The Curse of Efficiency
why making literally every decision about cost is bad for life and probably bad for business and definitely bad for entertainment
Hello and welcome back to High Functioning, where I waffle endlessly between barely outlined media reviews and barely outlined cultural criticism, held together by a common thread of barely outlining and an outsized belief in my how good my opinions are.
A few weeks ago, my Wonderful Girlfriend and I had dinner at KazuNori on Wilshire Blvd. KazuNori is a handroll place: a bunch of wooden stools sitting around a U-shaped wooden counter behind which a surprisingly large number of employees prepare and then serve raw fish and cooked shellfish in rice in seaweed. Their website claims that “eating one of [their] handrolls . . . will redifine what you think about sushi,”1 and they’re absolutely correct. The handrolls were utterly delicious. Seaweed so crisp it could cause an avalanche2, rice so good I’m shocked nobody has heisted the recipe from the company’s vaults, and fish so tasty it makes me wonder why I ever eat sushi at other restaurants. It was one of the most unpleasant dining experiences I’ve ever had.3
KazuNori, for those not familiar with the Los Angeles restaurant scene, is a restaurant concept with multiple locations from Sushi Nozawa Group, the company behind such restaurants as UOVO (which serves pasta), HiHo Cheeseburger (which serves cheeseburgers), and Sugarfish (which serves sushi).4
Nozawa, the namesake of and one of the owners of the group, was5 a sushi chef who moved to the US in 1985. He became a sushi consulantant, traveling around the country to educate chefs in the traditional style of sushi-making. This post is not about sushi making, but I do want to point out that the traditional style of sushi making is time- and labor-intensive. New chefs at top restaurants will spend multiple years just making the rice, then just making the tomago. It’s about precision, care, and expertise.6
Sugarfish, the first restaurant from Nozawa Group, opened in (I think) 2008 as a way to bring Nozawa’s delicious, expert sushi to the masses. KazuNori opened in 2014 for the same reason, but handrolls instead of nigiri. By all accounts, these restaurants have been massive successes, delivering admittedly incredible food at shockingly low prices.7
To accomplish this price point, these restaurants have leaned hard into efficiency. They seat quickly, serve quickly, and get the check quickly, with the implicit understanding that the customers also eat quickly. Going to one of these restaurants feels like walking into an assembly line. This is a place to eat, not dine. The absolute moment you finish your edimame, they’re already out with the tuna sashimi thing, and there’s still four pieces of that left when they bring out the first plate. There is no room for savoring, no time to digest, literally or figuratively.
During the above dinner, my Wonderful Girlfriend and I spent more time in line than we did eating. We were sat within a minute of the people before us leaving, and, after we finished, our seats were filled before we had even left the room (and it’s a small room).
It was a weird feeling. The food was great, but the whole experience felt…hollow. Dissociative, in a way. Like I wasn’t a necessary component of the whole process. Like if no customers had shown up at all, the chefs and servers would still be there, butchering the fish, steaming the rice, and prepping little bundles of delicoiusness that would then sit on the plates forever.8 There was no soul, just mechanics.
I hate efficiency.
Let me rephrase: I hate that so many modern businesses and groups and people are pursuing efficiency at the cost of other, very important ideas/feelings/whatever-majigs. Efficiency seems to have an inverse relationship with something else. To gain efficiency, they have to sacrifice something else. For KazuNori and its other restaurants, it’s more efficient at the cost of a worse overall experience. I’m sure it’s great for their bottom line, but I don’t think I’m going to be eating there anytime soon.
What’s even more frustrating is that I work in the entertainment industry, an industry that ostensibly produces art and entertainment, two things which really don’t like efficiency. Some of the best movies and movie moments and even TV shows came from a lack of efficiency. For example, I just saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the Red Rocks Amphitheater outside Denver (highly recommended). You know that bit where Wonka walks out with a cane and a limp, then tumbles and rolls out of it to great applause?
That idea came from Gene Wilder himself on the day they shot the scene. Imagine if they were all about efficiency, if they didn’t have time for actor ideas or trying new things. We’d miss out on this wonderful moment.
And we see the results of the this pursuit of efficiency in the theaters (and tvs and computer screens and cetera)! Marvel in particular has built out this years long franchise plan, figuring out how to shoot what and where and which stories to tell long before they ever see a script. Effecient! Except everyone can see how shit these movies have been lately (except Thunderbolts). They’re a franchise factory, shovelling ideas through the magic factory, expecting wonder and greatness at the end, except all they end up getting is 120 minutes of the same shit we saw four months ago! But because film doesn’t work that way, they end up paying however many millions for reshoots which often don’t even fix the issues with the film.
Creativity thrives in weird places on strange timelines with random people and at least some chaos. It is every finance guys nightmare. It is absolutely vital to creative industries if they want to survive.
Efficiency is not all bad. Many things should be efficient, particularly things that take up some finite resource. Power consuming and power producing things should always be more efficient, that’s a no brainer. Maybe filling out job applications could use a good ol’ squeeze of the efficiency oil drum. I’ve had a real bastard of a time finding doctors through Medi-Cal, that could use some more efficiency. But to take this idea and apply it unilaterally across all business and all aspect of your life? That’s a recipe for living as a hollow, pained, miserable shell of a person.
I want to take this moment to draw your attention to four very interesting articles that touch on some aspect of this. The first, an article from CNN (the Bloomberg article is better but behind a paywall), talks about how the reason for Barnes and Nobles’ 2010s decline was due to their finance-focused CEO, and how the recent resurgance is because their new leader actually cares about making a nice bookstore. Imagine that.
The second, a post from Substack publication the Culturist, highlights how goddamn samey every building has become across the world. They don’t provide a culprit, but surely you know what I’m about to blame: efficiency. They’re picking the most cost-effective materials for use in the most cost-effective method of building to rent out the most cost-effective tenants and so on into eternity until everything is robot.
The third, a paper on the National Institute of Health, points out the myriad issues caused by industrialized livestock (virus propogation, optomization of animal growth past what is physically supported by their bodies, antibiotic overuse, etc.).9
And lastly, an article from the Atlantic (they offer a 30-day free trial which I highly recommend, also it’s included with Apple News10) shows that companies are extremely aware of how efficient or, in this case, ineffiecient they make things, and how they (allegedly) weaponize efficiencies and inefficiences to achieve the goals they want. Which is lame.
It’s like a constant faustian bargain we all keep making. Make your life a little easier, a little quicker, a little cheaper, and all it costs is your soul.
I have, once again, forgotten how to properly source and can’t be bothered to look it up, so here is the link: https://www.handrollbar.com/
if eaten at the proper altitude
goddamn what a classic essay hook
technically Uovo and HiHo are “sister restaurants” but they’re always next to a KazuNori so it feels like an unnecessary distinction
he’s not dead, but I don’t think he’s sushi-ing anymore
for more on the incredible effort top chefs put into sushi making, watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi (but not if you’re hungry)
shockingly low for what you’re getting. it’s still like $60/person
I know that I’m not a necessary component of any restaurant, for the record, but it’s nice to be able to pretend. I can’t even pretend at KazuNori
And anectodally, factory farmed meat and eggs taste way worse
bundles, so efficient!
this line....."It’s like a constant faustian bargain we all keep making. Make your life a little easier, a little quicker, a little cheaper, and all it costs is your soul." Dead right.