Saru Jayamaran says workers are “being asked to do so much more for so much less”

As restaurants around the country rush to staff up to meet the increased demand from customers, owners are finding it increasingly difficult to fill all their open roles. One factor is simply the onslaught of new positions. But workers’ rights advocate Saru Jayamaran says many workers are exiting an industry that is asking them to do so much more for so much less.

Jayamaran, who is the president of One Fair Wage, a group fighting to abolish the tipped minimum wage, says front of house employees, who often rely on tips but have to enforce at times controversial mask mandates, are especially fed up. “We’ve just heard from so many, literally thousands of workers who are saying it is just not worth it anymore. It is not worth it to be paid so little, to get so little in tips and to have to put up with so much more in terms of responsibility, health risk, hostility, and harassment,” she told Eater’s Digest this week.

She and many advocates hope this moment becomes a turning point for an industry with a notoriously vulnerable workforce and offers workers leverage to get the benefits and wages they’ve been asking for.

Listen to Jayamaran discuss the dynamics at play for restaurant workers facing a return to their jobs right now, why higher unemployment benefits is not a contributing factor for many workers, and how this moment could lead to lasting change. Afterwards, listen to Culinary Agents CEO Alice Cheng talk about what the jobs board data is telling us about hiring and restaurateur Jenn Saesue explain what it’s like on the ground hiring up at two restaurants right now.

Listen and subscribe to Eater’s Digest on Apple Podcasts, and read the condensed and edited transcript of our conversation below.

You often represent workers and fight for workers’ rights. So I want to hear your perspective on the labor shortage and what this situation is from a worker’s point of view.

So we’ve been trying to warn the industry for the last year that this was coming. We were hearing from workers all last year that they just were starting to feel like it just wasn’t worth it to stay in this industry, to stay in their jobs. Because during the pandemic, not only did workers lose their jobs and then often not qualify for unemployment insurance — because in most states they were tipped, workers were told their sub-minimum wage was too low to qualify for benefits — they found when they went back to work, about 70 percent of workers reported that tips are down 50 to 75 percent. And that health risks and harassment and hostility and their responsibilities are way up. So they are being asked to do so much more for so much less. They’re being asked now to enforce social distancing and mask rules on the very same customers from whom they have to get tips to survive, at a time when they’re saying, “Look, tips are already down 50 to 75 percent because sales are down.”

And 60 percent of workers said when they try to enforce these rules, they get tipped less. And by the way, it’s so much worse for Black workers. 60 percent of workers said they get tipped less when they try to enforce these rules. 73 percent of Black workers said they get tipped less when they try to enforce these rules. But worst of all, 41 percent of all workers have said that sexual harassment has gone way up during the pandemic. 50 percent of women said that sexual harassment has gone way up during the pandemic, mind you, in the industry that already has the highest rates undeniably now of any industry of sexual harassment, of any industry in the U.S. And as you have written about and know, we’ve been exposing that hundreds of women have been coming to us. Just today, we heard from more women saying, “I am consistently and constantly asked, “Take off your mask so I can see how cute you are, how pretty you are, before I determine how much to tip you.”

So they’re being asked to do so much more for so much less. And we’ve just heard from so many, literally thousands of workers who are saying it is just not worth it anymore. It is not worth it to be paid so little, to get so little in tips and to have to put up with so much more in terms of responsibility, health risk, hostility, and harassment. And so we did a survey of New York City workers, for example, earlier this year, and almost 40 percent of workers said they are thinking about leaving the industry. Top two reasons were health risks and wages. And number one reason they said that would make them stay is a livable wage, a full livable wage.

And speaking about the health risks, a lot of servers and back of house employees weren’t prioritized for vaccines. I think that’s important to point out.

