Photo: Janice Chung/The New York Times/Redux
As the free-market evangelist Milton Friedman famously noted in his 1975 book of the same name, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. At the time he was agreeing with generations of saloon keepers and skeptics who perhaps shrewdly saw danger in each offer of help. But help is exactly the point of Paga Lo Que Puedas (Pay What You Can Day), which takes place this year on August 26 and will include a handful of New York restaurants. The idea is as simple as it is radical: Customers pay what they can. Same menu. Same portions. Same service. No bill.
The tradition started, as per its co-founder Saqib Keval of Mexico City’s Michelin-starred Masala y Maíz, during the pandemic. Keval and his partner, Norma Listman, were struggling. Their community was struggling. The duo decided to offer their menu every few months at whatever price each customer could afford. “We had nothing to lose,” he explained. “Everything was going to shit.” The response was immediate. Contrary to their fears, most of the diners paid full price, some paid more than the listed amount, and a few paid less. “We very specifically called it ‘Pay What You Can,’” said Keval, “Not ‘Pay What You Want.’” What Keval and Listman discovered was that the experience was enriching, both financially and emotionally. “It was always our favorite day because it brought in a good mix of people,” he said. “We could allow ourselves not to be stressed about the numbers of the day that normally defines restaurant operations. It was cooking for the love of the game.”
Last year the day spread throughout Mexico and this year, it has gone worldwide. Over 100 restaurants in 15 countries are participating. “It’s been really impressive that the vast majority of the restaurants that signed up are smaller, mom-and-pop operations,” explained Keval, “the restaurants with the tightest margins, the most at risk and the least amount of emergency funds or safety net.” In New York, that number includes Kabawa, HAGS, Hellbender and Vato.
The day was an easy sell for Kabawa’s Paul Carmichael, where the starting price for the restaurant’s prix fixe is typically $150. “As a Caribbean restaurant,” he told me, “it has always been important for me to be accessible. That’s why the bar and the restaurant exist in the fashions they do.” Pay What You Can Day, explained Carmichael, represents a radically more affordable opportunity: “It’s going to be nice to have people in that would never come or would not be able to afford to come.” For Hellbender’s owner, Yara Herrera, Pay What You Can Day is a way to reconnect with what got her into cooking in the first place. “One of the reasons I left fine dining,” she explained, “was because my parents would never come to eat here, not only because they can’t afford it but because they wouldn’t feel comfortable.” And the same could be said for Fidel Caballero of Vato. “When I was younger, I worked at a pay-what-you-can café in El Paso called the Mustard Seed Cafe,” he recalled, “I got to see what food could do to the community. This brings me right back to that moment.”
A day of lost income is often enough to seriously impact a restaurant, but according to Keval, that risk is necessary. “Some people are shit, some people are amazing,” he said. “It’s about us believing in the best in people and the people believing the best in us.”
