The anxiety of going back to restaurants
When everything started shutting down back in March and life as we knew it ended, I thought that as soon as things reopened and went back to normal, I’d be back to dining out again. I love so much about restaurants: certainly the food, but also the whole experience of sharing a meal with friends, eating food that you didn’t cook and could never approximate at home, the buzzing, energetic hum of people all around you, the luxury of enjoying a nice bottle of wine or a cocktail recommended to you by someone with great taste. New York’s restaurants have been one of my greatest sources of pleasure and comfort. In a few weeks, I thought, I’d be back.
As we all now know, it wasn’t just a few weeks. New York City moved into phase 2 of reopening on June 22, which is when restaurants were allowed to reopen for outdoor dining only. Finally! You might expect that I was dining out on the very first day it was allowed, but my first meal out was this week, when Renan and I went to our neighborhood fave Olmsted. It was wonderful, but still kind of fraught with anxiety.
The restaurant took lots of precautions: tables were spread far apart in Olmsted’s spacious garden; there were no paper menus and we were instead instructed to scan a barcode on the table with our phones to pull up the menu online; staff and customers alike all wore masks, except when eating; there was a giant gallon-sized hand sanitizer readily available. I took my mask off to eat, but sort of scrambled to put it back on every time our server came in our direction.
While a part of me relished how good it felt to be back, to be sitting outside in a beautiful garden enjoying cocktails and a meal prepared by professional chefs, something about it still didn’t feel entirely right. Why are we doing this, I wondered, if the risks are still so high that we have to take so many precautions? Of course businesses need to reopen in order to stay in business and pay bills, but it felt a little wrong. There are still so many risks: not just to ourselves, but to the restaurant staff as well. As Kat Kinsman wrote in Food & Wine this week:
I'm too afraid, not of them but for them, and I don't know what the right thing is to keep them safe. People who work in hospitality are my personal heroes. They keep me fed, coddled, delighted, and at least temporarily sheltered from the woes of the world, even though in non-pandemic times, they're often among the most vulnerable people in the workforce. There are exceptions, of course, but the majority of restaurant workers don't have benefits through their employer—especially healthcare. Many haven't gotten any sort of government-based unemployment money because of documentation status (and if you think your favorite restaurants aren't relying on the labor of undocumented workers to get you your delicious meal, well, now you know) or because of overwhelmed and antiquated phone-mail-internet systems. And an hourly minimum wage—including the tipped minimum wage which varies by state but federally is $2.13—is the norm. Many restaurant workers just don't have an option to not return to work because they're the least able to weather the loss of a paycheck, but they're also at tremendous risk from exposure to diners who open their mouths to order, eat, and scream about the indignity of being asked to wear a mask to protect their fellow humans.
And earlier this month on Eater, restaurant critic Ryan Sutton wrote about why he’s still not going back to restaurants:
For a patron with a sudden craving, no plate of duck wings or fluke ceviche is worth getting catastrophically sick over, especially if one can order those dishes more safely via takeaway. For a staffer with little alternative but to work, no economic benefit outweighs the reality of getting infected with COVID-19, which can bring with it chronic health repercussions, devastating financial consequences, and death.
And New York Times critic Tejal Rao also wrote about how restaurants are left to figure out their own guidance:
Restaurateurs, despite being pushed into the role, are not our public-health officials. Understandably, many want customers to fill up their dining rooms, to eat and drink well, and to spend money again. But after collecting data from 30 million credit and debit card holders, JPMorgan Chase found a close correlation between the level of spending in restaurants and new cases of Covid-19: Restaurants can easily turn into hot spots.
Restaurant owners can’t, and shouldn’t, be in charge of weighing and managing the risks to both their customers and workers. How deep is their knowledge of the virus and its spread? What are their priorities? And why should they be put in an impossible position, stuck between the economic imperative to reopen and the fact that reopening may harm their workers and customers?
The soaring case numbers around the country make one thing very clear: America is not ready to reopen.
It’s easy to let ourselves believe that because the curve has been flattened (in New York, at least) and businesses have reopened, that the threat is over — but cases could just as easily surge again in New York if we let our guard down. The threat is still present, and it may well be that way until a vaccine arrives.
I want so badly to go back, with every fiber of my being, but I think I’ll be sticking to takeout as my preferred way to enjoy restaurants. Just because we technically can go to restaurants again, doesn’t mean we should. It just feels too risky and too ethically complicated to dine out yet. The risks to everyone involved feel like they far outweigh the pleasures of dining out.
Cooking
This week I made homemade hummus for the first time and I can’t believe it took me so long to see the light?? It’s WAY better than storebought hummus! Highly endorse this 5-minute hummus recipe from the NYT as a starting point; next time I’m looking forward to tinkering with it for different flavors. I served it with a fave standby of mine, oven-roasted shawarma chicken, and a tomato and cucumber salad.
And later in the week I made this crispy tofu with blistered snap peas, and I want to HIGHLY endorse this recipe; the sauce, made of coconut milk, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger, is incredible.
What I’m reading
The best $14 I ever spent: a plastic kiddie pool, Vox.
Insane after coronavirus?, London Review of Books. Patricia Lockwood on her six-week bout of coronavirus is hilarious.
What it’s like to enter the workforce from your childhood bedroom, NYT.
The true cost of dollar stores, The New Yorker. This was very, very good.
We’re in the era of peak comfort TV, Vulture.
Yeah, let’s not talk about race, NYT.
Ziwe Fumodoh asks: “How many black people do you know?”, NYT.
Fashion’s racism and classism are finally out of style, The Atlantic.
Soledad O’Brien: A #MeToo moment for journalists of color, NYT.
The influencers of pandemic gardening, Engadget. Who among us hasn’t tried to grow something during this pandemic…
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