Foodies Clan

You can tour a museum at 9, take a mixology class at 11, and swoop over Machu Picchu at 3, but do these online versions of “doing stuff” really scratch the itch? 

Most of us are currently missing things like Outside and Proximity to Other Humans. For the lucky ones, at least, monotony and loneliness are our most prominent enemies, as we stare down seemingly endless nights of Netflix and bean soaking, longing for the day we can experience somewhere else. If you run a business that requires anyone travel from one place to another, this means that you’re particularly reeling. Airline capacity is down 73 percent, hotels are empty, and even the potential reopening of restaurants and bars comes with heavy caveats. Because of that, brands like Airbnb, Viator, Google, and various tourism councils have begun offering virtual “experiences,” so that hypothetically you both keep spending money and also don’t die of boredom. But can paying to stare at a screen for culture really rescue you from the monotony of staring at Twitter? Or are they, you know, both screens?

Broadly, there are two types of experiences happening today. First, there are interactive classes and group activities, where you can learn to make pasta or Irish step dance or listen to a museum docent talk about statuary on a video call — all with other people looking to emerge from this time with a new skill set. In Philadelphia, one restaurant owner is trying to mimic the experience of dining out. He video calls you for your order and then, once it’s delivered, calls back to check in on your wine and see how everything is. Aside from the fact that they take place over a video call, these experiences are pretty close to their in-person counterparts: you sign up for a particular time and date, you follow directions, and supposedly you learn something, or at least pretend you’re in a restaurant.

And then there are the experiences that aim to “immerse” you in some locale that is not your apartment, whether that’s Rome’s colosseum or an orchard of cherry blossoms in Japan or the British Museum. Often, the entirety of the experience is just a 360-degree camera or other pre-recorded video footage of a beautiful place, and sometimes it’s free. Maybe for a brief moment it will seem as if you aren’t on the couch with your partner who won’t stop bouncing every time they try to catch a tarantula in Animal Crossing, but instead are surrounded by skulls and a haunting breeze in Paris’s catacombs. Or seeing the Faroe Islands through the eyes of a local with a camera strapped to their shirt and whose movements you can control with a joypad (yes, this is real, and no, it does not seem ethical).

Both of these types of experiences are not new, except for the joypad thing. Virtual cooking classes and workouts are offered by plenty of companies, and Google has long allowed you to tour the world’s museums, or plant yourself in the middle of a national park on Google Earth. Normally, these offerings are an invaluable tool for those who don’t have the ability — whether financially or physically or because there’s only so much time — to visit these spaces in person. Personally, I’ve avoided them all. Aside from the occasional video yoga class, it just didn’t seem worth it — too much potential for technical difficulties, too easy to open Twitter in another tab. Plus, I could just go there if I really wanted.

But now that the pandemic has wiped out any in-person plans for the foreseeable future, boredom is my primary struggle. I finish work and move from my dining table to my couch, queueing up another movie or TV show or video game. The idea of a plan, of something to look forward to, feels increasingly distant — and online experiences increasingly appealing. Can they actually fulfill our collective void of “doing,” or just highlight how far we are from ever “experiencing” in person again? I decided to fill up my calendar again to find out — or at least see if I could forget about the confining walls of my apartment, even for a few minutes.

The instructions for Airbnb’s “GINspiration History & Cocktails at Home” said that points would be given for the best outfit, so I put on earrings and an actual shirt before signing on. The company best known for providing vacation and short-term rentals offered “experiences” — both real-life and virtual — before the spread of COVID-19, but has taken care to promote the latter on its homepage recently. You can learn to cook tacos or pasta or tapas, or watch a man wandering the streets of Prague in a plague doctor costume as you learn about the Black Death. My hour-and-a-half long class promised the bartender would teach me to make some great gin cocktails, as well as tell me a bit about the history of the spirit itself. It took place at 11:30 in the morning EST (the host was in England) but time is meaningless now, right?

I assume I won the best outfit contest, as I was the only student.

Signing onto what you assume will be a bustling Zoom chat only to find yourself the only one there is a little like showing up early to a party; it’s deeply embarrassing for no specific reason, and the only way through is to act like being a party of one is your favorite thing. We waited a few minutes for the other student who had signed up, but he never came. He is my enemy now, and I began the class feeling resentful that I had no other participants to hide behind, and that I had to make an extra grocery run to pick up the limes and juices necessary for cocktail prep. These should have been provided for me, I thought. There should have been more people. It shouldn’t be like this.

But as I listened to my instructor’s story about accidentally spilling a bright pink Cosmo all over a bachelorette’s white dress, I realized I was experiencing what felt like something new after weeks of monotony: talking to a stranger. For an hour and a half the bartender and I chatted, he told jokes, we traded stories and watched each other’s reactions, I drank a French 75 on an empty stomach, and he taught me how to make daiquiris and Cosmos as well, because I came woefully unprepared in the ingredients department. And I know it’s a bartender’s job to make everyone feel like their friend, but I felt like his friend, which meant I felt like my kitchen was a bar. The magic worked, and I’m not sure if my socialization itch would have been scratched had that other guy (still my enemy) showed up.

So I tried another one. I have been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art countless times in my life. As a New Yorker, I can name my price and visit my personal highlights on any rainy day — the Arms & Armor section, the Asian and “Arab Lands” wings, jewelry, “Inferno” by Franz von Stuck. The Met is currently offering 360 degree video of some of its corridors, but to see any art up close right now, I had to sign up for a tour with Walks. The hour-long tour promised a docent would uncover the “scandals and secrets that lie behind some of the artifacts in America’s greatest art collection,” and an art lecture would mean I’d experience the Met in a way I haven’t since I was a kid on a class trip.

Our docent first started by highlighting all the benefits of an at-home video tour, as if we had a choice. On a normal day we’d probably have to wait outside in a line, waddle through security, and check our coats before seeing any art. Now, he joked, we could be “naked with a glass of cabernet” on hand, and because our “tour” took the form of a slideshow of images, we could zip from the Egyptian wing to “Washington Crossing the Delaware” nearly instantly. In the museum it would have been a 15-minute walk. Our docent clicked through works I’d never stopped to notice before, and famous paintings I’d never really considered that deeply. I learned who Madame X was in John Singer Sargent’s portrait, and that Monet’s water lilies were more staged than I’d previously imagined. I regretted that I’d spent so much time at the Met cycling through what I already knew.

But I found myself missing that 15-minute walk. Our tour was an hour long and featured 87 PowerPoint slides. As soon as we were done with one painting we hopped to the next, leaving barely any time for our new knowledge to sink in. I pictured myself in the alternate-universe version of the tour, following a man holding a flag, maybe chatting with a stranger on the tour about what he’d just said as we weaved through galleries, feeling whether the energy of the group was “bored” or “amused” or “laughing politely.” Our video host turned off everyone’s cameras, so I couldn’t even see the nine other participants’ faces as our docent spoke, or allow him to see my genuine laughs at any of his jokes. I joined to stave off the loneliness, but once the call was ended, I felt newly alone.

In an online conference hosted last week by Arival Online, a resource specifically for the tours and attractions companies, members of the tourism industry gathered to discuss the pros and pitfalls of virtual tours, and whether they were worth investing in. The short answer was yes. Andy Lawrence of Vox Group (no relation) noted that this is what business will be like for a while. “From that we know social distancing will become a norm, and the easiest way to deal with this is to give someone the power to take a tour how and when they want,” he said. However, he denied it was a long-term solution, as people can get free videos of monuments and museums on YouTube. Online education may be a need now, but there’s no telling how long it’ll last.

But others noted it didn’t seem like interactive tours were really competing with the videos on YouTube. “I don’t see it as a full replacement for travel, but a new initiative that’s complementary for travel when we get back to normal,” said Matthijs Kefi of Withlocals. After all, streaming a video is one-way. “Our hosts also want to connect with other people, everyone likes that interaction.” The point of a guided tour or a lesson is rarely just the accumulation of new information. We had cookbooks and Wikipedia before the pandemic. What we want is people.

