Admit it, you’ve thought about opening a restaurant. Everyone has, especially internet people, who tend to, by and large, fancy themselves as foodies, among other things. We all love to take pictures of our meals — the ones we prepare and the ones we pay for in restaurants — and post them to Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook so that all of our friends can gaze upon what we’ve consumed with amazement and envy. And when we’re not uploading photos of our food, we’re thinking out loud on the web about the food options we’re considering for later on. Everybody live tweets “Top Chef,” it seems. So opening a restaurant has become one of the ultimate hip things to do, which is why so many of our celebrities open restaurants, I suppose. Hell, Britney Spears even opened a goddamn restaurant!
We also live in a time of abundance where nothing seems beyond our reach. Want some exotic spice to add to that lamb curry dish you’re thinking of making this weekend, but can’t find it in your local Winn Dixie? Order that sh*t on Amazon and it’ll be there tomorrow! Hell, I used to have sacks of live crawfish that were pulled from a pond in Louisiana on a Friday and FedEx-ed to me in New York on dry ice for arrival the next morning. The ability to prepare all varieties of food well has never been more celebrated, or easier to do.
It seems that every network has some type of programming centering around food. Hell, we have an entire network dedicated to food and cooking. Modern culture on the whole glorifies it, and web culture glorifies it even more. Paula Deen’s diabetes-stricken fat ass would not be an international celebrity, on the web and off of it, at any other moment in world history.
So yeah, we’ve all thought about opening a restaurant. And luckily for you, Eater has compiled a handful of handy-dandy charts, like the one below showing all the key ingredients to opening a restaurant in Brooklyn, to make it all easier for you…
Kinda sadly, these Eater charts are DEAD-ON. Even sadder, I don’t think I can honestly say that I noticed this sort of cookie-cutter, copycat thing going on. But now that I’ve seen these charts, and the others, I’m all, “Christ…they’re all doing the same thing and I never noticed!” I feel so dumb.
Below is everything you need to know to open a Southern-themed restaurant, which just so happens to have a few things in common with opening a Brooklyn restaurant — no surprise considering that Southern-themed restaurants seem to be all the rage in Brooklyn of late.
Anyway, I’m emailing these to all of my friends who’ve opened restaurants in the past few years in New York and New Orleans. The subject line will read, “Grow some originality for the love of God!”
(Lead pic via)
