Some community organizers are hoping the changes driven by the pandemic will improve Ramadan for years to come 

When I broke my fasts at mosques during pre-pandemic Ramadans, I basked in the unspoken agreement among the strangers in the room that filling everyone’s stomach was an urgent and shared responsibility. Iftar gatherings worldwide take pride in providing copious amounts of food every night for 30 days. At each iftar (the meal eaten at sunset to break fast), every person was guaranteed water, dates, fruit, and if they were lucky, a warm pakora. I’d arrive no later than sunset for the pakoras and stay past twilight for the steaming pots of Palestinian makloubeh, an aromatic rice dish layered with chicken and vegetables.

Community iftars are almost always planned in advance. Families race to sign up for a day to sponsor the iftar, often cooking it themselves. For other iftars, mosques use their budgets to book catering from halal restaurants. On any given evening, one could expect to be greeted with giant trays of a neighbor’s home-cooked biryani, or spicy chicken burgers sponsored by a halal fried chicken joint, and typically that food would nourish upwards of 500 people per night.

But COVID shutdowns last spring halted any possibility of people breaking fast side by side at mosques, and as a result, in-person donations to mosques declined. A year after Muslim community leaders and volunteers scrambled to create a sense of togetherness in the midst of the first lockdowns in the U.S., thousands of Muslims are reviving traditional Ramadan customs with pandemic-safe initiatives. These range from socially distant community service projects to drive-thru iftars served in to-go boxes. And despite operating on historically low budgets, organizers are contemplating ways to best serve a new set of needs that have emerged from the pandemic, recalibrating their communities’ relationships with food and Ramadan for the future.

Roswell Community Masjid (RCM), in Metro Atlanta, stopped holding community iftars in 2020 due to lockdowns and financial constraints. “When suddenly everything stopped, we had to focus on how we’d sustain the money,” says Lubna Merchant, RCM’s operations manager. “We started planning for this last July.” Regaining their losses wasn’t the organizers’ only consideration; they also believed they could improve on their usual Ramadan programming from an ethical standpoint.

In Islamic teaching, Muslims are instructed to break their fasts with humble portions of food, motivating those who fast to avoid gluttony. But food waste plagues countless Muslim communities, as a culture of overindulgence has overtaken the historical practice of breaking fast with no more than a simple date and glass of milk. Merchant recalls the exorbitant food waste she witnessed during pre-COVID iftars at the mosque. “When you’re fasting and opening your fast, you’re just trying to stuff your plate,” she says.

Shaheen Bharde/RCM

As RCM brings back iftars for this year’s Ramadan programming, the meals look different. In the spirit of sustaining the mosque’s budget and reducing food waste, weekly iftars feature balanced portions served in compostable to-go boxes. The goal for this year’s programming, under the theme Ramadan Revive, is to carve out economically and environmentally sustainable food traditions that will lay new groundwork for the Ramadans to come. Even when people can gather again, the food at iftars will be limited. And while the changes to RCM’s Ramadan programming were driven by budget constraints, they also serve the greater purpose of Ramadan, which is centered on community.

“[It’s] about getting community life back up as we’ve learned new technologies and invested in our ability to reach a broader audience,” says Arshad Anwar, RCM’s resident imam.

In another measure to bolster its budget and emphasize community over consumption, RCM published a cookbook, RCM Eats, on the first day of Ramadan. Families submitted hundreds of their most precious Ramadan recipes, ranging from a Pakistani family’s take on koobideh kabobs to the RCM executive director’s famous pot of beef chili. The book covers go-tos for both the early morning suhoor and evening iftars. Merchant’s son, a 19-year-old home cook and baker, contributed a chocolate samosa recipe to the desserts section. The cookbook will give RCM members one more way to feel connected even as they can’t gather in person. “We wanted the book to be a bond between the different communities that are part of RCM and make RCM what it is. Our hope is that recipes from different parts of the world will be a part of every home and foster a sense of community,” says Merchant.

Fasting only scratches the surface of how Muslims practice their faith in this holy month. During Ramadan, Muslim communities intensify their commitment to social responsibility and engage in volunteer activities, most often designed to combat food insecurity. Feed the City is one of many service projects organized by 901 Ummah, a Memphis-based nonprofit founded by and for young Muslim professionals. In its earlier days, Feed the City took the form of a traditional soup kitchen, where volunteers served hot meals. But in the lead-up to this Ramadan, Adil Abdurahman, community service co-chair of 901 Ummah, revamped the meals to emphasize more produce.

“I’ve been given an above-average cooking ability and passion for combating food insecurity,” Abdurahman says. “It’s an obligation for me to use these gifts I’ve been given.” Volunteers have dubbed the future medical student “head chef,” as he cooks meals such as coconut curry or cumin-spiked veggie stir-fry for Feed the City to distribute weekly in food-insecure areas of Memphis.

Community engagement isn’t possible for some people due to COVID restrictions, but for Abdurahman, the pandemic’s impact on this Ramadan made his call to service feel all the more urgent. Abdurahman learned to cook Ethiopian staples like elecha and gomen alongside his mother when he was 13. His childhood interest in cooking coincided with his diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Even though his condition put him at higher risk for severe COVID complications, Abdurahman saw the pandemic as a time to count his blessings and do more to give back. “It’s our duty as Muslims to seek out people in need and use whatever energy we have left on this earth to give people a better week or a better day,” he says.

The pandemic also created obstacles for organizations like Believers Bail Out, a community-led effort to bail out Muslims in pretrial incarceration and ICE custody. “Community building is a lot easier in person, especially when you’re trying to expand movement building,” says Isra Rahman, whose Ramadan volunteer service focuses on the Chicago-based group. “There was no chaplain on site due to the pandemic,” Rahman says. “People in prison aren’t even permitted the right to worship or break their fast when they should.”

Believers Bail Out has nonetheless made progress toward its ultimate goal of building a movement around abolition work by engaging Muslim communities in grassroots abolitionist advocacy. This Ramadan, Rahman is engaging in a variety of Believers Bail Out initiatives, like packaging hot foods into iftar boxes and delivering them to recently-bailed-out Muslims. For the first time in its history, Believers Bail Out is providing an opportunity for incarcerated Muslims to partake in the Islamic tradition of breaking their fasts with a date: After finding a sponsor to donate dates and battling the bureaucracies of the prison system, the group got permission to donate dates to more than 200 Muslims in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. Rahman, alongside a team of volunteers, spent three days dividing and packing 18,000 dates into individual COVID-friendly packets.

For Rahman, working with Believers Bail Out a full year into the pandemic made the urgency of abolition work more relevant than ever. “I have seen how COVID isolates incarcerated members of our community. It’s reminded me of all the ways prisons are unjust.” Rahman, and many volunteers like her, have a new understanding of what it means to serve a community in its entirety, allotting due diligence to the often lonely Ramadan experiences of incarcerated and previously incarcerated Muslims. “Abolition is really an extension of Islam for me,” Rahman says.

As Muslims continue to get vaccinated, the spirit of revival grows among those rejoining festivities and prayers — ultimately in the hope of creating some semblance of a pre-COVID Ramadan. Meanwhile, for folks waiting on their vaccine appointments, this Ramadan doesn’t look that different from 2020’s Zoom iftars and socially distant food exchanges.

