Should We Prepare for a Black Rabbit Takeover?

The hit restaurant series makes the humble burger the main protagonist. Is this a precursor of things to come for the industry?

Victor Calleja is not enthused.

Reader – or muncher of words and burgers – be advised: I am about to make a few confessions, so if you would rather keep away from the juicy stuff, move on to your next chore.

I love burgers; the juicier the better. I also love faux burgers. Not the processed meat alternatives but the simple vegetable-based ones. When they are well thought out they can be wonderful.

Back to burgers. Or maybe back to confessional mode. I love Netflix; or any of the Netflix lookalikes.

Liking – or being passionate about – burgers and video streaming does not make these two things good for us. Both satisfy us instantly; both offer juicy comfort; both create a feeling of wanting more of the same, of that easy-to-watch, easy-to-eat, pleasure.

Even if, by some magic, a burger is kept relatively healthy, it is still not gastronomy at its highest. Biting into a burger every so often is fine, but it still remains junk food or closely related to junk.

What ties these two things together? What does Netflix have to do with food, except that it sometimes offers screenings extolling food?

I recently watched – or suffered pleasurably – a series called Black Rabbit. It was all about a hugely successful restaurant, also called Black Rabbit, in New York, which was attracting the choicest clientele from the art, design, music, media and finance world.

As we all know, the Big Apple is quite the centre for all things, with a definite gastronomic flavour that reverberates throughout the rest of the western world.

And Black Rabbit’s signature dish was? A burger! This burger produced on most people’s faces looks of satiety and ecstasy when they bit into it.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good burger at a chic place with influential people dining there. I definitely would love to – if this wasn’t pure fantasy – sink my teeth into it. I’m not even complaining that from the name of the restaurant, Black Rabbit, I imagined it should serve Fenek Moqli (fried rabbit) right from our hallowed local cuisine.

What gets me is that the qualities of the burger, already a staple in American food, are constantly being praised. This series is just one of the many that feature a burger. Watch lots of Netflix and somewhere a burger makes an appearance. In restaurants, in homes, in the mouth.

Netflix, which churns out a huge number of films, is American, like most other major film producers. They – sadly for film and for the world – mainly believe in numbers, in quantity not quality.

Their algorithm for their creatives seems to be: churn it out, let people enjoy it and gorge themselves on more of the same.

A bit like the burger algorithm: it satisfies you while not making you ask too many questions, where the taste is one gooey, messy, juicy mixture of comfort junk.

I do hope we in Malta do not go this way. That we do not start giving the burger pride of place or consider it – or any comfort food – good enough for most of us. It’s bad enough that so many places have sprouted out offering nothing more exciting than kebabs, pizza and pasta.

Mind you, just as I love burgers and Netflix, I adore a good kebab, a good pizza and a plate of pasta.

Yet the gastronomy world in Malta needs more variety. Yes, we have great restaurants offering far from junk or comfort food. But Netflix starts slowly dictating, just as it did with film. And all of a sudden Netflix is all over, and we start paying homage to junk that keeps us happy, sated and with a smile that says no worries, no cares, no thoughts.

What takes the US by storm today usually then takes over the rest of the world. We ape them in most of all they do: in the bad, the good, the ugly. But let’s not give in to the burger taking over.

Keep the burger where it belongs: as an occasional wicked escapade.