Public anonymity is one of the things that keeps me in my hometown of New York. I’ve cried in parks, in museums, and at well-renowned bars. I’ve sat quietly with my thoughts at crowded restaurants, and I’ve had life-changing conversations in front of world-famous monuments. Some of the most important things have happened to me while I’ve been shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers.

Now, all of these things happen on my couch. There is no white-noise of humanity to provide cover to my sobs or my half-baked ideas. I am not anonymous, but alone, and the thing I am missing the most is being in public with strangers. What I wouldn’t give right now to attend a book reading, have a drink, or look at a painting with people I’ll never know. What I miss about the world isn’t being told about an artist’s life by a docent. It’s meandering through a museum, talking to my partner about why a newly seen painting is hitting us, quietly experiencing the beauties of life alone in company.

As soon as I named this craving for myself I started feeling it in anything else I tried to do. I clicked around a virtual tour of Machu Picchu where tourists in bucket hats and cargo shorts stand frozen and warped by the circular camera. I tried to recall what the wind felt like on my own trip there over a decade ago, but I could only focus on what it would be like to overhear another person’s conversation. I looked at cherry blossoms blooming in Prospect Park, and thought of the last time I was there, which happened to be the same weekend as the West Indian Day Parade so the Japanese garden was juxtaposed with booming dancehall music from the street. I tried “going” somewhere I’d never been before, the Great Wall of China, only to find myself focusing more on a tourist squatting while drinking a water bottle than any of the sights.

“The same” is too high a bar to set for these experiences. Nobody is advertising that these virtual tours and classes will provide an identical experience to one in person, but rather they’re a way to support docents and guides and bartenders who would otherwise be out of work. But even then, it’s too easy to recall the other version of this experience, the one where your conversation isn’t studded with glitching video, where you can shake the bartender’s hand after he’s taught you how to make a lemon twist, where even after you’ve found a quiet spot at the top of Machu Picchu where it feels like you’re the only person in the whole world, you can walk back down and watch everyone else having their own moments of transcendence without ever having to ask them about it.

Most everything about life right now is both deeply essential and muted. We’re instructed to leave our houses only for necessary work or supplies, and only touch those we live with (which could mean no one at all). Every decision carries the weight of literal life and death. And yet every action feels like a photocopied version of reality, like we’re in a holding pattern until life gets switched back on. The virtual tours and classes are no different. Human interaction, however it happens, feels newly vital. But mostly, these tours and experiences don’t provide that any more than watching Too Hot to Handle on Netflix does. The majority of them are one-way entertainment, good enough if the topic interests you, but the equivalent of an interesting PBS special. And even when they are slightly more interactive, there is no lasting release. You say goodbye, feeling smarter or tipsier or full. The video sputters and freezes and then it ends, and you’re still in your living room, with no one to even ignore you.

Anyway, I love Cosmos now, so at least there’s that.

Plus, fine-dining chefs are going private, and more news to start your day

Chain executives say “cocooning” response will hopefully drive sales

It’s safe to say the country’s eating habits have shifted during the pandemic. We’re cooking beans and making bread, eating a lot more processed foods, and perhaps a bit more wary of meat. And most of all, we’re embracing the concept of “comfort,” as perhaps exhibited by Samin Nosrat’s nationwide lasagna-making challenge. Fast food executives are banking on that, saying our collective desire for “comfort brands” will translate to sales.

According to Business Insider, David Gibbs, the CEO of Yum Brands, says brands like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut provide the “convenience and normalcy, all of which are highly sought out in these uncertain times and beyond.” Taco Bell is already trying to position itself as the “safest” place to eat, by requiring things like contactless payment and employee temperature checks. And Frances Allen, the CEO of Checkers and Rally’s, told the site that “there is going to be this cocooning going on, a sort of a relief that we survived, but at the same time, wanting to embrace the things that give them comfort...from a selfish point of view, we’re also excited to be able to lean back into that.”

It’s also likely that, if you’re seeking the comfort of a burger and fries, chains may be the only option for a while. Fast food restaurants have the infrastructure and coffers to be able to continue operations through a pandemic, while small, independently-owned restaurants continue to struggle. And if the cycle continues, fast food might be all that’s left.

And in other news...

• Employees of Hillstone Restaurant Group — which owns chains like Houston’s and Gulfstream — say bosses are forbidding them to wear face masks. [People Newspapers]
• Taco Bell is selling taco kits for Cinco de Mayo. [CNN]
• With the risk of meat shortages, and questions over the safety of factory farm production, more people are hunting for food. [Reuters]
• The Department of Agriculture will spend $300 million a month to buy surplus fruit, vegetables, meat, and milk from farms, but it still might not be enough to prevent food waste. [NYTimes]
• Chefs from restaurants like Daniel and Eleven Madison Park are increasingly working for billionaires as private chefs. [NYPost]
• Food banks continue to struggle to provide enough. [The Guardian]
• The pandemic has basically revealed everything wrong with our food supply chain. [LA Times]
• Recipe comment section go brrrrr:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

As chefs and restaurateurs create their own versions of the condiment, chile oil has reached cult status here in the States

Back in 2011, shortly after taking ownership of the 100-year-old Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Wilson Tang wanted to sell jars of branded chile oil. But his first batch did not meet the labeling requirements for bottled products according to the Department of Health, and he shelved the idea in order to focus on the restaurant’s bread and butter: in-house diners.

Nearly 10 years later, Tang came back around to the idea. “We had everything ready to launch right before we closed up operations for COVID-19,” says Tang. He released Nom Wah’s first batch of chile oil on the restaurant’s webstore, and it sold out within hours. Once operations are back up and running, Tang hopes to sell the product again, in Nom Wah restaurants and online.

Today, he finds himself in the company of other restaurants and small businesses selling a signature bright vermilion, sediment-thick chile oil. Tang says he was even inspired by fellow young, New York-based entrepreneurs, including Eric Sze of 886 and Lucas Sin of Junzi Kitchen, who each offer branded chile oil that was for sale in their restaurants’ physical locations before they closed to in-house diners due to the coronavirus. (Sze Daddy, the chile oil from 886, was available online but has sold out; Junzi’s chile oil can still be purchased online.) San Francisco’s acclaimed Chinese restaurant Mr. Jiu’s has its own Chile Crisp Sauce, part of a lineup of sauces in partnership with Williams-Sonoma. Jason Wang, owner of the New York City chain Xi’an Famous Foods, which specializes in the cuisine of the western Chinese province of Shaanxi, also recently began to sell signature chile oil packets, by popular demand.

“I saw someone drinking it once,” says Wang, of his chile oil, before he made the decision to sell the packets separately. “People were saying, ‘I’m going to send this to my friend across the country.’” All locations of Xi’an Famous Foods are currently closed due to the coronavirus, but the chile oil can still be purchased online.

None of these business owners could have predicted that their chile oils would become vestiges of an experience that’s no longer available — dining at their establishment — for the lucky customers who bought them. They were intended to leave visitors with a lingering aftertaste and remind them to come back soon. According to Sze, who estimates that 886 sold about 60 jars per week when it was open, “A lot of people finish their meal and are like, ‘I’ll take a jar.’”

Now, as the timeline for reopening remains blurry, retail items from restaurants have become a hot ticket, and shelf-stable chile oils have been anointed a pandemic pantry must-have for those longing to give their home-cooked creations a whiff of spicy-restaurant nostalgia. But what is chile oil? What does it have to do with “chile crisp”? And why is everyone seemingly crazy for spicy, chunky, oily hot sauce in the first place?

When it comes to chile oil — or “chile crisp” — the first thing that pops into many people’s minds nowadays is Lao Gan Ma, a mass-produced, Chinese brand of chile sauce that’s gained a cult following in the United States. Inexpensive and widely available, its Spicy Chili Crisp condiment in particular — which some fans simply call Lao Gan Ma — is so popular that it’s increasingly seen as a benchmark for oil-based chile condiments, and the prototype that some restaurants have looked to to set their versions against. “Lao Gan Ma has too much of a monopoly. We wanted to offer something a little different,” says Sze.