But restoring Ramadan festivities to the pre-COVID status quo is no longer the priority for organizers. While the pandemic’s ongoing economic burden and safety regulations left many with perpetual logistical nightmares to troubleshoot, it was under these circumstances that organizers stepped up to the plate and redesigned Ramadan practices with new standards of ethics and inclusivity — standards that will transcend this year and beautify Ramadan for good.

Mehreen Karim is a recipe developer and writer.

“Slushy” refers to a fruited sour, which is essentially what it sounds like: a sour beer, in this case, Berliner-Weisse, that’s infused with a ton of fruit puree. The result is a beer that comes out thick, with a slushy-like consistency and seriously fruity flavor profile.

New starred entrants include Rezdora, Don Angie, Jua, Kochi, and Francie

From Conservative Grounds in Florida to Covfefe Coffee in Maine, MAGA wants to come for Starbucks

What looked like a delivery boom over the last year now seems more like a delivery bust in disguise.

The President and First Lady are visiting Washington restaurants again

“The flip-flopping is just devastating,” says chef Kate Koo

He’s working on a spot called the Outpost at the forthcoming Post HTX food hall

Your customized order with eight additional ingredients will always be safe at the ‘bucks

I like to think that when Jurassic Park’s Dr. Ian Malcolm wondered aloud about scientists being so preoccupied with what they “could” do that they never stopped to think what they “should” do, he was really talking about over-the-top Starbucks orders. Because nobody could have come up with some of these more elaborate of these drinks without years of semi-scientific and misguided experimentation.

In a now deleted tweet, a self-identified Starbucks barista, @projectjosiee, posted a photo of a drink he supposedly had to make at work. It was a venti Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino with a whopping 13 extra additions, including extra ice, five “banana,” and seven pumps of dark caramel sauce. He’s also been posting on TikTok about the drink going viral.

However, instead of discouraging people from making their barista’s lives a living hell, the tweet has inspired more people to order this exact drink, now dubbed the “Edward” for the name of its assumed inventor.

Some have pointed out that ordering through the app encourages customers to go wild since no one has to face the shame of saying “please make sure it’s seven pumps of the dark caramel sauce, not six, because I am a special little boy who needs his seven pumps” to someone else’s face. But according to other Starbucks workers, there are plenty of customers who have no problem being this high maintenance in person.

Of course tweets like these spark discourse over the nature of service work and what’s reasonable to order and expect. On one hand, you have people who say if they want to pay $15 for a drink with twenty extra additions, all of which are readily available and on offer at Starbucks, they should be able to do so. On the other, people note how off-menu-to-the-point-that-you’re-just-inventing-something drinks are a lot of extra work and time for those performing an already demanding job, and that these time-consuming orders are an inconvenience to other customers, as well.

Starbucks has sided with the former, saying that customized drinks is part of the Starbucks appeal. In a statement to Fox News, the company said, “Customizing beverages at Starbucks and our baristas’ expertise in helping customers find and craft the right beverage has and always will be the heart of the Starbucks Experience. There are many ways for customers to modify their favorite beverage at Starbucks and most customizations are reasonable requests from customers.” They stop short of whether saying what an unreasonable request might look like, but apparently the Edward isn’t it.

But mostly, I want to know how many times Edward had to order this particular beverage until he landed on this combination of 13 additions. Was four banana too little, and six banana too much banana? Why was single blended not enough? Isn’t the single pump of honey completely overwhelmed by...everything else? What is the sugar crash like?? I love academics.

The chef recreates the nostalgic dish, including a side of bright orange macaroni and cheese

What’s more nostalgic than peeling open a piping hot TV dinner straight from the microwave? Whether you were a latchkey kid looking for an easy meal, or just someone who enjoyed getting a steamy whiff of classic neon orange macaroni and cheese from time to time, the comforting TV dinner was always there, standing by in the freezer for when you needed it most.

Chef Nysesha Arrington remembers these moments well, which is why she decided to attempt a homemade version of Stouffer’s Salisbury steak with a side of macaroni and cheese. In her version, short rib steak, beef chuck, and filet trim are ground fresh, molded into a patty and cooked in a roux made from wild foraged mushrooms; Arrington uses shiitakes, oyster mushrooms, maitakes, and hon-shimeji. “Stouffer’s definitely didn’t use [these mushrooms],” she says, “but I have to chef-ify it somewhere.”

For the creamy macaroni and cheese sauce, Arrington uses freshly grated cheddar cheese, nutmeg, milk, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and most importantly, cheddar cheese powder for that unique (and necessary) highlighter-orange hue, which gives her “childhood vibes.”

After everything has been prepared, Arrington demonstrates how to plate, seal, freeze, and reheat the meal so that you can have your own arsenal of home-cooked TV dinners in your freezer for whenever the craving arises.

“It’s such a comforting dish,” Arrington says as she peels away the plastic to taste her creation. “I think it’s an awesome way to really elevate such a simple, classic, almost ‘lowbrow’ dish using hamburger meat, which is fairly inexpensive, but elevating it by the technique.”

Molly J. Smith

Salisbury Steak TV Dinner

Serves 5

Ingredients:

For the Salisbury Steak:

1 pound chuck
½ pound short rib
½ pound beef filet trimmings (if your butcher doesn’t carry trimmings, substitute with chuck)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1 small yellow onion, brunoised
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
1 teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground black pepper, divided
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, divided
¼ cup ketchup
1 egg
1 tablespoon flat-leaf parsley, chopped, plus extra for garnish
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
1 garlic clove
3 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon canola oil
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

For the Mac & Cheese:

8 ounces elbow macaroni
2½ cups whole milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups cheddar cheese, grated
1/4 cup cheese powder
Pinch nutmeg
Pinch cayenne
1½ teaspoons kosher salt

Instructions:

Step 1: First, chill and grind the meat.

If grinding your own meat, place your grinder’s meat grinding and plate attachments in the freezer at least 2 hours in advance of using.

About 1 hour before using, break down the larger cuts of meat into 1-inch cubes. Place the cubed meat in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and chill in the fridge for about 30 to 35 minutes.

While the meat is chilling, melt 1 tablespoon butter in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Season with 1 teaspoon salt. Set aside to cool.

Right before grinding, fill a large bowl with ice and add a little bit of water. Nestle a smaller bowl on top of the ice to catch the meat as it comes out of the grinder. Attach the chilled meat grinder to your machine with the coarse plate.

Remove the chilled cubed meat from the fridge and begin to feed it through the machine, using the coarse plate attachment, into the chilled small bowl. Next, take the ground meat and run it through the machine a second time, utilizing the fine plate attachment.

Step 2: Next, make the patties.

In a large bowl, combine the ground meat, mustard powder, garlic powder, ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper, 1 tablespoon salt, cooled cooked onion, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, egg, parsley, and thyme. Mix gently but thoroughly with your hands. Divide the mixture into five equal parts and form patties, about 6-7 ounces each. Place in the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

Step 3: While the patties are chilling, brown the mushrooms.

