Hope everyone is having a great day so far!
Branching off from my previous blog, Post Food Scarcity, I wanted to more deeply explore something that I eluded to in that post, and that is the Community Kitchen. How a shared space amongst the community fosters a sense of togetherness while also helping to reduce the redundancies of appliances and tools since not everyone would need to procure their own. Is it possible for everyone to come together in such a way? And how does that impact the daily lives and spatial needs of the individual? Find out here:
What's your opinion on this take? Could you envision yourself living in such a community? If not, what would you change? Always happy to hear other opinions, ideas, complaints, and experiences, so feel free to share! The more viewpoints I can experience, the stronger the ideas! 💪
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read and hope you have a great rest of your day!!
Tangentially related: I like the idea of "volxküche" and other such communal food efforts and even though the food was often bland, I never minded the canteen in university. But I absolutely loath normal restaurants.
Yes sometimes the food is good, but everything around it: the long waiting for food, the isolating table arrangement, the often frustrated waiters etc. is a complete turn-off for me. Even the nicest places both in regards to ambience and food are just ruined by the totally alienating mode of food preparation and delivery (and high price tag in addition).
Yet somehow people claim to love going to restaurants... this has actually put some serious strain on some romantic relationships of mine in the past 😬
And talking to some restaurant owners (I used to work in kitchens as a side job some years ago) always told the same story: The a la carte method is bad for income and forces you to cut all sorts of corners that makes the quality of the food worse, and landlords ask for insane rents at the popular places, which really drives up prices.
You know, I can think of plenty of experiences where communal food halls were lively, fun affairs (either serving or attending), but never really realized the lack of festiveness in most restaurants. Maybe that's why I enjoy cooking at home more.
one thing that helps mitigate this somewhat is finding a place with long tables / bench seating (where multiple groups are forced to share a table) creating a slightly more communal atmosphere
there is a big cultural split in the approach to restaurants between Western and Eastern societies – US especially choose restaurants for “atmosphere” and “status” (“the place to be seen”) whereas Chinese choose their restaurants by how loud and busy they are (people enjoying good food make more noise)