Lao Gan Ma [official]

However, there is some confusion over what exactly “chile crisp” means, and if it’s an entirely different type of product from chile oil, or a variation. “I’ve actually had Chinese friends who were like, ‘What’s chile crisp? Oh, it’s chile oil?’” says Lisa Cheng-Smith, founder of Yun Hai, an exporter of small-batch sauces from Taiwan. A condiment from a small Sichuan-Taiwanese maker called Su Spicy Chili Crisp was the first product available through her ecommerce business, and its best-seller. And while it’s been made for generations, Cheng-Smith gave it a new, English name for its U.S. debut. “I didn’t start calling it ‘chile crisp’ until I started selling it. I always just called it ‘chile oil,’” says Cheng-Smith.

“Lao Gan Ma has five different products, and only one is called Spicy Chili Crisp,” says Jenny Gao, founder of Fly By Jing, a brand of Sichuan ingredients with a signature product called Sichuan Chili Crisp. She says that she was taking cues from other references of the term “chili crisp” when she decided to name her product Sichuan Chili Crisp — in particular, a recipe for chile crisp in the Mission Chinese Food cookbook, published in 2015. That recipe, by Danny Bowien and Chris Ying, is inspired by Lao Gan Ma, “our favorite brand of the stuff,” the authors write. But it’s also a two-part recipe for “Chili Crisp and Chili Oil,” whereby the latter is produced simply by straining out the solids from the infused oil.

Products called “chile crisp” as opposed to chile oil typically have a higher ratio of particles in them than oil. Those particles are the chile flakes (and often garlic, shallots and any number of other ingredients and spices) that are sizzled in the oil to infuse it, becoming crispy in the process. This textural component is what many find irresistible about Sichuan Chili Crisp, Spicy Chili Crisp, and similar high-particle oils. They’re also typically seasoned with salt, soy sauce, MSG, and occasionally fish sauce or other savory agents like fermented black beans.

“I consider chile oil like soy sauce, in that it’s a cooking ingredient,” says Gao. “I view the chunky Spicy Chili Crisp from Lao Gan Ma and my Sichuan Chili Crisp as a condiment — I rarely cook with it; I use it as a topping.”

But in reality, these roles are not so strict, and one person’s idea of a cooking ingredient may be another’s condiment. “You can cook with dried chile pepper flakes and you can also just scatter it on pizza,” says Gao.

“Chile crisp”-labeled oils can still vary a lot in taste, too; Cheng-Smith thinks that Lao Gan Ma’s Spicy Chili Crisp is saltier and more laden with MSG than others — the product is “good in a junk food-y way.”

But whether it’s called a crisp or an oil, the idea of a spicy, chile-based topping that isn’t a vinegar-based sauce has little precedent in the U.S. For generations, when Americans wanted to kick up their entrees with a little extra heat, they dabbled thin, red droplets of a pepper sauce. There are thousands of sauces like this: cayenne- or habanero-based; red, green, or yellow; with the addition of fruit for balance or adorned with grim reapers on their labels. And while fierce proponents of Crystal and Frank’s Red Hot may argue about how much these sauces differ, when it comes to the general style, they don’t.

The taste for vinegar-based chile sauce is, of course, not just limited to Americans. The Southeast Asian chile sauce sambal olek is similarly bright and tangy, with a smack of fresh garlic, although it’s chunky in composition. Sriracha, a smoother, thicker, sweeter chile sauce created by a Vietnamese American in California, is also vinegar-based, with no oil to speak of.

A chile condiment that is not only oily but earthy, toasty, and cooked rather than highly acidic and fresh-tasting is still something of a novelty, found in Asian groceries or from the beloved restaurants that sell theirs. Walk down a typical American supermarket’s hot sauce aisle and you probably won’t find anything like it.

But as Tang saw it, with Chinese food more mainstream than ever, the time was right to sell Nom Wah chile oil. And, as he and other restaurateurs profess, a great deal of customers request a chile condiment with their food. Sriracha, Cholula, and other vinegary sauces are not the right complement for everything.

“You wouldn’t take out Tabasco and douse it on Chinese food because it doesn’t go together,” says Gao. “But with oil-based sauce, it’s just a better fit for Chinese cuisine.”

For more than a century, milder cuisines from China dominated the Chinese food enjoyed in the United States. That began to change after the U.S. lifted restrictions on immigration from China in 1965. Before then, the first waves of immigrants from China, who created the canon of Chinese-American staples like chop suey and egg foo young, were Toisanese, from Guangdong Province, whose traditional cuisine employs little to no spice. Much later on, Cecilia Chiang’s San Francisco restaurant the Mandarin introduced Americans to Northern Chinese cuisine, like Peking duck, which also happens to not be very spicy. After the floodgates were lifted, chile-laden cuisines from all around Asia brought new meaning to the word “hot.”

But before these cuisines reached the states, a taste for spice spread within China. “Chile peppers didn’t even arrive in China until 200 years ago,” says Gao, whose hometown is Chengdu, Sichuan province’s capital. “They arrived in the East... then slowly moved throughout China, and it took off in Sichuan because of the climate.” Many other parts of China, such as Hunan Province, also boldly employ chile peppers, but Gao says that Sichuan food is so well-known in China and throughout the world because its cuisine is all about complex flavor combinations, like ma la — the combination of chile heat and numbing spice from Sichuan peppercorns. “There’s dozens of flavor profiles in Sichuan cuisine; their chefs have really mastered what flavor can be.”

Diana Kuan, author of Red Hot Kitchen, a cookbook focused on the many varieties of Asian hot sauces, lived in China from 2007 to 2009 and witnessed the rising popularity of Sichuan cuisine in the country, especially in Beijing, where she was based. For the last few decades, as people — such as the laborers from the countryside who helped build China’s modern cities — migrated within the country, their cuisines mingled. “I think people are beginning to like spicy food more in southern China and Hong Kong, so there will be a little dish of chile sauce to go with dim sum,” she says. “In every city you can find some sort of spicy cuisine, so nowadays it’s pretty much ubiquitous.”

Hence, chile oil is not just enjoyed in Sichuan Province, where it would typically receive a touch of Sichuan peppercorn. Lao Gan Ma is, after all, a brand from Guizhou Province, whose signature flavor combo is a spicy and sour; Xi’an Famous Foods’ chile oil has distinct spices from China’s western provinces, including cumin; Su Spicy Chili Crisp has a scattering of sesame seeds; 886’s Sze Daddy sauce nods to the Taiwanese condiment sha-cha sauce, which has a touch of sweetness; and Nom Wah’s chile oil is a simple infusion of dried chiles and oil.

“Some regions might use fermented soybeans… in the Guangdong region they make theirs often with peanuts,” says Lucas Sin, chef-owner of Junzi Kitchen. The methodology differs, too. Sin, a 2019 Eater Young Gun, says that the different terminology throughout China used for these oils can offer clues into how they are made.

“Hong you,” which translates to “red oil,” is what many people in China, such as in Sichuan province, would typically call chile oil. Another generic term for chile oil used throughout China is “la jiao you” — which translates directly to “hot pepper oil.”

“We actually make you po la zi,” says Sin. He explains the character for “po” denotes the act of pouring the oil over something. (One might translate this term to “spicy pour-over oil.”)

Junzi’s signature chile oil employs this simple pour-over method: you take your spices and aromatics, place them in a heatproof vessel, and pour sizzling-hot oil over them at once. Other chile oils, such as Fly By Jing’s and 886’s, for instance, employ a longer cooking process where the chiles and aromatics are added in sequence, and cooked until the whole concoction is toasted and infused just so.

But, just like their English counterparts, these Chinese terms are often used interchangeably. And there are ever newer terms and variations being invented for a similar crispy, chunky, oil-y chile product. The grocer Trader Joe’s, for instance, makes a particle-rich chile condiment called Chili Onion Crunch.