In a large cast-iron pan over medium-high heat, add 2 tablespoons of butter and the mushrooms. Place one garlic clove on a fork and use the fork to season the pan while mixing the mushrooms. Once the mushrooms are caramelized and golden, remove them from the pan to a plate and set aside.

Step 4: Cook the patties and make the sauce.

Add 1 tablespoon of butter and the canola oil to the pan and return to medium-high heat. Sear off the patties, about 6-8 minutes per side.

In the meantime, warm the beef stock in a small saucepan over medium-low heat.

Remove the patties from the pan to a plate and set aside. Strain the oil from the pan into a bowl with a small strainer, and wipe the pan clean with a tea towel. Set aside 2 tablespoons of the strained oil to make the sauce, reserving the rest for another purpose.

Add 2 tablespoons of the strained oil and 1 tablespoon butter to the cleaned pan over medium heat, then sift in the flour and whisk until smooth. Slowly pour in the warmed beef stock, whisking constantly. Cook for about 2 minutes, until the gravy begins to thicken, then add the remaining 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, the remaining 1 teaspoon salt and the remaining ½ teaspoon pepper. Place the patties in the pan and coat with gravy. Continue to cook on low for about 10 minutes. Add the cooked mushrooms, mixing to combine.

Step 5: While the sauce is simmering, make the mac and cheese.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the macaroni for about 5 minutes, then drain.

While the pasta water is heating, warm the milk in a small saucepan. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat, then sprinkle with flour and whisk to make a roux. Gradually add 1½ cups warm milk, whisking constantly. Once the sauce has started to thicken, about 5 minutes, add the grated cheddar, cheese powder, nutmeg, cayenne, and salt. Add the drained macaroni, mixing gently to combine. If desired, add the remaining 1 cup of warm milk to finish.

To freeze, fill 5 plastic microwave-safe containers each with 1 steak and about ½ cup mac and cheese. Top the steak with the mushroom gravy and parsley, then cover and freeze. Reheat for 5 minutes in the microwave, turning the container halfway through.

Molly J. Smith is a photographer based in Portland, Oregon
Recipe tested by Marisa Robertson-Textor

Where to go for iconic turkey legs, crunchy fried chicken, Dole whip, and only the finest Mickey-shaped foods

Finding an exemplary dining experience or dish isn’t a given in a resort like Walt Disney World, where efficiency can trump flavor. But the sprawling complex boasts a wide variety of standout and even destination-worthy dishes for those willing to look for them. These are meals people remember for years, that they stalk the recipes of, that they clamor for the second they return. From hulking pieces of meat to hall-of-fame ice cream, hoisin spare ribs to a bowl of cheese soup, we found all of the spectacular dishes and restaurants and compiled them, Eater-style, into this Disney 38. Anyone planning a trip to Orlando should consider this a cheat sheet for the best and brightest across the parks.

Update 4/2021: Disney has expanded its culinary offerings by way of celebrity chefs, cultural cuisines, and new upscale ventures in the years since Eater’s guide was first written, but its full range of restaurants and offerings have not yet returned following 2020’s temporary closure due to the Coronavirus pandemic. There is plenty to indulge in and imbibe throughout Walt Disney World, including many of our time-tested favorites, so rest assured: You’ll still be eating well at this vacation paradise.

Editor’s Note: There are extensive health and safety protocols in place throughout Walt Disney World. All guests ages 3 and up require park reservations and valid admission to visit Disney’s theme parks; Disney Springs is open to the public. Walt Disney World restaurants have resumed indoor and outdoor dining services with increased social distancing measures and cleaning procedures. However, this should not be taken as endorsement for indoor dining, as there are still safety concerns.

Part of the Eater Guide to Disney World

What to do, bring, wear, and of course eat for a delicious trip to the most sanitized place on earth

The time has come for you to finally contemplate a trip to the Mouse House, and frankly, there’s never been a better time to plan. Disney World has always provided a grand escape from reality, with its cartoon character-shaped ice cream bars, towering fake mountains, and restaurants with ’50s kitchenettes where waiters berate you for putting elbows on the table. But the Florida theme park resort provides something new after a year of nothingness (and not just the ability to chow down on wildly good Neapolitan pizza that didn’t come from a cardboard delivery box).

The Most Magical Place on Earth amended nearly all its operations to safely accommodate guests in its four theme parks — the Magic Kingdom Park, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, collectively known as the Walt Disney World Resort — when it reopened in July 2020 after an unprecedented 117-day closure. Since then, it’s hit its stride, offering families a way to experience those Star Wars characters and Disney classics in real life after a year spent glassy-eyed, watching them on screens.

New safety protocols are in place throughout the resort that streamline the typical lineup of CDC recommendations: contactless purchases, a vast canopy of hand-sanitizing stations, and minimal touchpoints. Expect to see plexiglass barriers on ride vehicles and within queues and an expansion of Disney’s already rigorous cleaning methods in the parks, at restaurants, and throughout the resort. (Janitorial staff were known for all-white uniforms with nary a speck of dirt before the pandemic, so yeah, cleanliness is a big deal around here.)

What you won’t see, however, are selfies with princesses, masked-up hugs with Pixar characters, or sparklers coming out of Mickey Mouse’s mitts. Disney has temporarily suspended up-close character experiences and nighttime shows like Happily Ever After and Fantasmic! These will undoubtedly return, but it’s unclear when. Even FastPass+, the complimentary system that allows guests to “reserve” spots in line in order to breezily board rides like Splash Mountain, is still paused, with queues operating first-come, first-served for the first time since the late 1990s — allowing for a level of park spontaneity we haven’t seen in years.

A visit to Walt Disney World used to require regimented planning — restaurant reservations booked half a year in advance, to-the-minute itineraries — but now everything is in flux, allowing a rare window for a slightly more spur-of-the-moment visit, as though you’re actually on vacation. This also means rules are constantly being updated, so be absolutely sure to give Disney’s website a once-over and download the My Disney Experience app before you go. (Seriously. You’ll need it, and better to do it now than while standing in the sun as your kids are begging you to mobile order a Dole Whip.)

Some hotels, restaurants, attractions, and experiences remain closed, but if it’s magic you’re after, Walt Disney World Resort continues to provide it. Cinderella still waves at young fans, Space Mountain blasts you off into the stars, and Mickey-shaped waffles are served warm and smiling. Employees, known as cast members — the undisputed backbone of this new operation — work tirelessly to continue spreading that quintessential fairy dust, even from behind face masks and shields. The heart of Disney’s theme park outfit is still there, even if it looks slightly different.

Capacity is restricted on transportation, attractions, and within the parks themselves, but you will still encounter other guests, sometimes less than six feet away, while moving about the resort, particularly at Disney’s souped-up mall known as Disney Springs. Still, distance markers appear in every queue, and diligent staff enforcement makes mask compliance high.

Kent Phillips

Kent Phillips

Visiting the Parks

Expect to undergo temperature screenings upon arrival to Disney World’s four theme parks; face coverings must meet requirements (no valves or gaiters) and be worn by guests ages 2 and up at all times, except when eating, drinking, or taking outdoor photos.

Due to COVID-era capacity restraints, you’ll need both admission and a theme park reservation to enter Walt Disney World theme parks. Both are required for everyone ages 3 and up and can be booked in advance online. Park reservation availability is limited to each individual park and structured in three tiers — ticket holders, Disney Hotel guests, and annual pass holders — so be sure to book the moment you purchase tickets. (FYI: The reservations are free.)

If you want to go from Magic Kingdom to Animal Kingdom in the same day — a practice known as “park hopping” — you can, starting at 2 p.m. daily. Park Hopper admission is required (it’s a surcharge), and capacity limitations still apply, so call (407) 560-5000 to check availability.

With FastPass+ indefinitely paused, all rides instead offer standby lines like the amusement parks of yore, making it significantly easier to show up without a plan, a move that previously could have ruined a Disney vacation before it began. The one exception is Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This in-demand attraction requires a separate “boarding pass,” released daily at 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. in the My Disney Experience app. (They go quickly, so study up on how to snag them; admission and park reservations for Disney’s Hollywood Studios are also required. It’s a pain, but it’s absolutely worth it.)

Disney’s Blizzard Beach Water Park has separate ticketed admission and does not require a park reservation. Masks are not required while in the water or on waterslides, while walking to or waiting in line for waterslides, or while seated in distanced lounge chairs, a policy which, much like its the park’s quizzical snowed-in theme, somehow seems to work.

Staying on Property

There are plenty of hotels throughout the Orlando area. Disney-operated hotels, in addition to select others, offer a set of coveted perks, which have been slimmed down during the pandemic but still include additional access to the parks, particularly with theme park reservations.

Walt Disney World’s Extra Magic Hour program, which gives hotel guests additional time in the parks, was suspended when the parks reopened. Its replacement, Early Theme Park Entry, will provide 30-minute early entry to any of Disney’s theme parks, seven days a week, when it debuts later this year. (Park reservations are also required.) Complimentary Disney’s Magical Express airport bus service is also available and great for families looking to simplify the schlep, but it will cease operations on January 1, 2022; Mears, a local transportation company, will offer its own for purchase starting then.

Still, Disney’s own hotels are often preferred by fans for thematic immersion by way of larger-than-life statues, princess-themed rooms, and even a friggin’ monorail running through its center, one of the many modes of reliable transportation offered throughout Walt Disney World Resort in addition to buses, boats, and gondolas.

Matt Stroshane

What to See and Do

The majority of Walt Disney World theme park rides are open and operating with distance markers, partitions, and cleanings throughout the day. Capacity is controlled, but parties may be mixed on certain attractions, like Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, so keep that in mind.

Many of the indoor stage shows are not currently running, but Festival of the Lion King will be performed in an amended fashion when it returns in summer 2021. (At press time, all nighttime entertainment and fireworks offerings still remain on hiatus.)

You won’t be able to hug Mickey Mouse on a current trip, but you’ll definitely see him in all four parks. Princesses, Pixar characters, and the mouse himself can be spotted throughout the day in cavalcades through Epcot’s World Showcase, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and from along the riverfront in Animal Kingdom, where Pocahontas, Minnie Mouse, and others wave to guests from boats. In lieu of individual meet-and-greets, cuddly characters like Winnie the Pooh and Chip ’n’ Dale now appear at a distance, but don’t fret — their theater-in-the-round style antics, performed beyond fences or partitions, are a joy to watch. Disney PhotoPass photographers are on hand to take professional-style family photos, and while you’re now able to remove masks for outdoor pics, they must stay on for all other experiences, including on-ride photos. (Remove your mask on Expedition Everest and Disney won’t give you that screaming snapshot.)

Disney Dining

Mobile ordering is encouraged throughout the property and has been expanded since Disney World’s reopening. The pro move is to order in advance, particularly for meals later in the day, since hotels are known to be busy around dinnertime, which can mean lengthy waits. Be sure to indulge in that Mickey bar craving from the side of the walkway, too, as parkgoers are required to enjoy snacks while stationary and away from other guests.

Table service dining reservations can be made up to 60 days in advance and should be booked ASAP. Walt Disney World Resort is currently seating indoor and outdoor dining, so arrive early to specify outdoors if preferred. Character dining is available at select parks and resort hotels, and in lieu of tableside greetings, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and others interact from a distance with guests who remain seated.

Eater favorites include ’50s Prime Time Café, Jungle Cruise Skipper Canteen, and Tiffins, while at Disney Springs, the open-to-the-public “downtown” district, Wine Bar George and Morimoto Asia rank among the best. For grab-and-go food, cheeseburger pods and protein bowls at Animal Kingdom’s Satu’li Canteen, and Portuguese sausage Ronto Wraps or anything on the menu at Docking Bay 7 in the new Star Wars-themed Galaxy’s Edge land at Disney Hollywood Studios, are musts. If you’re heading out for bratwurst and beers in Epcot’s version of Germany, take note that some restaurants traditionally run by international employees through Disney’s Cultural Exchange Program are being temporarily operated by regular Epcot employees until the program is reinstated.

Kent Phillips

Matt Stroshane

Special Disney Events in 2021

Taste of Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival, a pandemic-era version of the seasonal event, brings outdoor food kiosks, live entertainment, and decorative topiaries to Epcot’s World Showcase through July 5, 2021. Epcot International Food & Wine Festival will run July 15 to November 20, while the park’s seasonal Festival of the Holidays and Festival of the Arts will announce dates later this year. (Disney has not yet confirmed if seasonal ticketed events, like Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, will be held in 2021.)

The biggest event of the year will undoubtedly be Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary, which kicks off its 18-month celebration on October 1, 2021. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, the family-friendly ride offering a vermin’s-eye view of the restaurant in Pixar’s Ratatouille, will debut as part of the celebration. Additional attractions, including an innovative TRON roller coaster and indoor Guardians of the Galaxy-themed coaster, will open at a yet-to-be determined time in the future, while Epcot’s forthcoming nighttime show, Harmonious, is set to debut in late 2021 as well.

Key Takeaways

Book everything as early as possible, especially park and dining reservations. For help on deciding where to eat, we recommend our list of essential eats at Walt Disney World.

Wear a good mask. Not just one that meets Disney criteria, but one that can survive hours in the brutal Florida sun. (Speaking of, pack extras to swap out midday.)

Stay attuned to Disney news. It may be easier than ever to roll up to the Mouse House without solid plans, but things are changing weekly. Be sure to check Walt Disney World’s website for current procedures and availability and the Disney Food Blog for pertinent updates, and follow me @CarlyeWisel on Twitter and Instagram for need-to-know news (and hot takes!) on everything happening at these parks.

Download the My Disney Experience app. Walt Disney World has all eyes on mobile ordering these days, so you’ll want it set up in advance so you can order food as easily as possible on the ground.

Matt Stroshane

Carlye Wisel is a theme park journalist and expert who reports about things like how Butterbeer was invented and Disney’s secret food lab on her podcast, Very Amusing With Carlye Wisel.

The pandemic has forced restaurants to accommodate delivery in order to stay relevant. And there’s no going back now.

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.

