STOP CALLING RESTAURANTS “INDIE”
“I hate them, btw.”
Look: Eater has been very, very good to me. They’ve been very good to my friends. I also go on Eater every day, I’ve gone on every day for the past 10 years, and they’ve been churning out pressing, persistent food content since you and I were in our circuit party days – as in bar mitzvah circuit. I also have absolutely no idea who wrote this throwaway line of copy; I’m sure they care about food, the food community, etc. I also don’t feel like this is the first instance I’ve seen this descriptor as it pertains to restaurants in the wild. Which is why I feel even more compelled to call out that labeling independently-owned restaurants “indie” is wrong:
This is what “indie pizza” looks like.
“Indie” can refer to anyone doing any kind of self-propelled endeavor, sure, but it has a strong connotation with independent music and cinema released during the academically-defined 1990’s (1985-2005). While indie music and movies may have been made without “Hollywood money,” they were certainly distributed by the multi-billion dollar industry that is Hollywood – that’s why you and I were able to buy Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001) merch at Hot Topic even though it was technically an independent film. The draw of “indie” for consumers is the promise of a great piece of art that just so happens on the periphery of Disney and Walmart. An “indie” restaurant implies that its customer base also exists on this same periphery.
More so than a business model, “indie” evokes a particular kind of aesthetic that’s hard to define but, like porn, you know it when you see it: sea goth, twee, mumblecore, stomp clap. If you’re wondering why I’m qualified to make that call, it's because I lived it baby. I lived in Bed-Stuy before it was cool. I worked at Brooklyn Kolache. I pooped at Gianni’s. I was wearing white at LCD’s final show. I read Videogum, RIP, and interviewed Gabe for a documentary I never finished while I was a film student at NYU. And I was there for the Meatball Shop and Egg’s original location and St. Dymphna’s original location and the location of every original Milk Bar:
Despite my argument, there were, there are, certain restaurants that were a fabric of the “indie scene:” DuMont Burger, Momofuku, Do or Dine, Pies and Thighs. They appealed to a certain demographic of us millennials that were culturally white with disposable income. “Good coffee” was also indie: Blue Bottle (now owned by Nestlé), Stumptown (now owned by Peet’s), and Intelligentsia (also owned by Peet’s) brewed fine-tasting coffee and offered a compelling alternative to Starbucks’ gasoline on tap, which albeit also has its place. Taipei may have been written in a vacuum, but I happily shilled $7 in 2012 money for a pour over that doesn’t “take milk” while living in said vacuum. Part of me hates that people call restaurants indie now because I also get it.
I’m also willing to accept that the indie aesthetic now is different than what it was, if such an aesthetic still exists as we know it today (it doesn’t). But regardless, it’s an aesthetic. We all know what indie fashion is for instance (American Apparel, Indie Sleaze), and that doesn’t necessarily correlate with “independent business.”
I get that restaurants set up by passionate individuals just trying to make art at the end of the day (food is art), working to live not living to work, not trying to please the masses but living their truth attracting those with the wherewithal to appreciate, can be justifiably classified as indie restaurants. However:
One of the establishments mentioned in this article is a red sauce joint that was open since 1997. Another is a “pan-Asian inspired cafe” that, yes, sells “eggy sandwiches,” but also slaps stickers on its cups that could have been designed in Canva. Another is a halal joint inside a gas station started by a son of parents who own a kabab house in Queens. You could say that the Italian restaurant is normcore if you’re really jonesing. You could even say that all these restaurants are girly pop (or boy girly pop, as in the halal joint’s case). But ultimately, each of their aesthetics are different. Their business models are different, their stories are different, their customers are different. To lump them all under the same umbrella of “indie” is not only inaccurate, it prevents them from being anything other than that – from being themselves.
The irony of “indie” is that by the time most people discover that cool new band or cool new food zine some rich boomer is already making money off of it, so the holy grail of the “indie” consumer is to discover something before it was cool. With Twee by Mark Spitz on the mind, perhaps that’s why indie things are to be collected: records, concerts, t-shirts, tapes. To classify a restaurant as “indie” is to also classify it as something that can be collected, and therefore owned. It is fair to want to collect restaurant experiences, as in going to a bunch of restaurants. We all want to support smaller corporations vs corporations that generate billions in revenue. But to liken restaurants to albums and movies is to believe that these restaurants exist for you, not to serve you. It puts the customer and not the business at the center of the conversation. That is not a worldview that builds community.
Whatchya got there, James? (James owns The Four Horsemen btw, we should go)