Every cook, restaurant, and producer lends their own creative spin to this rudimentary vehicle for spice and flavor. Sin describes his dad’s famous homemade chile oil — something that he’s “kind of famous for” in his circle of friends and family. He dices the garlic by hand and simmers it slow and low for hours along with dried chiles and sesame seeds. There’s a lot of room for creativity, says Sin. “Most likely, we just make the chile oil that tastes the best to us.”

Cathy Erway is the author of The Food of Taiwan: Recipes From the Beautiful Island and The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove.

At Dialogue, chef Dave Beran creates a visual, conceptual, and seasonal story through 18 courses

Michelin-starred Dialogue is a Santa Monica restaurant that prides itself on confusing the diner.

“If we force them to share something, and we don’t really tell people how to eat it, and just say ‘we encourage you to explore,’ then they have to talk to each other,” says executive chef and owner Dave Beran. He’s referring to courses like squab and beet consume, served in a glass to resemble wine, salmon roe on a bed of what’s essentially fancy cheese whiz, and mid course caviar and coffee cream dish that can be confused for dessert.

Chef Beran creates, and recreates, this highly conceptual 18-course tasting menu that showcases seasonal items throughout the year, all in an 800-square-foot space hidden inside a mall food court.

“I don’t want a menu with a bunch of short stories. I want to write the menu as one long story. So this is our winter menu. As things die in fall, it builds layers on the ground.”

The layered concept can be found in dishes throughout the menu, like a dish featuring pumpkin seeds covered in burnt parsley that simulates the twigs and seeds of a forest floor, a slow roasted miso carrot dish that resembles logs, and a black sesame and whipped yuzu course that looks like a spoonful of dirt.

“The original idea came from the idea of a concept album, an album you have to play straight through in order, where song five needs songs four and six, ”says Beran. “I was really drawn into the fact that things made [other] things better.”

Celebrated restaurateur Gabriel Stulman writes a letter to NYC City Council asking for protections from landlords

As some states plan to reopen economies, restaurant owners worry that opening at reduced capacity could ruin their already-limping businesses

When cases of COVID-19 were first reported in Memphis, Tennessee, in early March, Kelly English was quick to close dine-in service at all three of his restaurants. But on April 27, when Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced a tentative reopening plan for the city, which includes reopening restaurants to diners, English didn’t start planning a return to normal. He intends to stick to delivery.

“We aren’t rushing to [reopen],” English says. “There’re a lot of factors that go into this. I love my staff, I’m very sensitive to the fact that they’re not working right now. And I’m also very sensitive to the fact that we need to make good decisions for the long term, to make sure that those jobs still exist.” English says that once dining in is allowed in Memphis, his decision to reopen will ultimately be a slow one, first observing how maximum occupancy regulations are enforced at other nearby restaurants and seeing how they fare before he makes a move. He already has a sense for how his restaurants might do at half capacity: “If you came to me, a restaurant with 12 tables, and said, ‘You’re at 50 percent capacity,’ I’m screwed.”

English isn’t the only restaurateur wary of opening hastily, making yet another change to their daily operations.

As some states across the country allow businesses to reopen with limited occupancies, there are still serious obstacles in the paths of restaurant owners. In those Tennessee counties that have already reopened, restaurants can’t exceed 50 percent of their maximum occupancy. Restaurants in most of Iowa will also have the option to reopen at half capacity. Those in Alaska will be limited to 25 percent capacity, and will only seat diners who make reservations in advance.

Ryan Pernice, who owns three restaurants north of Atlanta, didn’t jump with excitement when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp released a list of 39 guidelines in advance of a push to open certain businesses — including restaurants — on April 27. Most notably for restaurant owners, the guidelines do not allow more than 10 patrons per 500 square feet in dining rooms. After Pernice closed his restaurants on March 17, leaving just one of his restaurant kitchens open for delivery, he sat down to crunch some numbers.

Even with the lights and the walk-in refrigerators turned off, running a restaurant remains an expensive endeavor. Pernice decided to continue paying for services, like pest control, that couldn’t just be ignored, as well as major costs like rent and outstanding vendor invoices. To break even and cover expenses at Table and Main, Osteria Mattone, and Coalition — his three restaurants — would cost $4,128 a day. Though he’ll take the measurements and rearrange the tables to see if reopening is feasible, Pernice can’t imagine hitting that number with only half of the seats in his restaurants occupied. “Not having run the numbers, I seriously doubt that in Table and Main, a tiny restaurant of 1,800 square feet, that I could make more doing sit-down dining than I can right now through our takeout … I think there’s very little to be gained by being the first to this party, in terms of opening the dining room again.”

Though some restaurants in Atlanta and across Georgia made the decision to reopen to diners, others echo Pernice’s sentiment: They’d rather stay closed until opening doesn’t feel so perilous. Glenn Singfield II owns two restaurants in Albany, Georgia, a city that has been hit hard by the coronavirus. Last week, two of Singfield’s friends passed away after contracting the virus, and his aunt just recovered. With a diabetic mother at home, Singfield spent the better part of last month at home with his parents after closing both of his restaurants. Just last week, he reopened Albany Fish Company, the smaller of his two restaurants, for takeout and curbside pickup. The Flint, his 10,000-square-foot location, remains closed.

“I’m going to support my governor, and I want to support my mayor and my civic officials,” Singfield says. “But I still have a choice. And our choice was to continue to do business as we’ve been doing it until we can see a major curve in coronavirus. And until we can find a conscious way to make sure our customers, employees, and ourselves can be safe.” Though he doesn’t know when he’ll reopen his restaurants, Singfield has already rearranged Albany Fish Company, and is putting up plexiglass partitions to separate diners from servers. He’s having a harder time imagining what the Flint will look like when it reopens. “When you’re at a fine dining restaurant, it’s an experience that you come for, not just the food. If you’ve got to wear hazmat suits, and you’re spaced out, what’s the purpose of it? We do live music, it’s a party every Friday and Saturday night. But I’m not going to jeopardize anyone’s safety for anything.”

Half occupancy doesn’t add up

On weekends, a line stretched out the door of St. Kilda Cafe and Bakery in Des Moines, Iowa. Alexander and Whitney Hall, the restaurant’s owners, would pack guests in, the din of service rising as the restaurant filled to capacity with diners stuffing themselves with breakfast tacos, pastries, and all sorts of breakfast-appropriate cocktails. Restaurants in Des Moines — in one of the state’s hardest-hit counties — are still operating under tight restrictions, but as restaurants in 77 other counties begin to invite diners back inside with spaced-out tables and a limit of 50 percent capacity, it’s certain Des Moines will follow after.

These occupancy limits are a serious hurdle for cafes and restaurants across the country that rely on busy weekend service. “That weekend is so vital to daytime cafes … We do 75 percent more revenue on Saturday than we do on Tuesday, for example. So if we lose that weekend we’re relying on being bustling and busy, it would make us hemorrhage even more money,” Alexander Hall says. “I know the restaurant business pretty well. I’ve been doing it for 27 years, and at 50 percent capacity restaurants don’t work. Unless the landlord gives you 50 percent rent, and MidAmerican energy is giving you 50 percent off the [energy] bill.”

In New York, the prospect of dining at a restaurant is still hard to imagine, and some restaurateurs are trying to envision how they might operate their restaurants at half or quarter capacity. As they crunch numbers and drag tables away from each other, they’re not much more optimistic than Hall. “Our busiest services are weekend services in particular, where we like to pack them in and pack them out,” says Claire Sprouse, the owner of Brooklyn all-day cafe and bar Hunky Dory. “They carry the rest of the week for us.” If the restaurant saw only half of the weekend customers it did before the coronavirus, Sprouse estimates her restaurant would bring in 40 percent — not half — of what it once did. “For us to survive, we would need to be doing a fair amount of takeout to make up for those missing seats. … Something has to give.”

The cost of reopening

For restaurants that already operated on razor-thin margins, reopening isn’t just a judgment call. When the time comes, it will cost Alexander and Whitney Hall $15,000 to reopen their largest restaurant. Glenn Singfield reckons it will take $25,000 for both of his restaurants to become operational again. To switch the lights back on, restock all of the refrigerators and bulk bins, bring in a cleaning crew, it’s an extremely expensive ordeal.

To reopen at such high costs only to serve a half-full restaurant isn’t feasible for many restaurateurs who were barely holding on already. “It is not as simple as turning on a light,” says Pernice of his three restaurants. “We’ve been trying to turn as much inventory as we can to cash. We’ve been trying to get everything that’s worth a dollar out of the restaurant. If we are to open, it will cost a lot of money to restock. And we in effect haven’t been open for six weeks. So there’s some planning toward how we use the precious money we have.”

Singfield says he’ll have to “piece it together” when it comes time to find the funds to reopen his restaurants.

For many of these restaurateurs, there’s a concerning backdrop to the already-difficult conversations being had about the risks of reopening at limited capacity. Restaurant owners who accept Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans are in a bind, as the loan is only forgivable if all full-time staff are rehired by June 30. How, these restaurant owners are trying desperately to work out, can they hire back their entire staff if their restaurants are only operating at half or quarter capacity?

In New York, and other states that have yet to reopen, and where occupancy limits are inevitable once they do, a PPP loan can feel more like a burden than a gift. “It feels really scary to take on potential debt even though it’s like, maybe forgivable when the timeline for reopening is so vague. And then there’s no clarity about whether or not we can open in a full capacity,” says Carla Perez-Gallardo, a co-owner of Lil Deb’s Oasis, a snug neighborhood restaurant in Hudson, New York.

Lil’ Deb’s Oasis has a legal capacity of 30 people, and the restaurant’s owners can’t see a way to hire back their full-time staff members while serving a half-empty restaurant. “The pressure is on businesses to pay their employees that they’ve hired back, at a time in which they may not even be able to pay their rent,” says Perez-Gallardo. “It feels like an odd narrative to be moving toward at a time where it doesn’t feel possible.”

The path forward is extremely uncertain for restaurants, whether they apply for and are given a PPP loan or not. Resources and guidance across the country are limited, and restaurant owners are left to ask questions that no one, it seems, will answer. “For us, the best-case scenario would be to have flexibility with our landlord and for our local and our federal government to provide some relief or guidance in how to move forward,” says Sprouse, who applied for a loan but has yet to hear back. “Right now it’s like they’re putting a Band-Aid over a severed leg.”

The food media paid scant attention to the Indian-born chef and restaurant owner Garima Kothari when she was alive. That lack of coverage has extended to her tragic death.

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to voices@eater.com.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this spring, the Indian-born chef Garima Kothari saw business at her Jersey City restaurant, Nukkad, evaporate overnight. Yet she found little time to despair. Instead, she strategized.

She started selling DIY dosa kits. She tried curbside deliveries. She offered discounts. When we spoke over the phone on April 9, Kothari said that her numbers continued falling, yet she tempered her concern with hope. She laughed nervously when I asked if she feared that the restaurant, just five months old, would have to close for good. “I hope not,” she said. “I have plans.”

Just two weeks later, on the morning of Sunday, April 26, Kothari died in an alleged murder-suicide at the hands of her partner, Man Mohan Mall. She was 35. According to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, authorities discovered Kothari with multiple upper body injuries in the apartment the couple shared, eventually concluding that her death was a homicide. A day after her death, an autopsy revealed that Kothari was five months pregnant.

I had spoken to Kothari as part of my reporting for a short piece on the impact of COVID-19 on small, immigrant-owned restaurants. Though our conversation only lasted nine minutes, Kothari talked candidly about the challenges of operating a tiny, newer restaurant that focused on Indian cooking, which still struggles to gain high regard in America despite the valiant efforts of gifted chefs. She had applied for many relief funds and grants, but feared that the nature of her restaurant, coupled with its relative infancy, would make capital elusive. “For a very small restaurant like mine, especially a restaurant that’s not doing Italian and French food, I don’t know if I will ever get a single penny,” she told me.

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the food and restaurant industry has stretched digital food publications thin, forcing journalists to dedicate all their resources to coverage of a rapidly shifting landscape. Stories that seemingly bear no overt relation to the pandemic — like, say, Kothari’s brutal death — have consequently fallen by the wayside. Such circumstances may explain why the tabloid and celebrity media covered the death, but few food publications in the country dignified Kothari with so much as a blog post, barring a short article on Tuesday morning from Grub Street (owned by Eater’s parent company, Vox Media).

But the response to Kothari’s death raises enduring questions: Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

Kothari’s death may be the first time that readers will hear about her, an embarrassing truth that suggests her demise will eclipse her accomplishments. She bid farewell to the life of investment banking in her native India (she’d later call the corporate world “too cold”) after realizing her life’s great love was food. In 2010, Kothari entered MasterChef India, making the top 15. Following that experience, she decamped for Paris and attended Le Cordon Bleu, where she received her pastry diploma in 2013. She then moved to America, working as a pastry chef in Jacksonville, Florida, before heading north to New Jersey in 2015. Kothari managed her own catering and events business; she was also an occasional writer, having contributed to such sites as Food52, the Kitchn, and the Michelin Guide.

Coverage of Kothari was so scant in her lifetime that some may reason that she wasn’t yet “famous” enough, that her restaurant was too young, to justify immediate reporting on her death. This argument is precisely the issue at hand, one that exposes the inherent bias of a food media whose narrative gaze skews towards white, materially advantaged, cis male chefs, who also tend to have aggressive public relations teams that help to guarantee media saturation. Such privileges also dictate access to capital, like the kind Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has gotten from American Express. Without them, few aspiring restaurant owners stand a chance of catching the mainstream food media’s attention.

Given the sheer number of restaurants that open each year, and the fact that Jersey City is flush with Indian restaurants, you may wonder what made Kothari’s restaurant so special. At Nukkad, she was trying to do something different with her native country’s cuisine; she saw street food through the prism of her own nostalgia, filtering childhood staples through the culinary techniques she’d picked up throughout her career. This approach resulted in dishes like butter chicken mac-and-cheese and pizza dosas filled with mozzarella, as well as fare one might consider more typical for a nominally Indian restaurant, such as idlis, chaats, and biryanis. Kothari didn’t care about being slapped with the dreaded “fusion” label, much less about the distinctions between north and south Indian cuisines. Like many chefs before her, she worked strenuously to push people past their worn perceptions of Indian cooking, and fought this battle in a highly individualistic way.

Viewed from a purely editorial standpoint, in other words, Kothari’s approach to food — and her winding path to it — made her a compelling character who should have been more famous prior to her death. But she operated at a distinct disadvantage within the restaurant world as a condition of her womanhood, her race, and the fact that she was not born in America. Her creative impulses, like the self-described “Indian soul food” she cooked, likewise put her on the fringes of the industry. In death, food journalists have further pushed her to the margins.

As such, Kothari’s case speaks to a rot in food coverage that existed long before the pandemic illuminated its fissures. While American food publications are infatuated with celebrity, they too often seem to impose a higher barrier of entry for figures like Kothari, an immigrant woman of color who didn’t quite have the resources (nor, eventually, the time) to become a media darling.

Critics may gripe that I’m reading these outlets in bad faith (or that Jersey City is too far from the food media’s pulse in New York City, but I’d point to stunningly consistent coverage of its critically acclaimed pizzerias). They may also charge that such intense scrutiny is unwarranted at a time when a pandemic has food journalists operating under unprecedented duress. But the muted response to Kothari’s death reveals a fundamental imbalance that Grub Street’s Chris Crowley illustrated in his sensitive piece on the April 1 death of Jesus Roman Melendez from complications of COVID-19. Melendez was a long-time cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Nougatine — the “backbone” of the restaurant, as Crowley wrote. In eulogizing Melendez, he gave flesh to a man who’d usually remain nameless in stories of Nougatine’s success, and simultaneously questioned the mechanics of a food media that deifies a man like Vongerichten.