A couple of years ago, Tacolicious, the San Francisco restaurant I’m a partner in, switched from using corn tortillas from a local tortilleria to making our own in-house. From an operations and labor point of view, hiring a human to spend eight hours a day pressing tortillas by hand and flipping them on a dedicated plancha is more complicated and expensive than using premade tortillas. But it was an upgrade in flavor deemed worth the investment.

That was PC, or pre-Covid, and as a full-service restaurant, we innocently assumed the majority of our tacos would be enjoyed in-house, each bite met with the warm, toasty fragrance of fresh masa. Although we did offer delivery, our menu decisions, like most of our decisions, had up until that point prioritized the entire dining room experience. No one could have convinced me that a pandemic was headed our way, and that third-party delivery would be our main outlet for months at a time. That our tacos would be put into a box and then a bag and set out to wait for up to 20 minutes for a driver who often had multiple deliveries, or ran into traffic, or (true story) had a couple of dogs in the back seat — all while our lovingly made tortillas lost their suppleness by the minute.

We also didn’t consider that the person who ordered them, noting the now-cold carnitas, might blithely pop everything into a microwave until the tacos were, yes, hot again, but also a bit rubbery, and proceed to eat them straight out of the now sweaty compostable box while watching Season 17 of the Bachelorette.

Today, even high-end restaurants — the kind that used to put a smear on an actual ceramic plate — have had no choice but to grit their teeth and make their food transportable, knowing that it was never intended to be that way. Having your business judged by the food that shows up in to-go boxes is cause for concern: A person can give a bad review, which can move a restaurant down in its position on a delivery app.

But my real worry isn’t a one-star rating. It’s that over the course of COVID, the average customer — despite shelling out costly fees and tossing a mountain of to-go ware — has adjusted their expectations. Their priorities have shifted to the point that they now conceive of a restaurant less as a place where you go for community and more as a facility that supplies dinner.

Today, restaurants are juggling how to fulfill both of these functions. We are at a crossroads, and the future of our industry as we’ve known it hinges on whether or not people are going to feel compelled to put some pants on. God knows the pandemic has nurtured our introvert selves, and in the process it’s changed our eating habits. Online groceries have become ubiquitous, and takeout has evolved to the point where it means not just pizza but chili-honey swordfish with grilled Little Gems and gin-grapefruit-thyme cocktails with lavender-wasabi salt.

And so as the world slowly begins to open again, and restaurants resume indoor dining (and, increasingly, cease their takeout operations), I wonder: When we’re at normal capacity and the novelty of eating out wears off, will the process of dining out — getting dressed, walking, driving, parking, waiting, asking for the check — be regarded as a return to hunting and gathering?

Considering that our restaurant’s own takeout business has shot up almost 150 percent since the pandemic started, it doesn’t seem like a crazy question. On a recent Friday night at Tacolicious, 63 of the 120 orders we executed between 5 and 8 p.m. were for delivery — an even split that is not atypical.

The scene is what T., the managing partner of our Mission District location, calls a “controlled crash,” Navy speak for the dangerous and precarious task of landing a jet on an aircraft carrier — one that can be mitigated through training but still offers no guarantees. In the kitchen, our cooks constantly switch back and forth between plating tacos to send out with a server and putting tacos in a box to hand to the delivery drivers who stand awkwardly in our doorway among waiting guests. They are impatient. They have a job to do. But they don’t work for us; we don’t have a relationship. This scenario was not a part of our original business plan. It’s almost like running two concepts out of the same kitchen.

The expeditor, the person who calls out the orders, is the most important person in the house on nights like this. Often, the chaos is miraculously managed. Diners are happy, as are our delivery patrons. But despite the “triple check” system we have in place for delivery, sometimes human error comes into play and a guacamole goes missing in an order. Now the DoorDash customer is left stewing and confused about whom to turn to, first pinging the delivery service, then emailing us. Our manager, who would love to be over at a table toasting someone’s birthday or dimming the lights or adjusting the music, is now embroiled in Operation Guac. And we can’t rectify the error face to face. Instead, we send an apology in the form of an emailed gift card. (Though if someone’s guac-less night is truly crushing, we have been known to send them their guacamole in an Uber.)

Whether restaurants want to or not, the invention of third-party delivery apps such as UberEats, Caviar, GrubHub, and DoorDash has forced us to accommodate delivery in order to stay relevant. There’s no going back now; it is a codependent relationship. Diners expect restaurants to provide delivery, and the revenue it provides has become essential for us to compete in an industry built on slim margins. While these apps began shifting restaurant operations before COVID (and putting a financial squeeze on restaurants with their high fees), they hit the jackpot during the pandemic, more than doubling their revenue since 2020. DoorDash — which was one of 2020’s biggest IPOs — did a study revealing that 58 percent of adults and 70 percent of millennials are more likely to have food delivered now than they were two years ago. “The delivery business is keeping restaurants alive,” Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber and UberEats, said in an interview. “[With UberEats], you can get wonderful, hot meals.”

“Hot” is relative, I’d say. But otherwise, Khosrowshahi is both right and wrong. Yes, on some level, delivery might be keeping restaurants “alive,” but it’s also killing us a little bit. Or at least changing us systemically, altering our purpose. Not to get existential, but considering until recently, restaurants were designed to be curated, multifaceted in-house experiences, what’s the tipping point? When is a restaurant no longer a restaurant?

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I’d say it’s when the dining room is no longer a priority. Because that’s where the joy happens, where a restaurant’s spirit lives. Without it, you cannot possibly practice hospitality, an act of giving that requires warm bodies and lots of tequila. It’s in the dining room where servers answer questions about the food and ask how your kids are doing. It’s where pretty tile covers the floor and there’s a riot of music, cooks clanging spatulas on the plancha, cocktails being shaken, salsa being blended. There’s the aroma of chilies and garlic wafting around diners deep in conversation with their family or friends. It’s where you might meet a stranger or get a little tipsy. And in this virtual world, it is one of the few places left for true community.

Also — and this is not insignificant — it’s the only place that puts you in close proximity to a kitchen, which is essential if you want to remember what truly hot, crispy-fatty pork wrapped in a fresh tortilla tastes like. Or maybe flank steak just pulled off the grill and plated with a smear of prickly ash relish. Or a bubbly, blistered, wood-fired Margherita pizza straight off the peel. I hope that rejoicing in restaurant food as it was meant to be served will help you recall that the delivered version, while satisfying, does not arouse the kind of irrepressible craving that can only be satiated one way. And that’s by getting off the couch and going out to dinner.

An intermittent food writer and former editor, Sara Deseran is a partner at Tacolicious, a San Francisco-based restaurant group.

The latest plan from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in May takes the term “shot and a beer” to its COVID-era conclusion

The chef and Eater New Guard member throws the concept of “authenticity” out the window in favor of serving up mouthwatering spins on his favorite dishes

“‘Authenticity’ means jack shit to me,” says Eric Sze, a member of the 2021 Eater New Guard. “What’s authentic to me doesn’t mean it’s authentic to you, even if you grew up in Taiwan.” Sze uses this philosophy to help guide his delicious, Taiwanese-inspired creations at his restaurant 886 in NYC’s East Village. “Whatever I like, and whatever I want to serve, is authentic to me and authentic to us.”

