★ 10/11/2021
“I’m convinced there’s a better way to be a restaurant customer,” writes food journalist Mintz (How to Host a Dinner Party) in his fiery work exposing “the twisted DNA of the dining industry.” As the Covid-19 pandemic dragged on, he writes, it revealed a restaurant industry struggling to make ends meet, and one ravaged by a culture in which “fiefdoms” were rampant with “wage theft, tip skimming, and abuse.” Through conversations with owners, chefs, cooks, servers, and delivery people, Mintz offers a searing critique of the food world, explaining why many of its standard practices—such as relying on apps for on-demand deliveries and tipping—have “train us to value convenience over price, quality, and fair wages”; how the brutal treatment of kitchen staff—from the underpaid to those not paid at all—has led to the current labor shortage; and the harms of operating under the ethos that the “customer is always right.” As a corrective, he urges consumers to stop treating industry workers as “beneath our concern” and to “suss out... what kind of workplaces are worth supporting.” Mintz also describes how thoughtful urban planning can preserve family restaurants and protect neighborhoods from being inundated by corporate franchises. With the hospitality industry poised at a point of inflection, this offers plenty of food for thought. Agent: Lynn Johnston, Lynn Johnston Literary. (Nov.)
With the warmth and humor of a good host, Corey Mintz invites us to meet the people and forces behind the restaurant business, and offers a taste of real change in The Next Supper.”—Karen Leibowitz, co-founder of Mission Chinese Food
“With a journalistic appetite honed like a Japanese knife, Mintz slices through the ego, spin, and fat of our restaurant obsession to reveal the dark underbelly that threatens everything we love about eating out, serving up a hopeful recipe for the future that may just save dining. The Next Supper is a brilliant, eye opening, fun as all hell book that is mandatory reading for anyone who loves to eat.”—David Sax, author of The Soul of an Entrepreneur
“Brilliantly written and deeply researched, Corey has delivered the book the restaurant industry has been waiting for. We're in a crisis, and this book turns every question on its head and gives us real life answers. Every single person interested in food needs to read this book.”—Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of Dirt Candy
“A former line cook turned crusading food writer, Mintz looks deep into the dark heart of contemporary restaurant culture to show us all a better way. Filled with insightful, up-to-the-minute reporting, inspiring characters, and original, even exhilarating ideas, The Next Supper is the ultimate guide to building (and finding!) the restaurants the world deserves.”—Chris Nuttall Smith, food writer and restaurant critic
“A flinty-eyed look at the world of food and how the pandemic has exposed some of its uglier aspects… Mintz’s account will make readers more knowledgeable eaters.”—Kirkus
“Before a tiny virus upended the worldwide restaurant business, and the world, Mintz had already begun to fear for the future of restaurants for a host of economic, social, and political reasons…He writes with passion about how he foresees all these pressures working themselves out.”—Booklist
“Fiery… Mintz offers a searing critique of the food world….With the hospitality industry poised at a point of inflection, this offers plenty of food for thought.”—Publishers Weekly, *starred review*
“With delivery apps making a killing while restaurant margins dwindle, food writer Mintz asks, Was the restaurant industry ever sustainable? And who benefits from going back to business as usual? Mintz balances a deep appreciation for food with a hard look at the sector’s dodgy labour practices and untenable social and environmental impacts.”—Quill and Quire
“Continu[ing] the work begun by the late Anthony Bourdain…Mintz optimistically believes that there’s a better future for restaurants and seeks to enlist every one of us in making that future a reality.''—Manhattan Book Review
“Impassioned…The Next Supper arrives at a muddy, critical moment…You’ve perhaps read about these issues disparately (and increasingly over the last several years) but it’s potent to have them freshly examined right now in one tightly written volume.”—Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times
2021-09-15
A flinty-eyed look at the world of food and how the pandemic has exposed some of its uglier aspects.
“My quest is nothing less than figuring out how to eat restaurant food and not be an asshole,” writes Mintz, who became a restaurant reviewer after working as a chef, a career trajectory that’s rarer than one might think. That the restaurant world died, by his lights, in 2020 doesn’t mean it won’t come back. However, it must shed some bad associations. For one, the author zeroes in on the genius chef who delivers abusive tirades on line cooks and servers, his nose stuffed with cocaine, his belly full of booze. Such people exist, Mintz allows, but their time has passed, and many have fallen (think Mario Batali). Why the drugs? Why does every cook, it seems, smoke? Because those chefs set insane paces, and “smoking is often the only excuse, during a long day, for leaving the kitchen or getting off your feet.” Those long hours are usually rewarded with substandard pay, and of course the whole restaurant world operates on tips, which Mintz neatly links to Reconstruction-era evasions of paying emancipated slaves a fair wage—an evasion now applied to a demographic heavy on women and immigrants. Regarding the latter, Mintz counsels that a little family-run kitchen on the outskirts of town is your best bet since the inner core is too expensive except for the giants. He advises that we order food to be delivered directly from the restaurant and not by third-party delivery services, which he considers predatory; that tips be paid in cash; that diners not chase the newest restaurant on the block (“Restaurants are built to age gradually into their best selves. The moment at which we shower them with attention is precisely when they’re not ready for it”); and that we value food and its providers more than we now do, once we emerge from the bunker.
It’s not Bourdain, but Mintz’s account will make readers more knowledgeable eaters.
Author/narrator Mintz paces his audiobook well. His delivery is enthusiastic; he knows food and restaurants, and the listener learns a lot. A Canadian food critic, culinary school grad, and an aficionado of cuisine of every stamp, Mintz delivers a catalogue of issues, including unrealistic customer expectations, wage theft, tipping disparities, and chains’ need for growth oversaturating the market. He offers a brief “to do” list of solutions: Eat local, patronize immigrant and mom-and-pop places, ask questions about sourcing, and learn to cook. Mintz has the charming Canadian pronunciation of “out” and “about,” but some of his American pronunciations are regional and distracting. That said, this audiobook has much to recommend it. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Author/narrator Mintz paces his audiobook well. His delivery is enthusiastic; he knows food and restaurants, and the listener learns a lot. A Canadian food critic, culinary school grad, and an aficionado of cuisine of every stamp, Mintz delivers a catalogue of issues, including unrealistic customer expectations, wage theft, tipping disparities, and chains’ need for growth oversaturating the market. He offers a brief “to do” list of solutions: Eat local, patronize immigrant and mom-and-pop places, ask questions about sourcing, and learn to cook. Mintz has the charming Canadian pronunciation of “out” and “about,” but some of his American pronunciations are regional and distracting. That said, this audiobook has much to recommend it. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine