Tock, the Super Duper Fancy Restaurant Reservations Platform, Has Been Bought by Squarespace

March 31, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

The acquisition of Alinea Group co-owner Nick Kokonas’s reservations platform comes months after American Express acquired Resy

One-Horse Town

March 31, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

What’s a year of social distancing when you’re Elsie Eiler, the longtime sole resident (and best burger chef) in America’s smallest small town?

Monowi, in Boyd County, Nebraska, is a somewhere far from anywhere. The town — if you can call it that; according to the US Census it’s a “village” — sits smack-dab in the flat center of the continental United States, four miles from the South Dakota border and 60 miles from the nearest Walmart, surrounded by dirt roads that wind through rolling farmland. The 535-square-mile county has a population of just 2,000; three of its towns have fewer than 10 people. Only Monowi, though, has a claim to fame, one conveniently suggested by its pronunciation: MONO-eye.

That is to say: Just one person lives in Monowi, the only incorporated, government-run town in the U.S. to have such a population. That person — that single, solitary soul — is 87-year-old Elsie Eiler. Ever since her husband, Rudy, died in 2004, dropping Monowi’s population by half, Eiler has been something of an international celebrity. She’s been featured in dozens of human interest news stories and television segments around the globe, from the BBC to People magazine, the Today show to Country Living. Arby’s set a world record in Monowi, placing the world’s largest advertising poster (7 acres) in a field near Eiler’s tavern, and Prudential Financial once filmed a commercial with Eiler as the quintessential independent woman.

For the most part, the world has long viewed Eiler as a novelty, a subject of fascination and wishful, rural-idyll projection: What’s it like to be an entire town?

Surprisingly busy, actually. As the sole resident of a one-human town, Eiler wears a stupefying number of hats. She dutifully signs whatever paperwork the state sends her to secure funding — for water, for the electricity that keeps Monowi’s three street lamps lit, for road repairs — fulfilling different municipal roles with chameleon-like ease. She files taxes and collects them herself. She is Monowi’s mayor, perpetually unopposed; its secretary and clerk, applying for liquor and tobacco licenses and signing them herself; and the proprietress, cook, and bartender of the Monowi Tavern restaurant and bar. The tavern is the only business in Monowi, and running it is Eiler’s most important and longest-standing job. It’s been hers since June 1971, when she and Rudy bought it from an older couple who weren’t much for upkeep.

Eiler works at the bar Tuesday through Sunday, from 9 a.m. to whenever her last customer has gone home, some 12 to 14 hours later. (She only began taking Mondays off in 2011 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. On those days, the tavern dark, she catches up on bookkeeping and other mundane tasks at home.) “I finally just sat down to lunch,” she says when I call her one midafternoon, “and it’s a peanut butter sandwich. Very seldom I’ll cook a burger for myself, but most of the time, I just grab a cold sandwich.” She spends too much time on her feet — and is too busy — to enjoy the luxury of a sit-down meal.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, outsiders saw Eiler’s life as a novelty, peculiar in an almost cutesy, children’s book way, a little old lady and her little old tavern in her own little town. Her rustic, singular aloneness was what made her unique. Now, though, with everyone isolated and socially distanced, her life — solitary but for the tavern’s customers — has a newfound resonance. She is relatable, not extraordinary, no longer the focus of projection but of admiration, even awe. How can someone live so utterly alone?

Monowi was established in 1902 as a farming, ranching, and railroad town. Its population peaked at 123 people in the 1930s, when it had all the trappings of a lively Great Plains village: grain elevators, schools, a post office, a church, even a jailhouse. But the modernization of farming and the closure of the railroad in 1978 accelerated Monowi’s decline, forcing residents to move elsewhere in search of work. The jailhouse is now an empty rust-colored building marred by actual rust. The church’s last funeral service was in 1960, for Eiler’s father, and it held its last Sunday service not long after. Today, the hulking structure sits abandoned across the street from the tavern like a gray wooden phantom.

Even the tavern itself is a reminder of the past. Above the bar are rows of ceramic Budweiser beer mugs, nearly 40 of them, that Eiler has purchased from the company every year since 1983. There are framed pictures of regulars’ families and her own, of cornfields and the church, and lots of Nebraska Cornhuskers football memorabilia, little helmets and faded photos of the team. The bathroom is an outhouse — “which is weird,” notes one Google review that begins, “Good food!” (Three stars.)

Most of her customers come from neighboring towns, locals-turned-regulars (“I consider all of them friends”), construction workers and firefighters and police officers who stop by every week to check up on her, update her on their lives, and hear about hers. Under normal circumstances, from Thanksgiving to the first of April, a group of locals gathers around the biggest table in the tavern on Sunday nights to play the card game euchre. “It’s just for an evening of being out, I guess,” Eiler says. “We don’t do it in the summertime. The guys are too busy ’cause it’s 99 percent farmers, and they’re always doing something.”

The tavern’s food and drink haven’t changed in decades, and neither have the prices. Eiler sticks to the basics: hamburgers ($3.50, plus 25 cents for cheese), hot dogs ($1.25), cheese balls ($4). There’s also tins of Skoal and Copenhagen ($5.50) and cigarettes ($6.50). Her wholesale food supplier is 60 miles away, and the beer she serves — American classics like Budweiser, Busch, and Coors — arrives on trucks from O’Neill, roughly 50 miles away, or Norfolk, 100 miles. She’s never thought to diversify her booze offerings to keep up with trends toward hoppy IPAs and fruity sours. “Around here, the flavored stuff doesn’t move, so there’s no need in having it,” she says. “I keep what moves.”

She enlists help, sometimes. Friends will hop behind the bar to assist during busy periods, especially when hunters arrive to fill their camouflaged bellies during deer-hunting season, lured by one sign that reads “Hunters Welcome” and another that advertises, cheekily, “Coldest Beer In Town.” She says she has a few barbacks “on deck,” acquaintances who “live in the area.” Around here, I ask, what constitutes “the area”? “Well, if you needed help in a hurry, you sure wouldn’t call somebody a hundred miles away,” she says, chuckling. Double-digit miles away, then. Fifty miles, maybe, like how far her burger patties travel.

Loneliness is more than just a state. It’s an affliction, proven to cause or exacerbate a wide range of physical maladies, from obesity and heart disease to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Long-lasting loneliness can absolutely kill; as a risk factor for mortality, emotional isolation is statistically on par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day, making it even more dangerous than obesity. You’d expect, then, for Eiler to be a case study in the kind of damage caused by solitude. After all, she’s lived alone for nearly two decades, her time spent among just three buildings: home, the tavern, and Rudy’s Library, a small ramshackle building with 5,000 books that Rudy had collected, which operates on a forgiving honor system.