Sze’s knack for melding traditional Taiwanese dishes and flavors with what New Yorkers (including himself) want to eat right now is on full display as he tests recipes for his forthcoming second restaurant in Brooklyn. For this new menu, he tries his own spin on spicy stir fried pigs’ blood rice cakes, Taiwaneses Baijiu garlic sausage, and a skin-on, deboned, whole fried chicken. “It’s very important to me to showcase chicken raised by the Chinese farmers,” he says. “It’s a different flavor of chicken. The meat is not the ‘conventional’ tender, but it’s still delicate and delicious.”

Sze makes a point to support Chinatown suppliers, shopping at local markets for his meat and noodles, and developing relationships with local butchers who understand his vision. “It’s very important to me to buy from Chinatown directly, because it was a place where I always went when I was homesick during college when I first came to the States,” he says. “It gave me a level of comfort, and the more time I spend in New York, the more connected I feel with the Chinatown community.”

As for advice on owning a restaurant, chef Sze says he would tell his younger self to trust himself. “I think that’s a very important lesson. Because for the longest time, I was thinking about what other people would want, and this really all ties back into being authentically myself.”

Meet the inspiring leaders using food to challenge conventions, empower their communities, and make positive change.

America’s food culture is at a turning point. Pandemic-related shutdowns proved just how fragile the restaurant ecosystem has always been, while last summer’s protests put a spotlight on the work still needed to dismantle white supremacy in all aspects of American life, especially in an industry built on a history of racism and inequity. And addressing hunger, an everyday reality for millions of Americans, became even more urgent as food banks struggled to keep up with the overwhelming need due to the pandemic’s devastation of the economy.

In the midst of all this, people stepped up, creating better ways of feeding, working, and living — and in the process, they are redefining what providing food and community truly means. They started and joined mutual aid networks and nonprofit organizations to weave together the strands of empathy and empowerment missing from our social safety net. They worked on farms and in urban gardens to champion food sovereignty and ecologically sound growing practices, driven by a desire to fortify their communities’ ability to thrive. Those dedicated to restaurant work adapted, designing new business models, new service structures, and new ways to connect with diners and one another. As our food systems and restaurants rebuild in the wake of a profoundly transformative year, these changemakers are ensuring what comes next is far better than what we had before.

Here now is Eater’s inaugural New Guard cohort. Chosen from over 1,000 nominations, each winner has risen to the challenges of the current moment, prioritizing the well-being of others and making a meaningful change in their community. They’ve also signed the Eater New Guard mission statement, affirming their commitment to building a more equitable food and restaurant industry. They are chefs, community organizers, restaurant operators, farmers, bartenders, founders, educators, entrepreneurs, and, above all else, they are the leaders we need now. They are the New Guard.

—Hillary Dixler Canavan, Eater restaurant editor

Introducing
the 2021
New Guard

Salimatu Amabebe

Chef, creative activist, founder of Black Feast
Berkeley, CA and Portland, OR

Two words you’ll often hear Salimatu Amabebe use when explaining their work as a chef, activist, host, and creator are “nourish” and “nurture.” To them, creating spaces and experiences that center, celebrate, and support the Black community revolves around care. That can manifest in many ways: through a precisely designed event like their Black Feast dinners, which merge the worlds of food and art; or communicated through a thoughtful note, skin care products, and desserts packaged and sent to Black people, as with their Love Letters to Black Folks project. Whatever form it takes, care always comes back to making creative spaces that are kind for them and for others.

Jacob Bindman

Director of service operations
and co-founder, SF New Deal
San Francisco

With the pandemic exerting tremendous pressure on both San Francisco restaurant owners and people experiencing food insecurity, SF New Deal sprung into action, raising funds — from donors and from government contracts — to pay independently owned restaurants to make meals for those who need them. Co-founder and director of service operations Jacob Bindman understands that the problems his nonprofit addresses aren’t new and that the solutions can be found in the communities affected by them — and the community organizations that have been doing the work for a long time. What he excels at is connecting the dots, building “connective tissue,” as he calls it, between communities, businesses, city government, and, most of all, people.

Kiani Conley-Wilson

Community empowerment coordinator,
Soul Fire Farm
Troy, NY

Rooting out the inequalities that exist across our food systems is at the center of Kiani Conley-Wilson’s work. This is especially true when it comes to their role as community empowerment coordinator at Soul Fire Farm, where Coney-Wilson runs the Soul Fire in the City program, which provides raised beds, seeds, and training to people living in New York’s Capital Region who want to grow their own food. But Conley-Wilson embodies the Soul Fire Farm mission of breaking down racism in the food system outside of the Soul Fire umbrella, too: Conley-Wilson is also the founder of Common Greens, a community garden and education center in Troy, and as they run for Troy city council, they seek to address inequality more broadly by protecting renters and advocating for immigrants.

Patricia Howard & Ed Szymanski

Owners, general manager, chef, Dame
New York City

In 2019, Ed Szymanski and Patricia Howard decided to open a restaurant together. But when the pandemic made their initial vision for a British, meat-focused restaurant an impossibility, they found a model that would work — and one that benefited their wider restaurant community in the process. Dame became a pop-up takeout-only fish-and-chips spot, and when the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests prompted Howard and Szymanski to consider how they could support BIPOC communities, they launched the weekly Dame Summer Club with a dual purpose: to give their restaurant friends a platform and raise money for social justice organizations. When Dame opens in its permanent space this spring, the duo will make equity part of their ongoing mission as they create a working environment designed to lift up their employees and ultimately make it possible for others to achieve the same restaurant ownership dreams.

Kirsten Kirby-Shoote

Urban farmer and cultural food worker
Detroit

Kirsten Kirby-Shoote is a member of the Tlingit Nation, and the seeds the urban farmer preserves and plants are a critical part of protecting Indigenous culture, separating the act of food cultivation from corporate agriculture and the profit demands of capitalism. By growing and teaching others to grow these plants — not to mention hosting gatherings and pop-up events to raise awareness around Native food and cooking — they’re promoting food sovereignty for the Indigenous, Black, and brown communities in and around Detroit. Kirby-Shoote finds particular inspiration in imagining a future in which Indigenous children will eat, know, and understand their own history and food culture — a new generation of stewards for the traditions Kirby-Shoote is safeguarding now.

Demetrius Milling

Assistant farm manager, Love Is Love Farm
Decatur, GA

Whether he’s weeding, harvesting, or adapting new practices at Love Is Love Farm, the organic farm in Georgia where he works, farmer Demetrius Milling is all about making things better than they were before. He teaches farmers how to use two-wheel tractors through the Food Well Alliance. He serves on the Rockdale-DeKalb County Farm Bureau, ensuring there’s a voice at the table representing young farmers and farmers interested in sustainable practices. And whenever he finds a fellow young person who’s even a little bit interested in farming, he will gladly share his own story — often inspiring them to make the leap, too. Along with four other farmers, including his current mentors at Love Is Love Farm, Milling will soon co-own and operate a farming collective east of Atlanta. The produce will be organic and sustainably raised, of course, but crucially, operating as a worker-owned, consensus-driven farm will allow each farmer to sustain a livelihood and work-life balance that’s proven elusive in the industry. Because if there’s anything Milling wants to see more than hard work leading to results, it’s people growing, not just crops.

