It should be obvious, but I haven’t seen anyone say it: The cost of opening a restaurant now has been driven up immeasurably by the ridiculous emphasis on design, branding, thematics, and obsessing over every last detail of every last thing. That precious stuff used to be the province of only the highest-end places, but it’s trickled down to even normal neighborhood joints. And the resulting costs, of many kinds, have made them terribly financially vulnerable. It’s time to rethink this bullshit from top to bottom and support places that embrace a much more resilient aesthetic of WHATEVER. We managed to get by with WHATEVER for centuries, and it’s time to go back to that model.