But if Eiler has anything to teach us about solitude, it’s that there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Being alone is the physical state of not being around other people; being lonely describes the hollow psychological state of lacking fulfilling social relationships. Self-isolation during the pandemic has, for many people, transformed the former into the latter. But while Eiler may spend long stretches by herself — Mondays, nights, whenever bad weather confines people to their homes — she rarely feels lonely, such is her comfort with her life in Monowi and her single-minded devotion to the tavern. She’s less alone, too, than those of us relying on the internet for social interactions, thanks to the symbiotic relationship between her and her tavern customers, each party benefiting from the other’s neighborly company. The Monowi Tavern isn’t just a place to hang out, it’s the place — a locus of community and friendships that spans state lines and generations. “Very seldom I spend much time in here by myself,” she says. “Even now, there’s always somebody coming or going. [The pandemic] didn’t much affect me. It wasn’t no big lockup or anything like that. It’s stayed real busy and the locals are all very supportive.”

The closest Monowi came to feeling the pandemic’s effects was in April 2020, when Nebraska’s governor added Boyd to the list of counties required to close their bars and restaurants. The county sheriff swung by the tavern to deliver Eiler the news. “When I got there, there were three guys,” he told the Associated Press. “Two were drinking, and one was getting ready to leave. She explained what was going on and said, ‘I’ve got to close up.’ ” Eiler never did fully shutter the tavern. “People couldn’t come in and eat for the month of April,” she says, “so I just cooked, and the meals went out.”

Before the pandemic and even since it began, many of Eiler’s customers have been perfect strangers, travelers who learn about Monowi on the internet. They come from all parts of the world — her guestbook has been signed by people from all 50 states and more than 60 countries — in all seasons, in all weather, to meet her and take pictures of the iconic road sign on the edge of town: MONOWI 1. Two years ago, after a torrential storm flooded the roads and washed out the bridges, a group still drove 150 miles to the tavern. “Some of them come an awful lot of miles,” Eiler says. “But I guess they always find their way.” They keep showing up, as much for themselves as for Eiler. They know their pandemic-traveler’s tale of meeting the lone resident of America’s least-populated town is a good one. And they know their presence at the tavern — sharing their stories of their adventures, their friends, their hometowns — is what sustains and stimulates Eiler.

I ask her if the news stories and social media — where travelers share proud selfies with her and accounts that specialize in fascinating facts repost images of the tavern — have been a boon for business. All the publicity is a good thing, right? “Well, sure,” she says matter-of-factly, then pauses, reassessing. “But I don’t know. I never see any of the stuff that’s published. I don’t pay much attention to it.” She has no cellphone, but people are always calling her on the tavern’s landline rotary. “I’ve got a computer and I’ve got the Wi-Fi, all that stuff,” she says, “but I’m just not interested in reading what I have to say when it’s probably — well, whatever.” Because, I suggest, it’s your own life? “Yeah,” she says, then adds in a surprisingly cheerful tone, “I lead a pretty dull life.”

During the pandemic, the way Eiler passes her days is not noticeably different from how she passed her weeks, months, and years before it. She goes to work, goes home, repeats; the sun rises, the sun sets. In her quiet corner of the world, self-sufficiency and independence are how both she and her customers survive, even thrive. They find pleasure in their work and in the small slices of life shared daily.

Running the tavern, she says, “is my interest. I’m not interested in going and sitting in somebody else’s bar. I’m not interested in going and gossiping at the coffee shop. I can do all of that right here.” Every day, she meets people new and old just by walking the few yards from her home to the tavern. “I don’t mind answering all their questions,” she says of the curious travelers and journalists like myself. “I’m more interested in what stories they can tell me than what I can tell them.” At a quiet tavern backed by cornfields, conversation facilitated by $3 beers, “It’s very easy to get people to talk about themselves.”

Eiler has no plans to give up the life she’s built in Monowi, whether during the pandemic or after it. “I’m doing what I want to do right now,” she says, resolutely. “Maybe next year I won’t want to. But this year, this is what I want to be doing.”

Kieran Dahl is a freelance writer covering travel, culture, design, and technology.

Daniel Johnson is a Midwest editorial photographer living in Omaha, Nebraska, specializing in editorial portraiture, food photography, architecture interiors, and documentary photojournalism.

The CDC Is Literally Begging You to Keep Up COVID-19 Safety Protocols

March 31, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

‘I’m asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can, so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends,’ said director Rochelle Walensky

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the White House are calling for continued vigilance and the reinstatement of mask mandates amid a worrying rise in COVID-19 cases as states relax their restrictions and reopen restaurants and other businesses.

The U.S. has surpassed 30 million cases of COVID-19 and is seeing an increase in 7-day averages of new cases per day, CDC director Rochelle Walensky announced in a virtual White House briefing on March 29. The 7-day averages of daily hospitalizations and deaths have also started to rise, prompting worries that we may experience a fourth surge of the pandemic more than a year after it officially took hold in this country.

“I’m going to lose the script and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope — but right now I’m scared,” Walensky said during the briefing, appearing to speak candidly and emotionally from the heart. She continued:

I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director, and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done, I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet. And so I’m asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can, so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends.

President Joe Biden echoed Walensky’s sentiments a few hours later, appealing to local and state leaders to pull the brakes on the easing of COVID-related restrictions and to require people to wear masks again. “Now is not the time to let down,” he said. “Now’s not the time to celebrate. It is time to do what we do best as a country: our duty, our jobs, take care of one another.”

In cities and states across the U.S., schools have reopened, restrictions on indoor dining have been lifted, and governments have ended mandates to wear masks inside businesses and in public settings. Restaurants and bars are showing signs of a positive financial rebound thanks in part to such easing of restrictions, as Restaurant Business points out. Increased dining out has been linked to COVID-19 spikes, while mask mandates are linked to decreases in infections and deaths, according to a CDC study published earlier this month. Until enough of the population is vaccinated to achieve herd immunity — which experts say is still a long way away — it’s as important as ever to remain cautious, despite whichever restrictions have eased locally.

• CDC Chief Warns of Another COVID Surge if States Don’t Slow Their Reopenings [Restaurant Business]
• Biden pushes governors to reinstate mask mandates, as the C.D.C. director warns of ‘impending doom.’ [NYT]
• Biden, CDC director warn of virus rebound if nation lets up [AP]
• CDC Observes Link Between COVID-19 Spikes and Increased Dining Out [Eater]

Michelin Announces 2021 Stars for the Netherlands

March 31, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

There are two new restaurants in the two-star category

This week, French tire company Michelin launched its newest dining guide: the 2021 Michelin Guide Netherlands. It’s a continuation of Michelin’s pandemic quest to, as international director Gwendal Poullennec puts it, “encourage restaurateurs, highlight their exceptional commitment and showcase their talent.”

There are just 10 new starred restaurants total on the list, including two restaurants with two-stars for the first time: Brut172 in Reijmerstok and Restaurant 212 in Amsterdam bring the total number of two-star restaurants to 18. Restaurant 212, from chefs Thomas Groot and Richard Van Oostenbrugge, made its debut in the 2019 Michelin guide with one star, while Brut172 appears in the guide for the first time. It’s a particularly remarkable feat for a restaurant which opened just weeks before COVID-19 shutdowns, leaving less than a year for Michelin inspectors to solidify their impressions.