Crowley’s posthumous profile of Melendez feels exemplary because it’s an outlier, pointing toward a future for food journalism that honors talents who so often remain unseen. But a piece like his shouldn’t be so unique. Two weeks elapsed between Melendez’s death and that piece’s publication; once the wound of Kothari’s loss begins to heal, I hope that other outlets will make room for a story that gives Kothari similar narrative consideration, framing her not in terms of erasure but instead focusing on what she achieved. Letting her story dissolve into the ether would merely confirm the anxieties Kothari expressed to me about the eventual fate of Nukkad: a fear that gatekeepers would look right past her.

It’s no secret that the press has unique power to mold public opinion and inform our ideas of who we consider to be stars worthy of respect. Just last year, the editor of a major newspaper’s food section asked me why I’d pitched a profile of a small restaurant owner in Bushwick when I could write about a more established name like Nigella Lawson. The question revealed this publication’s reactive, not proactive, default posturing. So I now find myself wondering if the food media’s commitment to the status quo will continue, despite how unsustainable the pandemic is revealing that to be?

In an ideal scenario, publications will emerge from this pandemic with greater sensitivity for the stories of restaurant owners like Kothari who suffered acutely as a result of the pandemic’s financial strains. To be fair, scores of food journalists are already doing this work, and no longer just at smaller and/or more regional publications. Such coverage should appear with even greater consistency in mainstream, national publications. But in a more likely (albeit cynical) scenario, these outlets may very well continue to give real estate to the blandly familiar cabal of well-funded celebrity chefs, figures who’ve become poster boys of this uncertain moment for American restaurants.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death? It shouldn’t have taken some arbitrary metric of success, be it a James Beard nomination or a profile from the New York Times, for writers to extend her the very basic courtesy of aggregating an article about her death. Such anointments have more to do with access than intangible variables, like talent and dedication. Those prerequisites shouldn’t determine whether a woman who devoted her life to food gets a fair remembrance.

Mayukh Sen is a writer in New York. He has won a James Beard Award for his food writing, and he teaches food journalism at New York University. His first book, on the immigrant women who have shaped food in America, will be published by W.W. Norton & Company in fall 2021.

The area near the campus may be largely empty for months

Plus, Elizabeth Warren is rallying with restaurant workers, and more news to start your day

A post by a Chicago pizzaiolo has people shocked over delivery fees

Third-party delivery platforms like Grubhub and Doordash have come under fire for their treatment of restaurants, whether it’s by charging them for phone calls, or signing them up for services they never agreed to. And while being able to offer delivery is a lifeline for many restaurants right now, it’s hardly a perfect solution with processing and commission fees eating a big chunk out of restaurant profits. Giuseppe Badalamenti, owner of food truck Chicago Pizza Boss, posted his March Grubhub statement to Facebook to give people a sense of just what the breakdown is. And people are stunned.

Badalamenti’s post shows he took in $1,042.63 in 46 pre-paid orders (42 delivery and 4 pickup), and yet only netted $376.54, what he says is “almost enough to pay for the food.” On its website Gruhbhub breaks down the different fees: there’s the marketing commission of about 20%, which is also applied if the business “offers [its] own delivery,” a delivery commission of 10% if it doesn’t, a processing fee, and more. There’s also a $231 “Promotions” charge, which is unexplained. However, in April, Grubhub offered a promotion where customers could receive $10 off orders of $30 or more. However, the fine print said restaurants who opted in would eat those costs, and that Grubhub would charge commission based on the pre-discount price of the order.

Based on the percentages provided by Grubhub, Badalamenti is being charged correctly. Though whether you consider him to be charged fairly is another issue. Third-party delivery sites have certainly helped many restaurants by outsourcing delivery staff, but now many businesses are questioning the costs, and have begun asking customers to call directly if they have an order. Ordering online may certainly be convenient, but as Badalamenti wrote, it’s time to “stop believing you are supporting your community by ordering from a 3rd party delivery company.”

And in other news...

• Senator Elizabeth Warren will be joining restaurant workers today in an online rally to urge restaurants to provide better worker safety conditions. [F&W]
• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will also join One Fair Wage today in a virtual Town Hall to “discuss the changes that employers both want to and need to make in order to create a new, better future for workers moving forward.” [NowThisPolitics]
• A pilot effort is underway to allow SNAP beneficiaries to shop online. [NYTimes]
• Rep. David Trone of Maryland owns liquor chain Total Wine & More. It is the country’s largest privately-owned liquor chain, and it recently ended its $2 an hour raise for employees. [Buzzfeed]
• Whole Foods will start giving free masks to shoppers. Also, today Whole Foods workers are on strike to demand better safety protections, as they say Whole Foods has exhibited “lack of transparency and basic safety protections for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.” [BI]
• Paula Deen has a weekly cooking segment on Fox & Friends. [Twitter]
• Just in time for our canceled summer: Dunkaroos

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

For Ramadan this year, Muslims are doing what they can to break the fast without breaking quarantine

Last Friday, as the first day of Ramadan drew to a close, Rami Ismail prepared his iftar, the meal to end the day’s fast, at his apartment in Hilversum, the Netherlands: laban bil balah, an Egyptian-style fast-breaking drink of chilled milk with dates and cashews; Dutch uienkruier flatbread with cheese and onions; salmon over a bed of quinoa and spinach. The portion size suggested it was a dinner for one, but Ismail was about to host an iftar party. As he sat down to eat, he turned on his Nintendo Switch and set a virtual table in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

“I built a little marketplace like they have in Egypt, with a carpet, for a communal meal, and made eight seats — one for me and the seven people that would come by,” he says, describing his corner of the popular life-simulation game. Guests soon began filing in from Singapore, London, Canada, and Seattle, some bearing virtual gifts and fruit baskets. “They just wanted to make sure that a stranger wasn’t alone for iftar,” says Ismail. “It’s meant to be a communal experience; you don’t really do it alone if you can help it.”

With Ramadan arriving as social-distancing measures remain in effect across the globe, Muslims are doing what they can to foster a sense of community in quarantine. Zoom dinners and remote prayer services have been commonplace since the early weeks of the pandemic, but Ramadan poses unique challenges. For many of the world’s 2 billion Muslims, the holy month is the most social time of the year, synonymous with large gatherings, group prayers, and community service efforts. Now, as many are in isolation during Ramadan’s requisite fast from dawn to sunset, jam-packed social calendars — lively iftar parties followed by taraweeh prayer congregations at the mosque and late nights culminating in suhoor (the pre-dawn meal before the next fast) hangouts at IHOP — have been replaced by group-chat scheduling conflicts.

While Ismail is an avid game enthusiast — he’s a developer and cofounder of the Dutch independent game studio Vlambeer — he doesn’t typically observe Ramadan virtually. His hectic travel schedule normally sees him breaking fast with large groups in Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, or India. “It’s always a fun, communal, celebratory experience for me,” he says. “It’s strange to be home in the Netherlands all month and not be able to do that.” So he tweeted an invitation to his 167,000 followers to join him in Animal Crossing for suhoor or iftar; the response was so overwhelming that he had to make a sign-up form. Ismail isn’t the only Animal Crossing fan using the game to observe Ramadan virtually — there are even simulated congregations that read the nightly taraweeh prayer together.

The next evening, as the sun began to set in New Haven, Connecticut, Omer Bajwa, his wife, Lisa, and a few friends donned masks and gloves to operate a makeshift drive-thru in the parking lot of Masjid Al Islam, a mosque in the city’s Dwight neighborhood. They handed out prepacked iftar boxes of dates, naan, and chicken curry from Ali Baba through rolled-down windows in car after car. “We all normally love the communal aspect in Ramadan — iftars are a big part of the American Muslim experience,” says Bajwa, the director of Muslim life at the Yale chaplain’s office. “There’s been a genuine anxiety leading up to Ramadan [this year], a sense of loss, people feeling bereft.”

Since many people are reliant on mosques for the nightly iftar meal, Bajwa asked his friends to pool money to feed 130 people every Saturday. “The reality of New Haven is it can be quite poor,” he says. “And we have so many Muslim-owned businesses in the restaurant industry, which is taking a huge hit — we’re trying to buy meals from them, give them business.” This first grab-and-go iftar was such a success that more donations poured in, enabling Bajwa and his friends to serve more meals this month.