That’s right. I mean, it boggles my mind. If we, as a society, as an economy, as an industry, are in such a rush to reopen, then why are we not vaccinating these workers first and foremost. If we want this industry to reopen and we consider these workers to be essential, which they are, we are relying on them to enforce social distancing and mask rules in these restaurants. If they’re essential, then they should have been vaccinated in the way that teachers and the nurses and everybody else. But if they’re essential, they also need to be paid. Because other essential workers are talking about hazard pay, additional pay on top of their work. These are essential workers are not even getting the minimum wage.

Do you think this is a moment where people will be raising wages? Like workers now finally have the leverage that people like you have been asking for, for so long?

That’s already been happening. All of last year, we were hearing from restaurants across the country who said, “You know what? We’ve changed our mind, or we’ve decided we’re going to move to a full minimum wage with tips on top,” because either they were moved by the murder of George Floyd and they didn’t want to perpetuate the sub-minimum wage as a legacy of slavery and a source of racial inequity, or they were moved by everything I’ve described in terms of women having to take off their masks and increased hostility and harassment, or they couldn’t get their workers to come back to work. And so they did start paying a full minimum wage. And so that was already starting to happen. And I think it’s going to be happening more so now. What I find very disheartening is some employers, especially chain restaurants that are saying, “Oh, it’s because they’re lazy and they want to stay home and get unemployment insurance.”

Well, let’s return to the statistic I said at the beginning. 60 percent of tipped workers couldn’t get unemployment insurance because in most states they were told their sub-minimum wage was too low to qualify for benefits. And the way unemployment insurance works, if you’re offered a job and you turn it down, you lose. If you’ve got unemployment insurance, which a minority of these folks did, you lose it if you turn down a job. So truly, these workers are choosing between the restaurant industry and no income. And because the benefits are so low, the wages are so low, the tips are so low, and the risks are so high, many of them are choosing no. No income, or I’m going to find something else because it’s just not worth it anymore.

When you said that some people have left permanently, do you think that is going to be a broader trend over the next few months?

I hope not. The industry is losing amazingly talented, skilled professionals. I hope it’s not an ongoing trend. But I fear that if the industry fights against wages going up and doesn’t as a whole really embrace the idea that its workers need the chance to survive, to thrive, to live, to be able to take care of themselves, then that is what will happen. We will lose incredible talent. We will lose skilled professionals.

Listen, this was a trend that was already happening. I know you’ve written about it. We were facing one of the worst labor shortages in our industry even prior to the pandemic, in the industry’s history in the U.S., prior to the pandemic. It’s just gotten so much worse. Because again, when you, as a human, weigh the risks versus the benefits of taking a job, it’s just not adding up right now. Being asked to take off your mask and expose yourself and your family to the virus, being treated with such hostility and harassment for trying to do your job, and at the same time, tips are so low and the employer’s not raising the wage, it’s just not worth it.

I think what you hear a lot from the business owners is that if they don’t have staff, they’ll raise the wages because they need to get staff. So like kind of the market corrects itself argument. So how do you respond to that?

I think that is a good thing, and that is already happening in a lot of cases. But I can tell you, there are hundreds of small business owners. We have an association (called RAISE High Road Restaurants) of 850 small business restaurant owners across the country. And a lot of them are people of color owned businesses, and they are saying two things. “One, we are having to do this. We are having to do this to get workers to come back. We’re having to do this because we need to raise wages to ensure there’s consumer spending during this horrible time. We need to ensure people can spend in our restaurants. So we need to raise wages. But we can’t do it alone. It has to be a level playing field. Everybody has to go up at the same time. That’s how we all survive together.”

So I would respond and say it’s a very good thing that some employers are finding that they have to raise wages, because it’s long overdue. And that as those employers raise wages, I think they’re going to join us in the call for this to become policy and not just individual businesses having to do this. But I have a second thing to say here, because there’s been a lot of talk in our industry about addressing racial inequity after George Floyd, now with the rise in Asian-American violence. Like a lot of the small business owners of color that are part of our group also want to make sure their colleagues in the industry here, that being woke and addressing racial equity is not just about putting something up in your window. It’s about paying people a livable wage, ending a legacy of slavery, ending a source of racial inequity, which is forcing workers to live exclusively off tips.