There are 93 restaurants with one star on in the guide, eight of them new: De Nieuwe Winkel in Nijmegen, Pieters Restaurant in Bergamacht, Zeezout in Rotterdam, Tilia in Etten-Leur, Meliefste in Wolphaartsdijk, Kasteel Heemstede in Houten, and Wils and Daalder, both located in Amsterdam. There are also eight entries into Michelin’s brand new Green Star category, which recognizes restaurants that make a commitment to sustainability, including the newly one-starred De Nieuwe Winkel.

There are no new three star restaurants in the Netherlands, but De Librije in Zwolle and Inter Scaldes in Kruiningen retain their three-star rankings from last year. The guide also includes 118 Bib Gourmand restaurants — in this case, restaurants that offer set menus for a maximum of €39. Thirteen of these are new this year.

For the full list of the Netherland’s Michelin stars head to Michelin, and for a list of newly starred restaurants, see the rundown below:

Two Stars

Restaurant 212

Brut172

One Stars

Wils

Daalder

De Nieuwe Winkel

Pieters Restaurant

Zeezout

Tilia

Thijs Meliefste

Kasteel Heemstede

Green Stars

De Librije

Bolenius

De Kas

Aan Sjuuteeänjd

Het Seminar

Lokaal

The Food Forest

One

• The MICHELIN Guide Netherlands 2021 honors two restaurants with a second Star [Michelin]

A Day in the Life of Whole Animal Butcher Heather Marold Thomason

March 31, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

On the first episode of our new series ‘Clocking In,’ we see what it takes to run Primal Supply in Philadelphia

“I don’t think I’ll ever not be hands-on,” says Primal Supply owner Heather Marold Thomason. “I think it’s really just my personality.”

When Thomason opened her Philadelphia-based whole animal butcher business in 2016, her goal was to improve the local food supply chains that supported farmers. Now, thanks to her personal relationships with farms, her hands-on approach, and her dedication to teaching butchers and leaving little to no waste, Thomason’s three shops and online business offer meat from about 18 locally-sourced whole animals a week.

Each day, before she heads to the Primal Supply’s headquarters, Thomason’s checks emails to make sure that farmers and deliveries are all on schedule. Once at the facility, it’s a whirlwind of reviewing inventory, checking in on the cut room where all of the animals get broken down, training butchers, and overseeing the packaging and distribution that goes out to their shop, restaurants, online orders, and their “Butcher’s Club” subscription meat program.

Primal Supply receives about six whole beef every week, which equals 700 pounds of meat per carcass. Since only 70% of that can be used as cuts of meat to sell, Thomason relies on her in-house chef Damon Menapace to make the rest into sausages, lard, and broths and stocks to be sold at the store.

“The thing people don’t realize is how much work goes in behind the scenes,” she says. “The butchery is beautiful, but there needs to be a greater understanding of what it takes to get food to plates.”

Massimo Bottura’s NYC Soup Kitchen Is Slated For a Full Opening This Fall

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

The Harlem location will be part of the Osteria Francescana chef’s nonprofit that operates multiple such centers across the world

The 16 Essential O‘ahu Bakeries

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Where to find the best roll cakes, coco puffs, ensaimadas, and poi mochi donuts

Hawai‘i is so much more than shave ice and malassadas. Those two treats are just a few of the iconic desserts that can be found at O‘ahu’s bakeries, where goodies wander across continents, from brioche tarts filled with liliko‘i (passionfruit) curd to poi mochi donuts.

There are older places, like the 70-year-old Liliha Bakery, that deliver straight nostalgia. Shortening-based crusts and whipped toppings (in lieu of whipped cream) still dominate many pastry cases. (Health trends have largely passed Hawai‘i by, which is why you’ll still find fried apple pies at McDonald’s.) Then there are younger outfits, like the Local General Store, a new pop-up that sells locally grown fruits — including cacao — folded into buttery pastries.

While the Japanese influence is obvious, the Philippines are more subtly represented in Hawai‘i’s baked goods, a reflection of the second-largest ethnicity in the state. Some of O‘ahu’s most iconic bakeries, such as Liliha and Paalaa Kai, offer ensaimadas (buns smeared with margarine and sugar), while each of the more explicitly Filipino bakeshops tends to do one thing exceptionally well, though they’re mostly reliable for hot-from-the-oven pandesal (bread rolls).

For a long time, Hawai‘i’s bakery realm stayed static, confined to old favorites. But recent additions have added a welcome mix of new flavors and techniques to make life that much sweeter.

Ranking Honolulu’s 5 Best Malassada Bakeries

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Fried, filled, dusted, and glazed — in search of the capital’s signature fried pastry in every form

Hot, fried, adorably puffy and round, malassadas are some of the most delightful confections found all over Honolulu. They range from palm-size to bigger than your hand. A traditional malassada is simply coated in white granulated sugar, but they are frequently served with flavored sugars and fillings. Some are denser, others airier; some are almost wet, others perilously dry; each style has its proponents, and I have come to believe there truly is a malassada for every desire.

Eggier than a typical mainland yeasted doughnut, malassadas came to Hawai‘i in the 19th century with immigrant workers from the Azores and Madeira, who brought with them this Portuguese fried dough. Malassadas make for an easy breakfast, but many bakeries stay open through the evening, as they also make for a perfect afternoon snack or after-dinner dessert. Today, these special doughnuts can be found across Hawai‘i, and Honolulu is home to many shops offering takes that range from classic to newfangled — which makes them perfect for a crawl.

A bit about food crawls: whether it’s a taco crawl in Austin, Texas, or Los Angeles, a pizza crawl in New Haven, Connecticut, or an ice cream crawl in New York City, planning is key. Go all in on one food, prioritize quality over quantity, and, if you can, go with a local or an expert.

Eater contributor and sweets obsessive Kathy YL Chan guided me on a five-stop, daylong crawl through the city. Each shop we visited served a unique function in the Honolulu malassada landscape, from tourist traps to old classics to new-school favorites.

Whether you're planning a crawl or simply choosing one malassada shop to hit, here's the lay of the land:

The Standard Bearer: Leonard’s Bakery

Leonard's Bakery, opened in 1952, is perhaps the most famous purveyor of malassadas in Hawai‘i, with a giant blinking retro sign and a gaggle of camera-toting visitors outside. The factors that make Leonard's annoying — the crowds, the long line, the general obviousness of it — also contribute to its winning formula. The best malassada is a fresh-from-the-fryer malassada. And at Leonard's, high volume means all the malassadas are fried to order, in huge, consistent volume.

