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" I can feel it. The grumblings of discontent before the uprising. Listen, and you can just make out what the people are saying. It&amp;#039;s getting louder now: &amp;quot;Emperor, go home, you&amp;#039;re naked and empty.&amp;quot; There have been signs along the way that we&amp;#039;ve been lost. That we&amp;#039;ve put our energies into self-satisfaction rather than real hospitality. You can see it in blogs and print. Writers are beginning to concede that molecular cuisine may have the staying power of the dot-com bubble. Editors are finally starting to shed light on the absurdity of post-modern desserts and the clinical indifference of &amp;quot;mixologists.&amp;quot; People are getting pissed off and they&amp;#039;re Yelping. They&amp;#039;re complaining about the phonies, the chefs more interested in fame than the desire to create transcendent experiences for their guests. Not only that, but I just checked my bank account and some chef&amp;#039;s hand-foraged pond scum diorama set me back a new timeshare in Puerto Rico. We&amp;#039;re bankrolling self-aggrandizement. Fortunately, there are restaurants hungry to cook real food. Food that I actually crave. When I eat it, I can taste each ingredient, all four of them. Maybe I&amp;#039;m simpleminded, certainly I&amp;#039;m simple-hearted, but sometimes I feel like I need a map and compass to navigate the fifty-ingredient plate or the windswept garden of Instagrammable flourishes meticulously placed on horseshit\u2014Excuse me, the &amp;quot;masterpiece of forward-thinking cuisine.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m not entirely certain, but I&amp;#039;m crossing my fingers that we&amp;#039;re coming back to a time when food was about aggressive restraint. Maybe we&amp;#039;re on the precipice of 1975, a time when bleeding hearts and hippies championed the beauty of ingredients, not a chef&amp;#039;s elephantiasis-stricken ego, when the phrase &amp;quot;great chef&amp;quot; alluded to a monk-like devotion to craft, a patient and tireless refinement of skill. Let&amp;#039;s return to a time when creativity was the means, not the almighty end, when the idea for a dish was cared for and shepherded to deliver a memorable experience. Can we end creativity for creativity&amp;#039;s sake and together say: &amp;quot;Maybe it&amp;#039;s never been done before because it shouldn&amp;#039;t have been done in the first place.&amp;quot; I see the mutiny bubbling up, led by no-bullshit cooks. Take for example Betony in New York, a restaurant where the leadership is\u2014hold your breath for this one\u2014actually humble. I know, humility is, like, a four-letter word, but I flip the bird to reality shows and the battalion of egomaniacs. I&amp;#039;ll proudly hang a flag to the new militia of craftsmen whose food is fucking good. Creative, yes, technical, yes, but also lip-smackingly craveable. There are no card tricks, no hipsters telling some painful monologue about a pheasant hunt during the aurora borealis, just straightforward hospitality at its best.    Cooks @betonyNYC keeping their tools sharp. pic.twitter.com/OEQnIsY7p2 \u2014 Bryce Shuman (@BryceShuman) May 31, 2014    Hospitality, how we&amp;#039;ve missed you. The world went into a trance induced by kitchen chemistry kits and tableside chicanery, but we&amp;#039;re waking up, sweeping pretense from our eyes and wallets. Restaurants are starting to care. The circle is reforming, taking us back to discipline, to skill, offering the diner something powerful and timeless: value. There&amp;#039;s no greater pioneer of this effort than my personal idol, Danny Meyer. Perhaps there has never been a more damning book to the hospitality industry than his, Setting the Table. Upon first read, it doesn&amp;#039;t come across as ruinous. Knowing what I do about Danny Meyer, damnation was not his intent, but if you read closely, you&amp;#039;ll hear a battle cry. His theory, at its core, espouses deep human generosity\u2014something that connects us all. It&amp;#039;s sad to think that our industry needs to be reminded that the key to its success is hospitality, but Meyer&amp;#039;s book was and continues to be a necessary dose of WTF. Alas, some of us dumb cooks are trying to follow his lead, revering servant leaders instead of tyrannical assholes playing Top Chef. We need to celebrate those who care about their staff, their guests, their partners, their suppliers, and most importantly, their community. All over the world chefs are sowing the seeds of this revolution, taking back their kitchens, returning to honest food, bestowing love and gratitude with razor-sharp knives and scalding heat. A war is on the horizon and it will be won with kindness and passion and empathy, qualities that stand the test of time and put asses in seats. This is The Spill, a new series on Eat Like a Man where chefs, food writers, restaurateurs, policy makers\u2014anyone who has something vital, incendiary, or earth-shattering (or just kind of amusing) to say about the food world today\u2014can write what&amp;#039;s on their mind. If you work in the food industry and are interested in writing for The Spill, please send your ideas to spill@esquire.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a29355/battle-cry-for-hospitality/>