Charity is one of the key components of Ramadan, and many of these same hard-hit restaurants are stepping up to serve their communities themselves. Since mid-March, Hamza Deib, owner of Brooklyn’s popular Middle Eastern restaurant Taheni, has worked with Muslims Giving Back to pass out falafels, chicken, and hummus to the homeless once a week, despite the struggles his own business faces. Now with the onset of Ramadan, Deib has increased his efforts to daily meal deliveries, while also dropping off food to a mosque and to police officers and hospital workers. “We’re not pushing our efforts to cater toward just Muslims. We’re just trying to take care of the entire city,” says Deib.

Muslims Giving Back/Facebook

Countless health care and essential workers happen to be practicing Muslims, and many of them are now fasting, too. For Dr. Uzma Syed, an infectious disease specialist and chair of a COVID-19 task force at a Long Island hospital, the last few weeks have “been an out-of-body experience — you’re in this constant feeling of being in a twilight zone.” But despite the added challenges she’s facing this Ramadan, she’s never considered not fasting. “It’s actually been fine, alhamdulillah,” she says of her first few fasts. “Fasting in itself is a practice of having resilience and willpower — it’s always been mind over matter. It’s a very spiritual time for me, very therapeutic.”

The Islamic Center at New York University, which serves 10,000 people at the university and the broader New York community, is one of many mosques across the globe that’s trying to beam the sense of spirituality that congregants crave into their living rooms. They’ve lined up a robust schedule of virtual programming, from Quranic recitations to lectures with scholars to Zoom iftars led by imam Khalid Latif, who’s also planning to offer niche iftars around interests like books and sports. In London, the nonprofit Ramadan Tent Project has also gone online, bringing its inclusive, popular Open Iftar events to people’s homes with a #MyOpenIftar pack of decorations, a trivia game, and a recipe book by chef Asma Khan of London’s acclaimed Darjeeling Express. There’s also a daily Zoom iftar with a rotating roster of speakers, and Khan plans to host a live cooking lesson later this month.

Offline, but socially distant, activities like remote potlucks — where everyone makes a dish and drops it off to other homes, letting friends enjoy the same meal at the same time — are gaining popularity. But finding the necessary ingredients to satisfy Ramadan cravings isn’t easy in the middle of a pandemic. “It’s already been like playing Tetris with your pantry — ‘We’re out of this, what can we replace that with?’ It’s been like that since the start of the pandemic,” says Brenda Abdelall, a consultant and law professor in northern Virginia, and founder of Middle Eastern food platform MidEats. Unable to go to her local Middle Eastern grocery store to stock up on her usual Ramadan supplies of lentils, fava beans, sumac, and za’atar, Abdelall has been strategizing for weeks, and in the process has become an internet-sourcing MacGyver. “It’s been tricky this Ramadan, trying to figure out how to preserve traditional foods without access to the ingredients. I had to get creative, going online to find what grocery stores sold dried fava beans — I found them on some obscure Russian website.”

Ramadan-centric, quarantine-compliant content is quickly taking over social media. You can take a fasting-friendly fitness session with a Nike trainer one day and learn how to make healthy suhoor smoothies the next on British lifestyle magazine Azeema’s Instagram feed. YouTube rounded up Ramadan content from top creators around the world, including LA-based modest-lifestyle vlogger Aysha Harun. Her “Ramadan Daily” vlogs chronicle her Ramadan decor and learning how to make the Ethiopian sambusas she grew up eating for iftar. “I do an Eid lookbook every year,” she says, referring to clothes for Eid-ul-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. “I haven’t gotten any of those requests this year, for obvious reasons.”

But going virtual has its own challenges. “How many people actually have access to the internet and know how to use it?” asks Samira Abderahman, who founded Black Iftar in Chicago in 2018. The iftar events geared toward black Muslims and their friends took off organically and were held in 11 cities last year; now, Abderahman is trying to figure out how best to take the events online. “I think about digital literacy a lot. That’s why in-person events are so beautiful — we’ve been gathering together since the beginning of time.”

This year, Black Iftar will offer virtual iftars centered around talks by Makkah Ali and Ikhlas Saleem, hosts of the podcast Identity Politics, and scholar and community sexual health educator Angelica Lindsey-Ali. “I just want to provide something beautiful, to not be the dominance of their Ramadan experience, but to assist it,” says Abderahman. “Ultimately, Ramadan is best experienced in person, and not through our phones.”

Just as people start to get into some semblance of a routine during this unnerving new take on the holy month, the next hurdle awaits at the end of Ramadan: how to commemorate Eid ul-Fitr in May, a holiday that’s usually marked by massive prayer congregations at mosques, sharing the traditional three hugs with strangers and friends alike, and a blur of brunch, lunch, and dinner parties. Ismail will likely host an open house-style Eid party on Animal Crossing, collecting “gifts” throughout the month and leaving them on his island for guests who pass through that day. But he isn’t sure what will be more difficult: fasting without friends and family, or marking a normally festive occasion in isolation. “Needing strength from the community while fasting [during Ramadan] and not having it is tough,” he says. “But Eid is a celebration — and celebrating alone is weird.”

Sarah Khan is a food and travel writer based in New York.

Jordan Salcito walks through her favorites from across the diverse wine-producing country

If there’s any doubt that canned wine has officially gone from déclassé to fashionable, just look to Ramona, the chicly packaged canned wine spritzer created by wine expert Jordan Salcito. As the former director of wine special projects at Momofuku, Salcito is keenly in touch with what’s of-the-moment and trendy.

But she’s also a bonafide sommelier, and Ramona cans are all filled with organic Italian wine, from zibibbo grapes grown and harvested in Sicily.

Salcito’s love for Italian wine, she says, reflects the fact that, while Italy is the world’s largest wine producer, the beauty of the country is that it’s really a group of vastly different regions — and the wines from those regions vary drastically in fascinating ways. Salcito hosted an Italy-themed Eater Wine Club over Instagram Live, as part of the Eater @ Home virtual event series, and shared wines from four different regions that she recommends drinking right now.

Ramona “Ruby Grapefruit” Spritz Sicily, Italy ($6)

While the grapes for this wine-in-a-can spritz, created by Salcito, are grown in Sicily, the wine is made in northern Italy — which is where spritzes originate. “The spritz derives from the Austrians who were living in and occupying Italy and wanted to drink local wines but thought that they were too high in alcohol,” says Salcito, “so they would add a spray or spritz of water.” As for the Ramona spritzer, “it was inspired by an Aperol spritz,” she says. “Like a love child between a mimosa and an Aperol spirtz.”

Punta Crena ”Vigneto Reiné” 2018 Liguria, Italy ($30)

This wine is from the Liguria region up north, a rocky region bordered by the the Alps and the Apennine Mountains. That might be why when describing the taste of this wine Salcito said, “You can feel some sort of a crushed rock element.” Punta Crena, a favorite winery of Salcito’s, works with mattaòssu grapes that have basically gone extinct everywhere else, since they’re incredibly hard to grow. But flavor-wise, they’re worth the effort. “It walks that beautiful tightrope of ripe and also fresh and vibrant and just delicious...” says Salcito. With zesty flavors like lime zest and honeydew melon, she says, “it’s almost like an aperitif.”

I Cudtodi Etna Ross “Pistus” 2017 Sicily, Italy ($29)

“We would be remiss to talk about Italian wine and not talk about Sicily.” The island is apparently ideal for growing wine, as evidenced by the fact that “wine growing has changed so little in the 3,000 years that wines been growing there,” Salcito notes. This wine is from Mount Etna, Europe’s tallest active volcano, meaning the resulting flavor is a bit “rugged.” Says Salcito, “There’s this herbal undertone — but the overtone is very tart cherry, cranberry, raspberry, tart red fruit.”