Of the five malassadas we sampled from the iconic pink box, my favorite was the simple, unfilled malassada dusted in cinnamon sugar, which allowed the flavor of the warm, sweet dough and cinnamon to shine, even if the sugar mixture got all over my fingers, jeans and camera. The malassada fillings — haupia (creamy coconut, based on the traditional Hawaiian pudding) and dobash (rich chocolate) — were tasty but, for me, unnecessary, since the real pleasure of a Leonard’s malassada is the delicate lightness of the freshly fried dough, unmatched by any other bakery on the crawl. 933 Kapahulu Avenue

Hillary Dixler Canavan

The New Wave: Pipeline Bakeshop & Creamery

Opened by a Leonard’s alum last September, Pipeline Bakeshop is the new kid on the block. A sweet cafe in charming Kaimukī, Pipeline sets the scene for an elevated experience, and it delivers on that with a serious malassada operation. Pipeline fries to order as a matter of policy. It was one of only two bakeries I visited that doesn’t offer fillings. Instead, malassadas come coated in white sugar, cocoa sugar, coffee sugar, or li hing (salty dried plum) sugar.

Senia pastry chef and Eater Young Gun Mimi Mendoza counts Pipeline as her personal favorite, raving about the “super fluffy and crispy” malassadas. Her description hit the nail on the head. Of the breadier malassadas I tried, Pipeline’s are the gold standard — the crumb drier than Leonard’s but still light and springy. I went for the classic white sugar and the li hing, which, in addition to being a bright pink, had a nice zing.

These malassadas are substantial and feel more like a baked good than a fried doughnut. And for those ready to branch out, Pipeline also serves riffs like malassada bread pudding, or the Malamode, a malassada filled with ice cream.

Crawl tip: If you want to take any malassadas to go, either to enjoy or gift later or even the next day, buy from Pipeline. My half-eaten malassadas maintained their integrity hours after purchase. 3632 Wai’alae Avenue

Hillary Dixler Canavan

Hillary Dixler Canavan

Best for Fillings: Liliha Bakery

Liliha Bakery is most famous for its coco puffs, a choux pastry filled with chocolate pudding and topped with chantilly that's attained icon status, but the haupia-filled malassadas are a delight.

Coated with powdered rather than granulated sugar, reminiscent of a typical filled doughnut from the Mainland, the malassada’s haupia filling is richly coconutty, thick, and improbably elegant. The Liliha malassada is on the larger side, which gratefully allows it to accommodate such a generous serving of haupia. The bakery doesn't offer plain malassadas, but that’s okay — the filling was the best part. My only real regret of this visit was not also ordering the liliko‘i (passion fruit) malassada.

If you are plotting out a route for your crawl, note that the new location of Liliha Bakery not only has a bathroom, it has a big, clean bathroom, which can be hard to find at bakeries (yet necessary while chugging water in the Honolulu sun). Plan accordingly. 580 N. Nimitz Highway

Hillary Dixler Canavan

The Insta-bait: Kamehameha Bakery

Kamehameha Bakery is famous for its poi-glaze donuts, inspired by the traditional Hawaiian staple of taro root paste. The fried confection has a rich purple color that reveals itself when you bite or tear off a piece. Kamehameha doesn’t fry to order, but the sturdy dough sat well.

If you want to go for the Instagram gold, order some of the daily malassada specials, too. While the orange and strawberry malassadas were marred by a chemical taste, their artificial hues look great on camera. (When I texted a pic of the neon pastries to various friends, it elicited a number of “wow” responses.)

Pro tip for malassada-crawlers: consider stopping in to Thắng’s French Coffee & Bubble Tea across the parking lot for an avocado smoothie, or some other green smoothie to counterbalance all the dough. 1284 Kalani Street

Hillary Dixler Canavan

Best Atmosphere: Zippy’s

Before entering the Zippy’s in Makiki, Kathy explained that this local chain is beloved for its cheap meals of local comfort food and for providing an all-day hangout for grandparents. Inside, the bright and sunny dining room was quietly humming with chatter from tables filled by the retirees Kathy told me to expect.

Once upon a time you could only find malassadas at Zippy’s locations that housed an accompanying Napoleon’s Bakery, leading to some confusion. But the chain now fries malassadas to order at all locations. They come unfilled, dusted in plain or cinnamon sugar, and emerge hot and wonderfully light. While they’re a bit smaller than at other shops, they do come three to an order.

Besides, Zippy’s is an essential restaurant to visit if you want to understand Hawai‘i. You shouldn’t leave without a malassada. 1222 S. King Street

Hillary Dixler Canavan

Hillary Dixler Canavan is a senior editor at Eater.
Special thanks to Kathy YL Chan

The 9 Most Refreshing Shave Ice Spots in Hawai‘i 

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Where to find Hawai‘i’s cold treat, from nostalgic, highlighter-colored cups to avant garde creations

Enjoyed year-round by young and old alike, shave ice is Hawai‘i’s most beloved cold treat and a must for any traveler visiting the islands.

While many cultures have their version of shaved ice covered in sweet syrup, Hawai‘i’s iconic treat can be traced back to the Japanese immigrants brought to work on the sugar and pineapple plantations in the mid-1800s. They introduced kakigori, the Japanese term for shaved ice, repurposing carpenters’ hand planes to create shavings from large blocks of ice. Back then they were topped simply, with sugar or molasses syrup, but modern-day shave ices boast domes of Technicolor, artificial rainbows with add-ons like mochi, ice cream, and snowcaps (sweetened, condensed milk).

With something so simple — ice and syrup — the details matter. For the perfect shave ice, the ice should be powdery, soft, and fine, with a consistency of snow (no crunchy ice flakes). The ice should be softly mounded in a cup — packed, hard ice absorbs flavorings poorly, while loose ice collapses under the weight of syrup. These days, there’s a shift away from the artificially flavored and fluorescent-colored syrups toward those made from real fruit. Either way, the flavors should be bright so they don’t get lost in the ice.

Here are the best places to experience the cool, fleeting joy of shave ice.

Part of the Eater Guide to Hawai‘i

What It Cost to Keep Two Restaurants Open During the Pandemic Without Outdoor Dining or Delivery

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Chef and restaurateur James Mark is relying on takeout and PPP loans to keep his restaurants afloat

Annoyingly techie but excruciatingly precise, “pivoting” is now a loaded term in the restaurant world. The pandemic has demanded adaptation; since March 2020, restaurants and bars across the country have navigated through the COVID-19 pandemic by transforming into online groceries, outdoor dining destinations, meal-kit providers, and more. These pivots require time, resources, creativity, innovation, and, of course, money — and their success can mean a restaurant’s survival. In this series, Eater asks operators to open their books and explain how pivoting has (and hasn’t) worked, by the numbers. Next up: North and Big King in Providence, Rhode Island.

For Big King and North, two restaurants in Providence, Rhode Island, 2020 was off to a great start. James Mark, the owner of both restaurants and the chef at Big King, says he made about $353,000 in sales in January and February alone. He started March with about $50,000 in the restaurant bank accounts, something he says is rare because he’s spent so much money in the last few years on renovations and equipment replacement.

“I felt really good going into March, like ‘Oh shit, we have money for the first time,’” Mark says.

On March 9, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo declared a state of emergency after three cases of the coronavirus were found in the state. At that point the outbreak had been limited to a few K-12 schools and had not yet become widespread.