Kapri Robinson

President and founder, Chocolate City’s Best; co-founder and director of operations, Empowering the Diner
Washington, D.C.

Kapri Robinson’s life as a bartender changed when she started winning cocktail competitions. The networking and brand partnerships that came as a result of the events opened doors, but even more important, those opportunities inspired her to start a cocktail competition of her own, one that would ensure that BIPOC bartenders like her had their own platform. Chocolate City’s Best was born just three years ago and is now a thriving cocktail competition and educational hub. Robinson’s expertise as an event planner and ambitions as an advocate for diners and workers of color have continued to guide her activism. And with her enthusiasm for her craft only strengthened after more than a year of virtual events and teaching online, she’s more excited than ever to have guests sidle up to the bar for her drinks once again.

Mohammad Salehi

CEO and co-owner, Heray Spice
Chicago

What if there was a spice that could change the world? For Mohammad Salehi, there is. His company, Heray Spice, sells Afghani saffron, getting high-quality product into an American market rife with fakes while getting money directly to Afghani farmers. Salehi has made a commitment to pay his suppliers fairly, and he also dedicates a portion of the proceeds to education-focused charities in Herat, where he grew up in a farming family. Prior to the pandemic, Heray Spices focused on wholesale clients, but last year, Salehi started selling saffron to home cooks and now hopes to expand his selection further, with each sale enabling him to do more good for both the Afghani farming community and for everyone cooking with better saffron.

Eric Sze

Chef-owner, 886
New York City

There was a time when Eric Sze didn’t think he, as the owner of a small East Village restaurant, was capable of making the kind of change he feels the world so desperately needs. But over the past year, as the pandemic wreaked havoc on his community, Sze began to believe that the size of his restaurant had no bearing on the size of his potential impact. He pivoted 886 to stay afloat through a year’s worth of changing regulations while simultaneously preparing thousands of bento boxes for health care workers and local shelters. In February, he started Enough Is Enough, a campaign to raise awareness of the hate crimes against Asian Americans. All the while, Sze has maintained his mission to bring Taiwanese food to New York City diners, and soon he’ll open his second Taiwanese restaurant — the most recent sign that he’s a long way from the small restaurant owner he thought himself not so long ago.

Brittney Valles

Owner, Guerrilla Tacos, Gogo’s Tacos, Tiago Coffee
Los Angeles

Brittney Valles has always been cool with working behind the scenes in the restaurant world. As the general manager and now owner of LA’s famed Guerrilla Tacos, Valles’s work is all about setting her team up to do their best — whether that means providing health insurance, offering Spanish and English classes, or, in the case of the pandemic, only reopening when there were protocols in place that prioritized workers’ safety. She sees now that being the person facilitating others’ success is important in its own right, and she’s making the most of her skills at it, serving as a founding board member of Re:Her, which offers grants to women in hospitality. A new restaurant opening this summer called Gogo’s Tacos will help fund Valles’s biggest goal: a nascent nonprofit community center, which will focus on providing financial and culinary education, and, ultimately, empowerment to her Los Angeles community.

In joining the Eater New Guard, we are committing to making the food and restaurant world respectful and inclusive. We understand that not perpetuating abuse through our words and behavior is the beginning, not the end, of how we reach that goal. We denounce and seek to dismantle the discrimination that results in inequity in our industry, including but not limited to sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and harassment. We urge all members of our industry to do the same.

Local governments rarely look to independent restaurants to solve community hunger. Jacob Bindman is making the connection with the SF New Deal.

At just 9 years old, Jacob Bindman got his first food job: volunteering for CUESA, the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, a San Francisco nonprofit that runs the city’s famed Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. The knives and the fire of the cooking demos drew him in, but it was the connection to the bigger food system and the people who create it that kept him in the food and restaurant world.

Now 23, Bindman is the director of service operations for SF New Deal, a nonprofit he co-founded with his friend and mentor Lenore Estrada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. After the city shuttered restaurants last spring, the pair saw an opportunity to support those businesses with cash while providing good food to community members in need. They secured a million-dollar pledge from a tech CEO — a friend of Estrada’s who was looking for a way to aid small businesses — and quickly got to work, paying restaurants to make meals and forging partnerships with local activists, organizers, and groups to distribute the food. One year into SF New Deal’s effort, Bindman now leads a team of more than 20 people working on multiple feeding programs. And he has also been working with the city of San Francisco to encourage local government officials to contract with small businesses instead of huge corporations.

Eater: How are you making change in the food world?

Jacob Bindman: One of the things I’ve been really excited about with SF New Deal is thinking about how sustainability extends beyond the very literal agricultural meaning — to understand what the sustainability of food systems at large looks like as it relates to fair wages, worker practices, and distribution channels. And I think a huge portion of what sustainability looks like has to do with the extent to which communities are in partnership to support one another. Everyone needs to eat and engage in their community.

SF New Deal thrives on serving as a facilitator and mediator for people who touch our food systems in not necessarily the most obvious ways. We’re working with farmers and providers, but we’re also working with the city of San Francisco, with restaurants that make these meals, and with members of our community who eat these meals. If we are going to build a sustainable system, it can’t look like what’s been happening. And a lot of the change that I’m excited to be a part of is change that really centers and gives voice to the people who are closest to the system, either because they are the individual essential workers who are going in every day and doing this work or because they rely on food support from the government, and the services they have been getting are lackluster.

How did you get started in the Bay Area food scene?

I grew up in San Francisco and started going to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market as a very young kid with my parents, and I started volunteering with CUESA. What was so surprising to me as a kid, and even more so in retrospect, is how much the Ferry Building — and CUESA in particular — really serves as an intersection of so many food communities in the Bay Area. I was welcomed into this space really early on and volunteered with CUESA through high school until going to college. Through the work I was doing at CUESA, I got to know a bunch of different chefs, restaurateurs, and farmers and spent most of my summers growing up working in those kitchens. Restaurant kitchens were a space where I felt engaged and able to participate in a food system that is driven by working to be sustainable and provide great service. But also, day-to-day, there’s a pace that I found quite fun.

What are you most passionate about with your work?

The reality is that food insecurity is something that has so long existed in San Francisco that by virtue of growing up here you just see it and are thinking about it all the time. There are all these people on the street and people who so visibly have not received the resources and support they need from the city. And when starting SF New Deal, that kick-started an opportunity to say, “How can we use this as a chance to provide some immediate relief during a time of acute pressures on individuals who need food support?” But also, from the get-go, we acknowledged that we weren’t solving a new problem; the people who were hardest hit have been deeply impacted for decades.

Community feeding is working to make sure that the basic needs of members of our community are met. Doing that means understanding holistically who the individuals are who are receiving services. And, by virtue of what food represents, overwhelmingly the people we serve and the people who are food insecure in San Francisco have received an insufficient level of support in a whole host of areas; they might also be housing insecure or unemployed or need mental or physical health services. So why I’m excited about working in a space that touches community feeding is that it really serves as a mechanism to touch so many important and vital things that dictate what a thriving city should look like.

