becoming superstars, having TV shows and naming brands of supermarket sauces, a brighter light is being pointed at the restaurant industry. What the public expects from my field has changed, especially in California, birthplace of Chez Panisse and the local-sustainable-Organic food movement. Supposedly in California we like to know where our food comes from, who grows it and how. We do this research by shopping at farmers' markets, talking to the chefs who shop there and "voting with our dollars."
When I eat at a restaurant because I know the owner, chef, pastry chef or cook, I say I am "supporting" said establishment. When the restaurant industry in San Francisco was hit by two consecutive blows, September 11th and the dot com bust, it became important to be aware, without the intentional support of "regulars," our favorite places would close. Many restaurants did close at the start of 2002, and just as many menus changed to reflect the devastated economy. Cook and chef jobs became scarce and few people migrated the way cooks tend to do.
At the end of 2002, a chef I knew scanned the horizon, commenting on the lack of those restaurants he felt should not have opened in the first place. Ones seeming merely to exist as a place for young millionaires to spend money. He and I talked about how opening a restaurant without understanding all its hidden costs and responsibilities was a crime. It seems amazing that very few restaurateurs understand accounting math or have any grasp on State, Local and Federal labor laws.