On March 15, Big King and North made about $10,000 in sales, about double the nightly average. During dinner service at Big King, a 21-seat restaurant that serves seasonal, seafood-focused Japanese-inspired fare, Mark leaned over the bar to talk with a group of students from Brown University about the sake selection. After work that night, he was scrolling through Twitter at home when he saw local journalists reporting on confirmed coronavirus cases at Brown. That’s when he realized that if he kept his restaurants open, he’d have no way to protect his staff, their friends, or their families.

“We have immunocompromised staff,” Mark says. “We have staff who live in multigenerational households.” He shut down Big King and North the next day, the same day Raimondo banned all in-person dining in Rhode Island restaurants, bars, and cafes.

Mark hasn’t opened for any form of in-person dining since. Instead, he’s focused on no-contact takeout, limited to two pickups every 15 minutes per restaurant. While this method is relatively safe for staff, it has hurt business. Even with the pandemic-related loans and grants the two restaurants received, Mark estimates he’s lost about $75,000 over the past year. That’s a big loss — even though his restaurants made a lot of money in sales before the pandemic, Mark also spent a lot on rent, wages for his staff, insurance, equipment, and expensive seasonal fish. “As a restaurant owner, I’ve never made more than 30,000 bucks a year, maybe 35,” he says.

Sales changes

Sales for Big King and North totaled nearly $2 million in 2019, with 65,000 in-person guests served. In 2020, total sales were closer to $1 million. Of that, $457,000 came in before March 15; since then, Mark says, his monthly average has been only $40,000 to $50,000.

Neither restaurant offered delivery before the pandemic — and they still don’t. Mark refuses to work with third-party delivery services like Grubhub or Uber Eats because he considers their business practices — such as regularly charging restaurants more than 30 percent of the cost of an order in delivery fees — “predatory.” Aside from that, he says, the cost of insurance and wages for drivers wouldn’t be worth the money made from added sales. That left takeout as the only option for the restaurants to survive.

Big King didn’t offer takeout at all before the pandemic, and North’s takeout represented only 5 percent of the two restaurants’ combined sales in 2019, so the move to a takeout-only model was a big change. Mark says alcohol, which made up about a third of revenue before the pandemic, was particularly difficult to adapt to takeout. Until late March, restaurants in Rhode Island were not allowed to sell to-go wine and beer, and they couldn’t sell to-go cocktails until May. During that time, Mark says, he lost about $10,000 in kegs of beer and open bottles of wine and sake that went bad. Now, only $4,500 of the two restaurants’ $45,000 in monthly sales is in alcohol. And the profit margin on that $4,500 is less than half of what it used to be because Mark cut prices to compete with liquor stores. Though Big King and North now offer to-go cocktails and a large selection of sake, beer, and wine, people just don’t drink as much with takeout, Mark says, and many people simply don’t want to pay for a cocktail that they’re going to drink at home.

It’s not just the pivot to takeout that’s impacted the overall sales data. Big King was completely closed for a week after its last night of service, and North was closed for about three weeks. After the restaurants reopened, COVID exposures would force them to shut their doors again, usually for a few days at a time, so the staff could properly isolate while waiting on test results. (Only one staff member has tested positive so far.) When Mark’s wife received a positive test result in June, he shut down Big King for two weeks to quarantine, though he never tested positive for the coronavirus himself. These closures naturally contributed to a loss in sales.

May and June are typically extremely profitable for North. Providence is a college town, and people buy out the restaurant for private graduation parties, where groups regularly spend $8,000 to $16,000 in a night. In 2019, North hosted 50 events. But all the reservations for 2020 graduation parties were canceled once the pandemic began.

Staffing

The day after Mark closed Big King and North, he held a meeting during which everyone on staff filed for unemployment benefits. In the first few weeks, Mark and Andrew McQuesten, the chef at North, worked as a two-person team to cook takeout bento boxes of rice, fish, and vegetable sides in the Big King kitchen. Within three weeks, Mark says, he’d hired back most of his staff to work five to 10 hours a week while also collecting unemployment.

But Mark didn’t hire back 10 part-time front-of-house workers, whose jobs no longer exist under the no-contact takeout system, something he says he feels guilty about. He also didn’t hire back two full-time cooks, who he says chose to leave the restaurant industry when the pandemic hit. Overall, Mark went from employing around 35 people, including part-time workers, before the pandemic to about 23 people since the restaurants reopened for takeout in March 2020.

In the summer, Mark enrolled his staff in a Rhode Island Department of Labor program called WorkShare, which lets everyone work at least 20 hours a week while remaining eligible for some state unemployment money. He’s been using this system ever since.

New costs

When the CARES Act Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation Program, which provided each of his workers with $600 per week, ended in July 2020, Mark was worried about his employees, so he increased everyone’s hourly wages, from $12 to $16 an hour to $25 an hour — essentially a form of hazard pay. While these extra wages help his employees, Mark says he’s spent about $94,000 more than he would have if he’d kept wages at pre-pandemic rates, and he plans to drop them down to $15 an hour when the pandemic is over.

Since Big King and North haven’t offered any on-site dining since March 2020, Mark hasn’t had to spend money on new ventilation systems or heaters, the way many other restaurants have. But he says his employees have been using hundreds of pairs of vinyl gloves each day. Because of increased demand, he says, it has cost up to $100 for a pack of 1,000 gloves at some points during the pandemic.

Relief

Money from the Paycheck Protection Program kept Big King and North afloat this past year. Marks says his biggest expense is payroll, which normally costs him 40 precent of revenue, so the roughly $240,000 he received in the first round of PPP at the end of July 2020 and the $330,000 he received in the second round in mid-February 2021 could easily be used for paychecks, making the loans forgivable.

He says he also received about $60,000 in grants from the state of Rhode Island and the Providence Chamber of Commerce. A GoFundMe set up by the managers in April 2020 raised about $5,800, which Mark says was distributed to the most in-need staff members.

Mark says he’s used about $50,000 of his second PPP loan so far and thinks the rest will keep his restaurants afloat until the end of April.

“Are we making money? No. But can we tread water? Sure,” he says.

Looking forward

Mark says Big King and North won’t open for indoor dining until every employee who wants a COVID-19 vaccination has one, and he might even wait for a while after that to get better data about the efficacy of the vaccines at preventing illness and community transmission.

But once his current front-of-house workers are vaccinated, which will hopefully be soon, he plans to start offering outdoor dining at North. Mark says he’ll be able to seat 32 people at eight tables of four, which he hopes will lead to a significant increase in sales, though he estimates the setup will cost him about $5,000. There isn’t any room for an outdoor setup at Big King.

As part of the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill President Joe Biden signed into law on March 11, restaurants will be able to apply for grants (not loans, like those available under the PPP) to offset losses in 2020. It’s the first federal pandemic relief aid specifically meant for restaurants. According to the Independent Restaurant Coalition, which helped develop the restaurant relief bill, restaurants that aren’t part of a chain of more than 20, or are publicly traded, will be eligible for grants equaling 2019 revenue minus 2020 revenue, with the amount of money a business received through PPP also subtracted. By Mark’s calculations, that would equal over $340,000 for Big King and North. Though he’s unsure whether he’ll receive any money through the program, if he does, it could change everything for the two restaurants, which have not been independently sustaining themselves since March 2020.

