Onehit wonders gain popularity among eateries
Restaurants that specialize in one dish are common in some countries, such as Japan and Mexico, but American restaurants have traditionally tried to hit a wide audience with extensive menus that have something for everyone. The Cheesecake Factory’s menu should probably be divided into chapters; even the House of Prime Rib, that garden of beefy delights, offers fish and vegetarian entrees.
That is changing in the Bay Area, which has seen a surge in food businesses that serve one thing really well. At Daeho in Japantown, it’s Korean short rib stew; at Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement in Emeryville, it’s fried chicken, and East Bay popup El Garage only makes crispy, meatstuffed quesabirria tacos. The lines can stretch to waits of an hour or more at peak times. Why are diners willing to queue up to try these
very specific foods, and what is it like to cook the same thing, day in and day out?
From its beginning, El Garage, based in Richmond, made its name on the strength of a single dish: quesabirria, a taco of braised beef and melted cheese, tinted orange from being dipped in pepperinfused consomme before grilling. The Montano family began serving them out of their residential driveway at the beginning of 2019; word spread of the Tijuanastyle tacos and soon hundreds of customers began to show up at their house. They went from cooking 6 pounds of beef at their first unlicensed popup to 425 for subsequent events at breweries and bars.
“That’s about 1,500 tacos per day,” Viviana Montano says. She and her sister Evelyn had been serving the food on their own as a side hustle, but the demand grew so much that they and their parents quit their day jobs to devote their time to quesabirria.
In Emeryville’s Public Market, soul food stall Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement celebrated its oneyear anniversary in the space by moving to a bigger space within the food hall. All along, the business has leaned on rosemary fried chicken as the center of its universe, with a slowly expanding array of side dishes like candied yams and macaroni and cheese orbiting around the main dish.
“When there’s a menu like ours, a concept like that has to be unique and executed the best,” says owner and chef Fernay McPherson. “If (the chicken’s) not good, you don’t have anything.” In Minnie Bell’s previous days as a popup restaurant and catering business, fried chicken became such a runaway hit that McPherson immediately seized upon the opportunity to highlight it in the Emeryville space.
According to McPherson, making the same dish over and over again isn’t necessarily boring. For her, it’s an opportunity to focus on technique and consistency: to teach her crew the right way to bread a thigh, the ideal brass color to look for while frying. Montano feels the same way. “We just keep perfecting, perfecting.” Practice makes perfect birria.
At Daeho, a Korean restaurant that opened earlier this year in Japantown, it’s common to see a crowd of people mingling on the sidewalk in the evenings, waiting for their chance to get a steaming cauldron of short rib stew. Daeho’s menu also includes Korean standards like bibimbap and seafood pancakes, but every table will inevitably order the stew. The ribs are braised until tender and coated in a sauce that’s sticky, salty and sweet; many opt to order theirs with an optional topping of shredded white cheese that a server melts at the table with a blowtorch. Instagram is all over it.
Another Instagram star is Berkeley’s new bagel shop, Boichik Bagels. Patrons frequently post photos of the lengthy line that forms outside for its chewy, New Yorkstyle bagels, with some showing up right at 6:30 a.m., when the shop opens its doors. The bakery frequently sells out by midmorning.
The popularity of places like Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement and El Garage — as well as souffle pancake specialist Gram Cafe in San Francisco and ramen imports like Mensho Tokyo and Tsuta — may also be credited to diners feeling overwhelmed by too many choices.
McPherson certainly thinks so. With more menu items, “it takes longer to order. At a fast casual place, we want that really quick turnaround,” she says. Even Minnie Bell’s relatively short menu can stump customers. “You’d be surprised how many people stare at that menu, then get to the counter and don’t know what they want.”
Decision fatigue, the behavioral phenomenon that describes how the act of deciding has a mental cost, can make it hard to navigate big menus. How many calories does this hot dog have versus the other one?
Which of these salads is organic? How much can I spend on this beer without going over my weekly
budget? As the brain churns away, the risk of getting frustrated and making bad decisions increases. That’s why you may end up ordering something you probably wouldn’t like after all of that pondering.
The idea of empowerment through the limitation of choice has found resonance with many, from tech founders like
Mark Zuckerberg, who famously wears the same outfit every day, to taquerias like Viviana Montano.
“We get a bunch of good feedback from customers about how we keep it simple with our menu,” says Montano. “They like how we have only one thing on the menu.” When El Garage opens its brickandmortar shop next year by the Richmond BART Station, the menu will stick to birria and four to five other items, with some daily specials available.
She’s not worried too much about people getting sick of the menu, even when the popup morphs into a neighborhood restaurant.
“I thought customers would just come once if they really liked it, but they’re back the next day, the next weekend, the next popup,” Montano says.
In the end, it may not just be the tacos that draw people: It might also be the peace of mind that comes with always knowing exactly what you’re there to eat.