In recent years, the menu has become a kind of script. Even before the stoves are lit, it already seems decided how things must end. Few ingredients—five or six at most. All declared, all reassuring. Seasonality loudly proclaimed, zero-waste narrated far better than it is truly practiced. It works, of course. It’s clean, legible, frictionless. But when everyone does it the same way, one starts to wonder what really remains.

Cooking is not just about following shared rules. It’s about taking a stand. It’s about carrying a story—sometimes an uncomfortable one. Today, the menu seems required to prove it is “right” before it even needs to be good. The result is dishes that are correct but without edges. Territory becomes a list of products rather than a way of eating. Personality thins until it nearly disappears.

This feeling intensifies when one considers what now seems to be a global menu. You travel, you eat, and the déjà vu is constant. The dining room changes, the language changes, but the dish could be the same. Beetroot prepared in some way, raw shrimp, foraged herbs, a foam to tie it all together. Acidity carefully calibrated, just enough bitterness. It’s a shared grammar, learned and replicated. No one quite knows who decided on it, but everyone recognizes it.

It’s a language that helps you stay within the times and avoid seeming out of place. The problem is that, by using it constantly, one stops speaking in one’s own voice. The risk of straying from the path feels greater than the risk of being predictable. Kitchens end up resembling one another, and travel loses its meaning. If the dish is the same everywhere, the place becomes mere scenery.

At the same time, the dish has shifted its intended recipient, its audience. It is no longer designed solely for the person eating it but for the person looking at it—preferably from above. Visual composition drives choices more than taste. Sauces are restrained, fats are controlled, nothing that could drip or makes too much mess. Everything must stay put, in order. Craving for deliciousness becomes something to keep in check rather than pursue.

The result is often an elegant, interesting cuisine—but restrained. One eats well, yet without surrender. As if the dish itself were afraid to overstep. And yet eating should also involve this: losing a little control, getting messy, feeling the weight of what has just entered the body.

Then there is the question of prices, which cuts across all kitchens. Costs have risen—there is no doubt about that. Everything is more expensive and working well costs even more. But alongside costs, a certain idea of permanent exceptionalism has taken hold. Every menu is presented as unique, unrepeatable, almost sacred. And so the price becomes a natural consequence, no longer something that needs explaining.

The tasting menu has become the dominant form. You don’t choose; you accept. You enter a path decided by others. In some cases, it works and makes sense. In many others, it becomes a test of endurance rather than an act of hospitality. One attends rather than participates. The kitchen becomes a performance, and the customer a silent audience.

In this context, the popularity of the ever-present, ever-visible chef inflates. The cook persona relentlessly explains, shows, and anticipates. It’s not wrong—it’s the era we live in. But when a restaurant’s value is measured by how hard it is to book, something shifts. Endless waiting lists, ever-higher deposits, and rigid rules. The harder it is to get in, the more the place seems worth it. Rarity becomes an argument for quality.

The risk is that access matters more than what ends up on the plate. That the experience begins and ends with securing a reservation. The restaurant becomes something more similar to an event space, to a status symbol. And at that point, the cooking itself takes a back seat—even when it is done well.

This leaves a simple but difficult question: is a more modest, more accessible cuisine still possible without being considered outdated? Can one run an everyday dining of quality, with humane prices, without constantly having to justify it? Without turning every dish into a manifesto?

Modest does not mean poor. It means measured. It means returning to the same dishes, improving them, and making them reliable. It means cooking for people who come back, not just those who visit once. It means working long-term craftsmanship and gradual mastery over short-lived impressions or wow-factor.

Perhaps the truly radical act today is not to keep inventing the new, but to resist the pressure to perpetually raise the bar. To stay committed to a cuisine that feels authentic and meaningful every day, not just when it’s being showcased or narrated as a part of an infinite storytelling exercise. To subtract rather than add. To accept that it won’t appeal to everyone. And to remember that, before it is content or story, food is nourishment. And before it is a spectacle, a restaurant is simply a table.

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