“If it wasn’t for federal aid, we’d be closed,” Mark says.

Jade Yamazaki Stewart is a freelance food writer and journalist.

Climate Change’s Impact on Our Food System

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week

This post originally appeared on March 27, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

It’s sometimes easy to forget that, what with the other crises we’re facing, we’re slowly, inexorably marching towards doom as the climate warms. It will impact us and future generations in myriad ways and will have an outsize impact on our food systems, how we feed the planet, how often we get sick, and what kinds of food we can eat and what it will cost.

So that’s our package for this week. As our executive editor Matt Buchanan writes in the intro, “Even if you’ve had the luxury of paying no mind to climate change, you will eventually taste it.”

Read about how climate change is impacting truffles, olive oil, squid and jellyfish, and wine in the Midwest, and how the warming climate is going to lead to ever-more foodborne illnesses. Plus: If Americans keep eating as much meat as they have been, the outcome will be cataclysmic. Enjoy!

On Eater

— LA’s dive bars that don’t serve food might be able to finally reopen (but just outside!) after a year of being closed.

— Boris Johnson is contemplating letting pubs (that want to) require vaccination for entry.

— Interesting to me that Chicago is not counting vaccinated diners towards indoor capacity counts.

— Time Out Market, which was on an expansion tear pre-pandemic, is pulling out of its plans to open in London.

— Multiple women are alleging they were drugged at a Michigan bar and restaurant.

— Servers are protesting an LA steakhouse for changing the tip pool structure to give more money to the back of the house.

— The long-anticipated Virgin Hotels, complete with a version of Night + Market, finally opened in Vegas. So did a 24,000-square-foot new food hall that’s meant to be an ode to hawker centers in Southeast Asia. It features notable imports from Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Manila, and Penang (as well as concepts from Steve Aoki and Marcus Saumuelsson).

— In other “things are open” news, Miami has been so open during spring break that South Beach had to enforce a curfew.

— Selling wine is about to get easier and more affordable for restaurants in Pennsylvania.

— Why all these fast food companies are taking a retro approach to their logos and design.

Christian Rodriguez/Eater

— 17 new cookbooks to get excited about this season.

— Zach Brooks chimes in with the clutch pandemic parenting move: THE TABLE.

— So many New York chefs are hopping on the (delicious) birria bandwagon, even if they have little to no connection to the dish.

— Watch: I am in love with this video about a quirky and obsessive wholesale bread maker in Philly.

— A wine person you should know: Rania Zayyat, this month’s host and curator of our Eater Wine Club.

— For those of you in New York, Robert Sietsema has a cheese-stuffed focaccia you need to try.

— And for those of you in San Francisco, we’re hiring!

Off Eater

• Despite everything, we prioritized work. [Vox.com]
• The owners of Hudson Yards landscaped out the food vendors. [Curbed]
• How and why mochi is in every grocery freezer section. [VICE]
• Von Diaz’s essential Puerto Rican recipes. [NYT]
• Anti-Asian violence is often inseparable from misogyny. [WaPo]

This Recipe for Chewy Birthday Cake Butter Mochi Is as Fun as It Sounds

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

The dessert from Sheldon Simeon’s new cookbook is “stoner food to the max”

I’ve spent a lot of time this past year daydreaming of Hawai‘i, which makes me like a good portion of the U.S. — as the New York Times recently reported, tourists have already begun flocking to the islands. It’s a trend Sheldon Simeon, chef at Maui’s Tin Roof, has noticed. And while the third-generation local welcomes the visitors, he admits that the past few weeks have been a bit overwhelming. “I think our community hasn’t been ready for the amount of tourists to come back to the state,” he says. “I think it’s our duty to continue to educate them, and for them to be respectful of what we have.” His new cookbook, Cook Real Hawaiʻi, is in part meant to do just that.

Interspersed among recipes for foods that feel quintessentially of Hawai‘i — like chicken Hekka, which Simeon describes as “something Japanese-rooted and Japanese-based, but it’s not found in Japan; it’s only found in Hawai‘i” — Simeon and coauthor Garret Snyder delve into Hawai‘i’s colonial history and the people and forces that have given rise to its unique, vibrant food culture. “The outside perception of Hawai‘i is very resort-ish, amusement park-ish — it might be only the hula skirts and the mai tais and that stuff, but if you dig deeper, it’s a lot richer,” Simeon says. “My hope is that [Cook Real Hawai‘i readers] have a different perception of what Hawai‘i is.”

Simeon also hopes that the people who buy his book actually cook from it. “Nothing is worse than a cookbook you can’t cook out of,” he says. And so the recipes are approachable, while showing off the diverse influences of Hawaiian cuisine. Take, for example, the recipe for chocolate birthday cake butter mochi. It’s a Tin Roof twist on Filipino bibingka, and, according to Simeon, “so easy to make” — in addition to being to supremely fun to eat, complete with rainbow sprinkles and (optional) Pop Rocks. “It’s one of those things where people place an order and they look down and say, ‘I need one of those,’” he says.

A visit to Tin Roof is still well out of reach for most of us, but making these is a very close next best thing.

Chocolate Birthday Cake Butter Mochi

Serves 12

Butter mochi is the best. The perfect mixture of chewy, squishy, dense, and sticky, these coconut and rice flour cake bars (a cousin of Filipino bibingka) are one of the most beloved island desserts out there.

Plain old butter mochi is great, but the kind we do at Tin Roof — developed after many hours of “research” — is on another level. Stoner food to the max. We start with chocolate butter mochi, which has the texture of soft-baked brownies, then spread it with a dead simple frosting made from creamy peanut butter, raw sugar, and Pop Rocks. And finally we shower the top with rainbow sprinkles because it’s like throwing yourself a mini birthday party. What more could you want?

Ingredients:

For the butter mochi:
12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) salted butter, cut into chunks, plus more for greasing
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk
1 (13.5-ounce) can full-fat coconut milk
3 cups mochiko (sweet rice flour)
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

For the frosting and topping:
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup demerara or turbinado sugar
¼ cup Pop Rocks candy (optional)
Rainbow sprinkles

Instructions:

Step 1: For the butter mochi: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13 baking pan.

Step 2: In a microwave-safe medium bowl, melt the butter and chocolate chips by microwaving in 30-second increments, stirring and repeating as needed, until just melted.

Step 3: Add the granulated sugar to the melted chocolate and stir until combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla, evaporated milk, and coconut milk.

Step 4: In a large bowl, stir together the mochiko, baking powder, and cocoa powder until evenly distributed. Fold the chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients, stirring until thoroughly mixed. When the batter is totally smooth, pour it into the prepared pan.

Step 5: Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let cool slightly.

Step 6: Meanwhile, for the frosting: In a bowl, with an electric mixer, vigorously whip together the peanut butter and demerara sugar until it has the texture of frosting.

Step 7: When the butter mochi is still slightly warm, spread the frosting evenly over the top. Sprinkle with Pop Rocks (if using) and shower sprinkles over the top. Let cool to room temperature, then cut into 2-inch-ish squares and serve.