In San Francisco, and in cities everywhere, the challenges we’re working to address have so long persisted that it can feel as though they cannot be solved. What I find inspiring is the simplicity of our model and the extent to which all it mandates is that community members show up for one another. And so many different people have come together to make this project work. Truly, it’s a collaborative effort: It’s community leaders, it’s the city of San Francisco, it’s our meal recipients, it’s the restaurants. It is so inspiring to see all these individuals come together.

The second piece I find really exciting is thinking about how the government and small businesses engage with one another. We have really been focused on community feeding and making small businesses eligible to receive city, state, and federally funded contracts, which is something that is incredibly challenging to do. Usually small businesses are completely cut out of these opportunities, and the scale of these opportunities is just so significant. It’s really disheartening the extent to which Sysco and Aramark are set up to receive these contracts and really no one else. I’m inspired by the extent to which the small businesses we work with have demonstrated that they’re capable of meeting the needs of a city contract and providing those services. That’s a piece I really hope will last beyond COVID, the extent to which we see small businesses as a tool by which cities can meet the needs of their community.

What do you hope to accomplish in this next year?

A big goal going into this coming year is working in our advocacy but also in our direct service to not let the vaccine rollout and the optics of opening back up overshadow the reality that the people who have been most impacted by this past year are going to continue to have a lot of challenges for years to come. We recently did a survey of over 185 participating restaurants, and overwhelmingly, restaurants are estimating it’s going to take them between a year and a half to two years to recover financially. For individuals who have been experiencing food insecurity for the past decade, a widespread vaccine rollout does not shift that reality. For the communities we serve, we really want to provide sustained support through recovery, acknowledging that recovery is going to be a lengthy process.

How can readers support your work?

Supporting our work means supporting the work of individuals and groups addressing food insecurity and the challenges faced by small businesses at large. To support the work of SF New Deal directly, you can donate on our website, sfnewdeal.org. I think what’s also incredibly important is to acknowledge the advocacy level that each individual has at their localized level; individuals should feel encouraged and empowered to reach out to their local politicians and ask them what they are doing to support small businesses and support members of their community who are food insecure. One of the things that has been really eye-opening for me in this past year is the extent to which there are individuals in every single neighborhood in San Francisco experiencing food insecurity; there’s a false perception that there are certain neighborhoods in which challenges don’t exist and all the challenges exist in 10 square blocks. That is not the reality. So I would encourage individuals to acknowledge the challenges in their neighborhoods and demand of themselves, their politicians, and their community to find ways to meet those needs and make sure people receive the fundamental and core human support they need.

Michelle K. Min is a food photographer based in San Francisco.

Kiani Conley-Wilson wants to remake the food system

If there’s one thing the pandemic has brought to light, it’s the rampant inequalities that exist across our food systems. One in four households experienced food insecurity in 2020, and food pantries and mutual aid networks have struggled to keep up with demand. The question of who can eat, and eat well, and who can’t has never been more urgent.

Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, New York, which is dedicated to “equity in access to land, sustenance, and power in the food system,” is working to fix those inequalities. With an eye toward Indigenous and Black rights, its food sovereignty programs help feed and teach more than 10,000 people a year, whether by providing raised garden beds to city dwellers, delivering free “solidarity shares” of produce to local residents, or working on land-return initiatives for northeast farmers. And when it comes to inspiring others to join in the mission, Soul Fire Farm relies on Kiani Conley-Wilson.

Conley-Wilson is a community organizer, activist, and food-justice gardener. As the community empowerment coordinator at Soul Fire, they organize programming around such topics as racism in the food system and teaching children how to grow plants from seeds. They also engage directly with the community in their role as founder of Common Greens, a local community garden and education center. And at 26, Conley-Wilson is further spreading their message by running for city council in Troy on a platform of protecting renters and immigrants and committing to environmental stability.

Eater: How do you see yourself making change in the food world with Soul Fire or any other projects you have going on?

Kiani Conley-Wilson: My biggest impact is probably with Soul Fire. We focus on two things there: food apartheid — making sure that folks have enough food to eat and have agency over the food that’s growing and available to them — and stopping racism within the food system. I work on both of those with the Soul Fire in the City program, providing raised [garden] beds for folks. Sometimes I get to help harvest for our solidarity shares that go out to families and help those in need. I also do our training: It’s almost like an introduction to racism and the history of the food system and how it functions today, breaking down the ways that our food system has been and continues to be oppressive. I also have a community garden where I teach some kids on the block how to grow food and plant seeds.

How did you get involved in community farming and education?

I was introduced to urban farming in college. I studied sustainability studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is here in Troy, so I put down roots. I took a class that really highlighted the good, the bad, and the ugly of the food system. And it really opened my eyes to how there’s a way we can connect with one another. We can make differences and changes on an environmental aspect, on a style aspect, and even on an economic aspect.

I picked that up a bit more after I graduated. I did an internship with a local community garden group when I was still in school, but after I graduated, I realized that I really liked to get my hands in the dirt, connecting with other folks and teaching and learning about the food system.

What advice would you give to someone who’s interested in doing similar work — especially right now in a pandemic where these issues of food insecurity and racism around food systems are more apparent than ever?

I would recommend they check out their local farm. Soul Fire is not the only farm that’s fighting racism and also providing food for folks in need. And I would say don’t be afraid to kill any plants. I’ve killed so many plants in a few days! You really wouldn’t believe it. I barely consider myself a gardener. Don’t get discouraged, and do whatever feels right for you. Not everyone’s going to be good at gardening, and that’s totally fine. There are different ways to get plugged into the food system. It doesn’t just have to be growing things from seed.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned in the past year?

I remember when the pandemic first hit and I was like, “Oh, quarantine; we all have to social distance.” I was just going through my head: How is all this going to work? How are we even going to have meetings? How are we going to get our groceries, our necessities, and all that stuff? Seeing how we’ve been able to adapt and do things more virtually, do more phone calls, things like that have been really fascinating to watch.

What do you hope to accomplish in the year ahead? You’ve got your city council race coming up.

June 22nd is the primary, and then November 2nd is the general election and that’s across New York State. So obviously that’s a goal of mine, to hopefully win this primary and the general election as well. There has been a lot of really great energy around that. With Soul Fire, it’s making sure that these programs I’m hosting are successful and people find them fruitful and helpful. And then with Soul Fire in the City, it’s trying to nourish those relationships and make sure everyone has what they need. I think one last goal is just making sure I rest. Because I feel last year I didn’t see too much resting, and this year, I’m really trying to prioritize that.

How can readers support your work?

Soul Fire has a whole bunch of resources (including this food sovereignty guide). You can support Soul Fire and follow us. But something that we really emphasize with Soul Fire is thinking beyond the hero narrative: It’s not just Soul Fire that’s doing stuff. I really encourage readers to look for the things happening around you that interest you.

Konrad Odhiambo is an award-winning portrait, wedding, motocross, and lifestyle photographer in Troy, New York.