Have you seen any business owners employ creative solutions? I know there are probably a lot of people listening to the show who are saying, “I just got ravaged by this pandemic. I don’t have the money to raise the wages for my staff. And I can’t find people to work. What am I supposed to do here?”

Yeah. Well, we would love to talk to those people because we have an association that has a whole training and technical assistance program to help employers figure out how to do it profitably, how to raise wages and stay profitable, how to find other ... The thing about raising wages is, A, you can do it slowly over time, but B, it actually reduces turnover. So there’s all kinds of additional costs that are saved. It increases employee morale and longevity and customer service, their excitement to work, their willingness to stay, their ability to upsell goes up when they’re paid better.

On top of all of that, in 2018, we passed a law in Congress that says if you pay the full minimum wage to all workers in the restaurant, you can share tips with the back of the house. And this is a really, we think, great, not just great solution, creative solution, it offsets some labor costs in the back of the house. But more importantly, it creates equity between front and back. Everybody goes up together. You share the incentives and burdens of tips. It really creates a better sense of team between front and back. So this is one of the best solutions we’ve seen.

Did you say that’s proposed, or that is legal now?

That’s legal now.

And is it your goal to push towards eliminating tipping in general?

No. We are trying to get everybody to a livable wage with tips on top. There are some employers that choose to go all the way and get rid of tips. We are supportive of that if they can guarantee that, with a full salary, these workers are getting what they used to earn. Everybody’s getting what they used to earn with tips. What we do know is that actually the states that pay a full minimum wage with tips on top, every quartile of workers from the highest tip earners to the lowest tip earners earns more than their peers. So that fine dining servers in California earn more than the fine dining servers in states with sub-minimum wage. And Denny’s servers earn more than in states with the sub-minimum. Everybody earns more with wages and tips, and it just doesn’t happen that tips go away or tips are lessened. So we are supportive of various models, as long as people end up with a livable wage and certainly not less than what they earned before.

The $15 minimum wage was floated around in this recent government package. And then there was criticism of it from people saying like it’s a no-go with the tipped minimum wage being $15. Do you see a world in which a $15 minimum wage gets passed, where there’s still a much lower tipped minimum wage in there?

That’s certainly what the National Restaurant Association is fighting for. But we’ve got incredible support from the White House, from Senate leadership, that’s really pushing that we finally end this legacy of slavery. So that’s what I’d love everybody to know. This train is moving. It is happening. This is the future of the industry. We are going to move away from this legacy of slavery as a country, as an industry. Consumers want it, workers want it. And so rather than fighting it and resisting it, let’s work together to make sure employers can survive and be profitable and thrive and see the benefits of paying people better.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you both so much.

Even when it’s an ingredient, wine is first and foremost something to drink

This post originally appeared in the April 26, 2021 edition of The Move, a place for Eater’s editors to reveal their recommendations and pro dining tips — sometimes thoughtful, sometimes weird, but always someone’s go-to move. Subscribe now.

In the year I spent working at a wine shop in New York, there was probably one person per week who would come in and ask for a “cheap bottle of wine just for cooking with”: a white wine for steaming mussels, a red wine to poach some pears for dessert. Each time, though, I did my best to move them toward not just the cheapest, dump-it-down-the-drain-when-you’re-done bottle, but to something that both didn’t break the bank and that they’d also enjoy drinking. Because when a recipe calls for cilantro, we don’t go to the store and pluck the saddest-looking herbs in the bunch. So why are so many of us buying less-than-stellar bottles of wine when we need a little of it to cook with?

There’s only one basic rule when it comes to cooking with wine: Stick to the recipe’s suggested wine. If a recipe calls for dry white wine, don’t substitute with an off-dry; if it calls for red, just use red. (Yes, you can substitute milk with lemon juice or vinegar for buttermilk, but that “just hack it” approach doesn’t really work here.) If the recipe calls for a wine you’re not familiar with, ask the person at the shop where it falls on an acidic scale, since something with higher acid will give you a bit more tartness; similarly, sweet wine will make the final dish a touch sweet.