Reprinted with permission from Cook Real Hawai‘i by Sheldon Simeon and Garrett Snyder, copyright © 2021. Published by ClarksonPotter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Photography copyright: Kevin J. Miyazaki © 2021.

What It Cost to Keep Two Restaurants Open During the Pandemic Without Outdoor Dining or Delivery

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Chef and restaurateur James Mark is relying on takeout and PPP loans to keep his restaurants afloat

Annoyingly techie but excruciatingly precise, “pivoting” is now a loaded term in the restaurant world. The pandemic has demanded adaptation; since March 2020, restaurants and bars across the country have navigated through the COVID-19 pandemic by transforming into online groceries, outdoor dining destinations, meal-kit providers, and more. These pivots require time, resources, creativity, innovation, and, of course, money — and their success can mean a restaurant’s survival. In this series, Eater asks operators to open their books and explain how pivoting has (and hasn’t) worked, by the numbers. Next up: North and Big King in Providence, Rhode Island.

For Big King and North, two restaurants in Providence, Rhode Island, 2020 was off to a great start. James Mark, the owner of both restaurants and the chef at Big King, says he made about $353,000 in sales in January and February alone. He started March with about $50,000 in the restaurant bank accounts, something he says is rare because he’s spent so much money in the last few years on renovations and equipment replacement.

“I felt really good going into March, like ‘Oh shit, we have money for the first time,’” Mark says.

On March 9, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo declared a state of emergency after three cases of the coronavirus were found in the state. At that point the outbreak had been limited to a few K-12 schools and had not yet become widespread.

On March 15, Big King and North made about $10,000 in sales, about double the nightly average. During dinner service at Big King, a 21-seat restaurant that serves seasonal, seafood-focused Japanese-inspired fare, Mark leaned over the bar to talk with a group of students from Brown University about the sake selection. After work that night, he was scrolling through Twitter at home when he saw local journalists reporting on confirmed coronavirus cases at Brown. That’s when he realized that if he kept his restaurants open, he’d have no way to protect his staff, their friends, or their families.

“We have immunocompromised staff,” Mark says. “We have staff who live in multigenerational households.” He shut down Big King and North the next day, the same day Raimondo banned all in-person dining in Rhode Island restaurants, bars, and cafes.

Mark hasn’t opened for any form of in-person dining since. Instead, he’s focused on no-contact takeout, limited to two pickups every 15 minutes per restaurant. While this method is relatively safe for staff, it has hurt business. Even with the pandemic-related loans and grants the two restaurants received, Mark estimates he’s lost about $75,000 over the past year. That’s a big loss — even though his restaurants made a lot of money in sales before the pandemic, Mark also spent a lot on rent, wages for his staff, insurance, equipment, and expensive seasonal fish. “As a restaurant owner, I’ve never made more than 30,000 bucks a year, maybe 35,” he says.

Sales changes

Sales for Big King and North totaled nearly $2 million in 2019, with 65,000 in-person guests served. In 2020, total sales were closer to $1 million. Of that, $457,000 came in before March 15; since then, Mark says, his monthly average has been only $40,000 to $50,000.

Neither restaurant offered delivery before the pandemic — and they still don’t. Mark refuses to work with third-party delivery services like Grubhub or Uber Eats because he considers their business practices — such as regularly charging restaurants more than 30 percent of the cost of an order in delivery fees — “predatory.” Aside from that, he says, the cost of insurance and wages for drivers wouldn’t be worth the money made from added sales. That left takeout as the only option for the restaurants to survive.

Big King didn’t offer takeout at all before the pandemic, and North’s takeout represented only 5 percent of the two restaurants’ combined sales in 2019, so the move to a takeout-only model was a big change. Mark says alcohol, which made up about a third of revenue before the pandemic, was particularly difficult to adapt to takeout. Until late March, restaurants in Rhode Island were not allowed to sell to-go wine and beer, and they couldn’t sell to-go cocktails until May. During that time, Mark says, he lost about $10,000 in kegs of beer and open bottles of wine and sake that went bad. Now, only $4,500 of the two restaurants’ $45,000 in monthly sales is in alcohol. And the profit margin on that $4,500 is less than half of what it used to be because Mark cut prices to compete with liquor stores. Though Big King and North now offer to-go cocktails and a large selection of sake, beer, and wine, people just don’t drink as much with takeout, Mark says, and many people simply don’t want to pay for a cocktail that they’re going to drink at home.

It’s not just the pivot to takeout that’s impacted the overall sales data. Big King was completely closed for a week after its last night of service, and North was closed for about three weeks. After the restaurants reopened, COVID exposures would force them to shut their doors again, usually for a few days at a time, so the staff could properly isolate while waiting on test results. (Only one staff member has tested positive so far.) When Mark’s wife received a positive test result in June, he shut down Big King for two weeks to quarantine, though he never tested positive for the coronavirus himself. These closures naturally contributed to a loss in sales.

May and June are typically extremely profitable for North. Providence is a college town, and people buy out the restaurant for private graduation parties, where groups regularly spend $8,000 to $16,000 in a night. In 2019, North hosted 50 events. But all the reservations for 2020 graduation parties were canceled once the pandemic began.

Staffing

The day after Mark closed Big King and North, he held a meeting during which everyone on staff filed for unemployment benefits. In the first few weeks, Mark and Andrew McQuesten, the chef at North, worked as a two-person team to cook takeout bento boxes of rice, fish, and vegetable sides in the Big King kitchen. Within three weeks, Mark says, he’d hired back most of his staff to work five to 10 hours a week while also collecting unemployment.

But Mark didn’t hire back 10 part-time front-of-house workers, whose jobs no longer exist under the no-contact takeout system, something he says he feels guilty about. He also didn’t hire back two full-time cooks, who he says chose to leave the restaurant industry when the pandemic hit. Overall, Mark went from employing around 35 people, including part-time workers, before the pandemic to about 23 people since the restaurants reopened for takeout in March 2020.

In the summer, Mark enrolled his staff in a Rhode Island Department of Labor program called WorkShare, which lets everyone work at least 20 hours a week while remaining eligible for some state unemployment money. He’s been using this system ever since.

New costs

When the CARES Act Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation Program, which provided each of his workers with $600 per week, ended in July 2020, Mark was worried about his employees, so he increased everyone’s hourly wages, from $12 to $16 an hour to $25 an hour — essentially a form of hazard pay. While these extra wages help his employees, Mark says he’s spent about $94,000 more than he would have if he’d kept wages at pre-pandemic rates, and he plans to drop them down to $15 an hour when the pandemic is over.

Since Big King and North haven’t offered any on-site dining since March 2020, Mark hasn’t had to spend money on new ventilation systems or heaters, the way many other restaurants have. But he says his employees have been using hundreds of pairs of vinyl gloves each day. Because of increased demand, he says, it has cost up to $100 for a pack of 1,000 gloves at some points during the pandemic.

