A new trend is developing. It is unliscensed and off-the-books restaurants
Four diners gave up their reservations at the venerable Chez Panisse on a recent Monday night to sit on the floor in a dimly lit house in Rockridge and bump knees with strangers. A cook from Chez Panisse was there, as was the executive chef of San Francisco's Mecca.They were at Ghetto Gourmet -- one of the hottest restaurants in the Bay Area that you have never heard of. And that's by design.
Ghetto Gourmet isn't listed in the phone book. Nor will you find it by cruising Rockridge's restaurant row on College Avenue in Oakland. Ghetto Gourmet has no sign. It has no wine list. It doesn't even have chairs.
What this unlicensed, underground restaurant does have is a pit bull named Shinobi, a cramped kitchen with appliances in various states of disrepair and a gregarious host named Jeremy Townsend who, in his untucked shirt and jeans, will dance with his guests, jam on his harmonica and invite patrons for a post-dessert nightcap at a nearby bar.
Townsend is not alone in looking for new ways to captivate a public who, having made Zagat a household name, are finding its food savvy turn into ennui.
Culinary speakeasies like Ghetto Gourmet are popping up in cities in the Bay Area and beyond, across the country and around the world.
Part of the thrill, of course, is the hipness factor, the ego-inflating I-know-something-or-somebody-you-don't-know feeling that comes with being on a VIP list. But underground diners also can find surprisingly good food at bargain-basement prices.
It's the free market at work. The government has instituted many overzealous (though some common sense) regulations, fees, and taxes that preclude many from ever opening a restaurant. This is just the obvious answer to this. It's no different than someone having a small "off the books" business on the side.
People have been eating at taverns and restaurants for thousands of years before regulations, and the human race is still thriving. This will be no different.
And if the government has a problem with it, I don't really think it's about their concern about health. More of those sorts of hand-wringing pleas for regulations to protect us are just masks to institute new and more expensive regulations that cost many business owners and make it less likely that someone will become a new business owner.