Once you nail down the style, cooking with higher-quality wine famously won’t make much of a difference in the end product. The flavors and aromas bursting from wine will pretty much cook off and get masked by the other ingredients, so it’s true that a pricey bottle won’t make the red wine glaze on the chocolate cake more delicious, or the wine-steamed mussels more inviting, in any memorable way. But we shouldn’t be thinking of buying a bottle for cooking as separate from a bottle we’d otherwise joyfully sip from; don’t let wine as a recipe ingredient make you forget that wine is first and foremost to be drunk. Unless you don’t drink wine and the rest of the bottle would actually go to waste, this reasoning for buying cheap wine for cooking should just go out the window.

Instead, the best bet is to buy or choose a bottle of wine you actually like that fits into what the recipe calls for, use the quarter-cup needed to make that delicious braised brisket, and drink the rest of it while you’re cooking, while you’re eating, or over the next day or two with another dish — make sure to keep it corked and in the fridge if you go this last route. If you’re early in the process of discovering the wines you enjoy drinking, ask someone at your local wine shop what they might recommend based on your liking off-dry riesling or light-bodied reds, or that you loved a recent acid-charged bottle.

So unless you’re making several recipes in the span of three-ish days that call for enough wine to add up to one fully cooked-with, not-drunk bottle, stop buying shitty wine to cook with. Wine is to be chilled and sipped and enjoyed, no matter what its application.

P.S. Want someone to take even more of the wine guesswork off your hands? Each month the wines in Eater Wine Club are curated by a wine pro from a beloved restaurant or bar and delivered straight to your door.

“Every time you abstain from beef at the grocery store or a restaurant, you send a signal,” says the popular recipe site, which actually phased out beef last year

Fresh off the heels of President Joe Biden spooking conservatives into thinking he’s going to force everyone to give up hamburgers (he’s not, that was just a leap taken by the Daily Mail), recipe website Epicurious announced its own restrictions around beef. The website said it has officially cut the meat out of its future recipes: “Beef won’t appear in new Epicurious recipes, articles, or newsletters. It will not show up on our homepage. It will be absent from our Instagram feed.” This is all in an effort to encourage sustainable, environmentally friendly cooking. And before you buy that eight pound brisket out of spite, they’ve been doing this for about a year, and it hasn’t ruined anyone’s life yet.

Epicurious began publishing fewer and fewer beef recipes in the fall of 2019, and then stopped altogether in 2020. “For every burger recipe we didn’t publish, we put a vegetarian recipe into the world instead; rather than articles about ground beef, we talked about alt-meats,” they said. “And last summer, when America’s annual grilling holiday rolled around, we set our fires on cauliflower and mushrooms, not steaks and hot dogs.” Epicurious also says it’s been a hit with readers.

Epicurious cites studies and facts about beef that are familiar— raising beef is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, the production of fertilizer and pesticides required fossil fuel, the cattle industry’s destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and now the fact that meat production plants have been hotbeds of COVID spread, and have long been unsafe for workers. Individual choice, they argue, may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to reining in corporate emissions and advancing legislation but it is at least a drop. They also note that there are environmental costs associated with everything from seafood to soy. “But every time you abstain from beef at the grocery store or a restaurant, you send a signal — to the grocery store, yes, but also, and perhaps more influentially, to whomever you talk to about your decision,” they write.

The Beef Question is shaping up to be the dietary drama of the time. In India, beef consumption has become a political issue in the fight against Hindu nationalism, as Muslims have been violently targeted in the name of “cow protection,” and beef consumption is seen in some regions as a fundamental issue of religious diversity and individual liberty. Beef consumption is also rising in places like the U.S. and China, as a boom in international production has resulted in cheaper prices, making beef more accessible than ever. And over the weekend in the U.S., conservatives who were mistakenly convinced Biden was going to take away their meat, took to the internet to brag of their struggle beef to own the libs, or something.

