How to keep amazing cooking affordable (from Boston Globe 12/22/13)
IF YOU FOLLOW the high-end food scene, you may have heard of a particular paradox: Winning a Michelin star can actually kill a restaurant. Starred restaurants often spend big to maintain their newly lofty status, which drives up food prices, which drives away diners, which sometimes drives them out of business.
Is it possible to break the cycle—and, generally, the cost traps that make top restaurants almost impossibly expensive for normal people? That’s the question behind a new study by Harvard Business School professor Gary Pisano. Pisano studied Davide Oldani, chef/owner of D’O in Cornaredo, Italy, which opened in 2003 and won a single Michelin star a year later. Pisano was drawn to the way Oldani had merged his culinary skills with a management consultant’s eye for efficiency. As a result, dinner at D’O costs around $68 per person—more than a burrito, but far less than you might pay at restaurants of similar esteem.
Pisano’s research—which was published as a business school case study and featured on the HBS website last week—shows how. To keep staffing costs low, Oldani’s chefs double as waiters. He is also “fervent about not wasting food,” charting the “edible share” of different ingredients (a sea bass is 47 percent edible, a hake is 60 percent edible, and a strawberry is 99 percent edible), and only using ingredients when they’re in season, and cheaper. He chooses glassware based on what Pisano calls “breakage costs.”
Of course, Oldani’s remarkable price-quality combination has made his restaurant inaccessible in a whole different way: If you want a table, be prepared to wait at least 18 months.
Kevin Hartnett is a writer in South Carolina. He can be reached at
kshartnett18@gmail.com.