Relief

Money from the Paycheck Protection Program kept Big King and North afloat this past year. Marks says his biggest expense is payroll, which normally costs him 40 precent of revenue, so the roughly $240,000 he received in the first round of PPP at the end of July 2020 and the $330,000 he received in the second round in mid-February 2021 could easily be used for paychecks, making the loans forgivable.

He says he also received about $60,000 in grants from the state of Rhode Island and the Providence Chamber of Commerce. A GoFundMe set up by the managers in April 2020 raised about $5,800, which Mark says was distributed to the most in-need staff members.

Mark says he’s used about $50,000 of his second PPP loan so far and thinks the rest will keep his restaurants afloat until the end of April.

“Are we making money? No. But can we tread water? Sure,” he says.

Looking forward

Mark says Big King and North won’t open for indoor dining until every employee who wants a COVID-19 vaccination has one, and he might even wait for a while after that to get better data about the efficacy of the vaccines at preventing illness and community transmission.

But once his current front-of-house workers are vaccinated, which will hopefully be soon, he plans to start offering outdoor dining at North. Mark says he’ll be able to seat 32 people at eight tables of four, which he hopes will lead to a significant increase in sales, though he estimates the setup will cost him about $5,000. There isn’t any room for an outdoor setup at Big King.

As part of the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill President Joe Biden signed into law on March 11, restaurants will be able to apply for grants (not loans, like those available under the PPP) to offset losses in 2020. It’s the first federal pandemic relief aid specifically meant for restaurants. According to the Independent Restaurant Coalition, which helped develop the restaurant relief bill, restaurants that aren’t part of a chain of more than 20, or are publicly traded, will be eligible for grants equaling 2019 revenue minus 2020 revenue, with the amount of money a business received through PPP also subtracted. By Mark’s calculations, that would equal over $340,000 for Big King and North. Though he’s unsure whether he’ll receive any money through the program, if he does, it could change everything for the two restaurants, which have not been independently sustaining themselves since March 2020.

“If it wasn’t for federal aid, we’d be closed,” Mark says.

Jade Yamazaki Stewart is a freelance food writer and journalist.

An Incredibly Obvious at-Home Pizza Hack

March 30, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

If your local pizzeria sells dough to go, buy it

This post originally appeared in the March 29, 2021 edition of The Move, a place for Eater’s editors to reveal their recommendations and pro dining tips — sometimes thoughtful, sometimes weird, but always someone’s go-to move. Subscribe now.

I was raised in a house by two people who rarely went to restaurants, preferring instead to make most of their meals at home. The upshot of this was that pizza, when it was eaten, was the product of a multi-hour endeavor, always undertaken on a Saturday, that involved the painstaking kneading, rising, shaping, and re-rising of dough. It wasn’t that delivery pizza was altogether verboten; it was more that my parents relished the ritual, which was often performed against the sonic backdrop of “A Prairie Home Companion.”

As a result, I entered adulthood with a binary belief about pizza: either you ordered it, or you made it all yourself, crust included. I stubbornly maintained this belief for many years, and it received further reinforcement when I took a class that taught us that thin-crust, restaurant-quality pizza was something that could be made using regular AP flour and a run-of-the-mill, crappy apartment oven. And then the pandemic came, and while I still believed in the myriad virtues of homemade pizza dough, I had little desire to make it.

But sometimes you want pizza, and sometimes you don’t feel like shelling out the cash to order whole pies, which can get expensive when you’re trying to feed, say, four people who all have different ideas about toppings. I’ve never bothered with the premade pizza dough you can find at the grocery store; but one recent evening, my boyfriend went out and bought four balls of dough from his local pizzeria. An hour or two later we had four individual pizzas, made in a nondescript New York apartment oven but tasting for all the world like pizza that had emerged from a real, above-average restaurant.

Not only did we have semi-homemade, very good pizza, but we’d also managed to support a local pizzeria in a way that we’ll continue. Takeout and home-cooked meals are often pitted against each other as an all-or-nothing proposition, but if take-home dough showed me anything, it’s that they can exist in intertwined harmony. Now we can support our local pizzeria both on the nights when we feel like spending money on pizza, and on the nights we don’t.

For those people out there who long ago discovered you could do this, the idea of just walking into a pizzeria and buying dough to take home is a bit of a “no shit, Sherlock” situation. But for me, it was life-changing, a word I typically reserve only for certain dog care products and condiment brands. So, yeah, if your local pizza place offers it, then buy some dough to take home. It hits that sweet spot right between takeout and homemade; some might say it’s the best of both worlds.

How Austin Restaurant Workers Can Book Vaccine Appointments in Texas

March 29, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

A list of all the available vaccine providers in Central Texas

The Ultimate Guide to Seafood in Houston

March 29, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Everything you need to know about where to find the freshest catches from the Gulf and beyond 

How Two of Seoul’s Most Celebrated Chefs Created a New Korean Fried Chicken Restaurant

March 28, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

At Hyodo Chicken, chefs Mingoo Kang and Shin Chango use their pro cooking knowledge, high quality ingredients, and unique flavors to make their crunchy birds

At Hyodo Chicken in Seoul, South Korea, chefs Mingoo Kang and Shin Chango focus all of their experience working in Michelin-starred kitchens on perfecting a singular dish: Korean fried chicken.

The duo focuses on high quality ingredients, and unique flavors in their crunchy fried chicken. Their restaurant features both their crispy saucy dishes, and spicy dry-rubbed pieces, and the two are constantly imparting the knowledge they gleaned from their high-end restaurant experience, especially when it comes to the most important part: frying the chicken. The chefs explain how frying it only once will force the moisture to gather inside and then drip out. Letting the chicken rest and frying it a second time, however, allows the meat to have a chance to soak up the juices inside, and remain extra crispy on the outside. They also demonstrate another pro tip: after the first fry, they poke the joints where blood clots may be found to release any blood during the second fry.

The two are careful to choose fresh, good quality ingredients for their sauces, seasonings, and glazes. “I think it’s one of the major factors that makes our chicken special,” says Kang. “The fundamentals of cooking are in using good ingredients and taking care to prepare it.” This great care in preparation is demonstrated in their soy sauce-based glaze, which takes an entire day to make, and features Korean spices, grain syrup, shishito and cheongyang peppers, green onions, garlic, ginger, dried red peppers, and grain syrup. For their signature dish, fried chicken gets coated in this sauce, and topped with stir-fried jiri anchovies and shishito peppers. “It also has to be delicious,” says Kang. “That’s what we feel is important.”

Austin’s Restaurant Workers Feel Left Out of the Vaccination Rollout in Texas

March 26, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

“And we have been vaccinated at way lower percentages than our white counterpart ZIP codes,” says Claudia Zapata of Austin’s predominantly Latino neighborhoods

Disneyland Announces Resort Expansion Plan With New Restaurants and Rides

March 26, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

Plus, staffing problems at LA restaurants, COVID-19 protocols at Dodger Stadium, and Squire 73 reopens

Eater San Francisco Is Looking for a New Editor. Is It You?

March 26, 2021 Admin 0 Comments

The site is on the hunt for a new leader