The sad, somber, modern, minimal restaurant, Hawthorn, sits on an island far removed from anything that wants to be included in society. The only way to know about it is if you care for a restaurant like this, you’re in the know, kinda like how Sneakerheads know of a shoe drop, have access, or receive the golden ticket invite from the chef. Much like farm-to-table tasting menu restaurants such as Noma, The French Laundry, or the late El Bulli or Faviken, everything made inside Hawthorn is grown, caught, and slaughtered before it is sautéed, braised, and gelled. 

One dines at Hawthorn, and it feels like a new kind of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory story. The customers have their motivations, and the chef and his staff have theirs. 

Tasting menu restaurants where the menu changes daily are challenging. The chef and his staff can’t spend ample time with research and development perfecting the dishes. They have to converge art and craft with raw emotion and perverse humor that is cathartic in some twisted way. As a customer, whether the meal is good or not, worth remembering or not, a proper bang for the buck or not, you’re getting a meal that cannot ever be duplicated.

And is that a good thing? Well, that’s relative, but you know every time you go to In-N-Out Burger, those cheap, greasy cheeseburgers will be just right.