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SLOW FOOD
Walk a few blocks through Manhattan's Flatiron district (home to Daring Ventures Global HQ) and you'll encounter one of the most expensive lessons in modern dining. At 315 Park Avenue South sits the shuttered remains of Kernel, Steve Ells's $36 million experiment in robotic expediency. Around the corner at 11 Madison Avenue, Eleven Madison Park continues charging $365 for elaborate tasting menus that take hours to unfold.
Eleven Madison Park is the opposite of efficient. Teams of servers choreograph around tables when a single person could take your order. Meals stretch across hours when they could be served in minutes. Every course arrives with theatrical timing that prioritizes experience over expedience. They've turned inefficiency into luxury, making friction the entire point of the exercise.
Kernel was designed as the antithesis of that waste. Robot arms assembled 1,000 items per day with Germanic precision. Phone-unlocked cubbies eliminated conversation. Three employees per location, maximum efficiency, minimum human contact. The experience was engineered to be "frictionless," stripping away any waste that slowed down the transaction of delivering human fuel.
But Kernel's streamlined system felt cold and inhuman. Diners stood at narrow counters eating robot-assembled salads in sterile green rooms, picking up orders from locked boxes like they were collecting dry cleaning. The precision was impressive and the food reportedly good, but the experience felt like eating from a sophisticated vending machine. Cost-effective? Absolutely. Satisfying? Not remotely.
I was always curious about it, but I could never tell it was open because it was always desolate. Their doors have been closed for months now. Ells is pivoting to something called Counter Service, and the philosophical reversal is complete. Where Kernel evoked circuit boards and algorithmic processing, Counter Service suggests the warmth of leaning across a deli counter, the human ritual of "How can I help you?"
Meanwhile, Eleven Madison Park keeps doing it the frictionful way, proving that diners will pay premium prices to be served by people who remember their preferences, to wait between courses, to experience the elaborate choreography of being cared for.
An app can remember your usual order. An algorithm can recommend a great wine to go with your meal. But at the end of the day, an automated system cannot make you feel special the way a human can. My friend – who’s a creature of habit – used to frequent a local fast food restaurant in college. When he revisited the place post-grad, one of the servers leaped over the counter to greet him. While this story illustrates the embarrassing extent of my friend’s chicken wing addiction, and an operational drag on the part of the restaurant, it also shows how making customers feel valued sits at the crux of good hospitality and good business.
What other friction is good friction? The bartender who makes conversation while mixing your drink. The ice cream scooper who gives you extra crushed oreos because that’s her favorite topping. These interactions slow things down, cost more money, and introduce variables that a robot could eliminate.
But they're also what transform eating from a necessity to an experience. The experiments of Kernel and Eleven Madison Park prove that sometimes the most revolutionary thing a restaurant can do is remember that dining has always been, fundamentally, about humans taking care of each other.