Monteraponi Chianti Classico Riserva Il Campitello 2015 Tuscany, Italy ($70)

Tuscany may be one of the most famous wine regions, known for wines like Chianti and Brunello di Montepulciano. “Chianti can be tough and it can make you work for it; it can be kind of ‘tough love,’” says Salcito, alluding to its distinct dry, tannic qualities, “but Monteraponi is not.” The Monteraponi winery is a 700-year-old, family-run winery, and produces this classic that Salcito calls one of her favorite wines right now.

Additional Italian wines recommended by Jordan Salcito:

Stella di Campalto “Rosso di Montalcino” 2014 Tuscany, Italy ($240)
Girolamo Russo Etna Rosso ‘A Rina’ 2017 Sicily, Italy ($31)
Vietti ‘Scarrone’ Vigna Vecchia 2016 Piedmont, Italy ($77)

Noise apps like Noisli and Soundsnap can bring the background sounds of a busy coffee shop, restaurant, or Paris cafe to wherever you’re sheltering in place

I’m struggling with the quiet. It’s week seven of social isolation, and of all the strange new aspects of coronavirus life — working from home, compulsively washing my hands, wearing a mask in public — it’s the silence I can’t get used to.

I’m a food writer, and before COVID-19 I probably found myself out at a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop four to seven times a week. Now, like the rest of the world, I’m stuck to eating at home. I miss a lot about my old routine, but possibly more than any food or drink, it’s the sounds of public life I miss the most.

March 15 was the last time I heard them. It was a pre-birthday celebration at Jackrabbit Filly, a new Chinese-American restaurant in my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. My boyfriend and I sat at the bar and shared mapo tofu verde, hot karaage, and pork dumplings. We chatted with the owners, said hi to a friend, and consulted with the bartender on cocktails. At the time, I didn’t give much significance to these interactions until suddenly the world went silent because of the pandemic.

Our brains crave the familiar. For many, food and drink establishments — along with their sounds — are a regular part of everyday life, and usually a pleasurable one. Like Pavlov’s dog and the bell, just the sound of dining can trigger positive emotions in restaurant regulars. Similarly, the very absence of those sounds can trigger the opposite.

Luckily, on week three of struggling in the silence in my office, I made a discovery: Among the various ambient sounds like “white noise” and “rain” and “fan,” my phone’s noise app, Noisli, also has a “coffee shop” setting. I usually use Noisli for sleep, so though I’d noticed it before, I always thought it a little strange to doze off to the sounds of milk foamers and bean grinders. But one day recently, while trying to get work done in the grips of deafening silence, I hit play. Almost instantly, the familiar sounds of a voice announcing orders, fragments of conversations, and the cadence of servers made me feel a little better — comforted, dare I say almost normal.

Apparently I’m not alone in my response, because a number of services like Noisli, A Soft Murmur, and Soundsnap have latched on to the idea that consumers might crave the soft din of a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant as much as they do their menus. Once the mp4 begins to play, the listener is surrounded by pre-COVID-19 interactions — another world where we were all a little less stressed and could order dinner without gloves and a mask.

But the particulars of an audio backdrop varies from place to place. Like a sonic fingerprint, the specific tenor of laughter, the tone of glasses clinking, shuffling waitstaff, and the low clamor of customers ordering are unique to each establishment. To satisfy the need for audio diversity — not to mention our wanderlust — apps like Soundsnap also offer a varied range of recorded experiences, including international getaways like an outdoor restaurant in Amsterdam, with soft murmuring in Dutch, a crowded sushi spot in Tokyo with the sound of stacking plates, or lunchtime in Brazil with a breezy waiter speaking Portuguese. Close your eyes and it almost feels like you’re on a vacation — heavy on the “almost.”

My brain is prone to anxiety, so for me, the low tones of people going about their lives is about more than background noise. It’s therapeutic, and helps distract me from the jittery thoughts and focus on the task at hand. It’s why I’ve always done my best work in coffee shops, and why now you’ll find me more often than not hunkered over my computer with ear-buds blasting the banal muffled sounds of everyday eating — because in a time with so much uncertainty, every shred of normalcy counts.

Separated by thousands of miles, restaurants in nine Latin American countries have formed a dining club to raise funds from globetrotting customers

When life returns to a state resembling normal and everyone is released from COVID-related self-imprisonment, you may want to celebrate with a meal out. But with restaurants shutting their doors around the globe, in many cases permanently, the dining landscape could look significantly different when everyone emerges from home. Some restaurants have reached out to customers for financial support through delivery, gift cards, and fundraisers, but a group of restaurants in Latin America has a new approach: They’re hoping you’ll be willing to fork over around $20 a month starting now in order to secure yourself a reservation at a chef’s table or a fancy dinner on New Year’s Eve somewhere down the line. (You won’t even have to awkwardly slip a Jackson to the maitre d’.) And that promise of future access could help guarantee the longevity of not one but more than 100 of the most acclaimed restaurants across nine countries.

Pre-paid access to tables, in the form of a membership collective, might be enough to keep businesses afloat in the midst of COVID-19. The newly announced Stellar Collective includes a number of higher-end restaurants in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. Many are names commonly found on the Latin America 50 Best list, like Restaurante 040 in Santiago, El Baqueano in Buenos Aires, Maito in Panama City, Isolina in Lima, and Leo in Bogotá, while others are somewhat more accessible, like A Casa do Porco in São Paulo or Nicos in Mexico City. (The full list of participating restaurants is available on the collective’s website.)

The Stellar Collective is a sort of international dining club, with monthly fees starting now for big perks in the future. Unlike gift cards that merely delay the financial pain, membership sales inject cash into the restaurant industry at no cost later. And unlike fundraisers that rely on charity (in limited supply these days), the collective offers today’s cash-strapped consumer at least something in return.

For $20 per month ($15 monthly if customers sign up for an annual membership), diners gain access to early reservations on holidays like Valentine’s Day, take preference when reserving chefs’ private tables, get notifications about last-minute openings from cancelations, and receive concierge services across the network. “These benefits are not unheard of,” says Luis Caviglia, who co-founded the collective with his brother Juan. “There’s just no systematic, one-stop access to this kind of hospitality.” Despite a number of exclusive restaurants on the list, membership is designed to be affordable to a broad customer base — more broad, at least, than the usual clientele of wealthy locals and international trophy diners.

Over the past month, the Caviglias, originally from Uruguay, talked with their Latin American clients at restaurant software company Meitre about ways to survive the COVID-19 crisis, a particular challenge for fine dining restaurants whose tasting menus don’t translate to delivery. While there are plans to introduce a premium membership option in the future, the collective aims to capitalize on the public’s immediate urge to help mitigate economic damage. “Probably in two months time, the membership is going to sell better than today, but we need to do something now,” Luis says. That means making membership broadly accessible, even if that means sacrificing the exclusivity that, for many high-end regulars, is part of a restaurant’s allure.

The brothers are completely handing off the collective to the chefs, who can add new members, coordinate membership benefits, and manage profits across the network. As of yet, there are no specific rules about how restaurants must use the funds, so no money is guaranteed to go toward employees rather than owners’ pockets. Juan says they considered implementing spending requirements but ultimately decided against it given the urgency of the situation and the broad spectrum of economic factors restaurants face. He compares it to an emergency oxygen mask on an airplane. “First put the mask on yourself. Then help others,” he says. If a restaurant goes under, it takes workers with it. Some member restaurateurs have pledged to pass along support to vulnerable workers and suppliers, but these promises are informal for now.

Big names and extensive geographic coverage give the collective broad appeal, but it’s not always easy to coordinate efforts across different countries, cultures, and economies. But Luis argues variety could also be a good thing. “If I’m a diner and I’m offered a membership for one restaurant, that’s not enough,” he says, “but the network effect here is huge for the people who love gastronomy. Diversity might make things more complex … but at the end of the day, it’s one of our biggest strengths.”

The collective has grown organically and quickly, as chefs invite peers and friends to participate, and there’s no reason the idea couldn’t take root elsewhere. As restaurant owners everywhere struggle to stay afloat financially, they may want to look to Latin America for inspiration.