There’s also been the rise of “plant-based” faux meat like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, meant to mimic the taste of ground beef so well that it’ll lure eco- and health-conscious Americans away from the real thing. And while it’s been popular, it’s already faced backlash over being “highly processed.” Some argue that beef and dairy can be part of a sustainable diet, as long as they’re purchased from independent farms that use more holistic agricultural techniques. But it’s going to take a massive restructuring of the entire food chain to make that the dominant way beef is farmed, and even if that happens, there will be far less of it to consume.

Epicurious insists it has no “agenda” aside from helping home cooks cook “better,” which is slightly disingenuous. If it had no agenda, no changes would have been made. Instead, the site is working from the premise that both the planet and anyone’s individual life will be “better” with less beef. Epicurious still has hundreds of beef recipes on its site, and that it will still include older beef recipes in broader collections, so it’s still a resource for any beef eater. But it’s also asking readers to rethink beef, something they’ll only be prompted to do more and more in the coming years.

Culinary Agents CEO Alice Cheng on the restaurant worker shortage and how workers will return to the industry ‘on their timeframe’

As restaurants across the country expand capacity, reopen for indoor dining, and prepare for a new season of outdoor service, owners are struggling to find staff to meet their needs. Many workers still don’t feel safe returning to work during a pandemic. Others don’t want to fight with patrons over health and safety guidelines. Some may have left town or joined another industry while they were laid off and will return when the timing and opportunity are right.

Alice Cheng, CEO of hospitality industry job search engine Culinary Agents, has a macro view of the hiring trends across various cities and states and is a careful observer of candidate behavior. “A lot of the data that we see is there’s so many people looking at jobs, more so than in the past, and they’re waiting,” Cheng told Eater’s Digest podcast this week. “So, the data implies that people are looking, saving, clicking, curious, but they’re not taking action as quickly as they did in the past, for various reasons.”

Cheng is confident the workers will return, that the hospitality industry is a center of gravity for so many. But not right away. “They will come back in waves and on their timeframe. That’s just going to take a little bit of time. Nobody wants to hear that,” she says.

Listen to Cheng discuss what she’s seeing in her data, which cities are attracting the most candidates from out-of-state, how industry workers are beefing up their resumes right now, and what restaurateurs can do to get an edge over the competition. Her interview starts at the 16:35 mark, after our conversation with workers’ rights advocate Saru Jayamaran.

Or read the condensed and edited transcript of our conversation below.

Listen and subscribe to Eater’s Digest on Apple Podcasts.

It seems like right now is really when people are ramping up hiring, and now, we’re seeing all these stories about staff shortages from the restaurateurs’ point of view, all over the country. As we know, the labor market was tight even before the pandemic. What are you seeing from where you sit?

You’re exactly right, and you see different scenarios and different challenges depending on the state and city as well. Some have had their ongoing challenges of just turnover, normal turnover of hiring in certain cities like Miami, where they had an influx of people in general, coming down there. They had to staff up and keep things going. So, their challenges were far different than the state of California or New York, or Philly or Chicago that were shut down for indoor dining completely.

As we’ve seen things unfold, what’s interesting is that pre-COVID, people were looking for certain qualifications. They were looking for line cooks with certain skills or certain experience and when they didn’t find that level, they said, “Oh, there’s a shortage”, or “I’m not finding what I need.”

The difference now is, especially with everyone reopening or the cities that are allowed to reopen that were closed, all the delayed projects from 2020 that are opening, people are hiring full-fledged staffs, multiple people per position. Not just like, I need one here, one there, but for a business owner, if you’re reopening and you’re getting your delayed projects back on track, you’re looking for 10 cooks. You’re looking for 20 cooks.

So, you have these restaurant groups that are opening entirely new restaurants because they were delayed until this moment. And then you have restaurants that are basically hiring new staffs because they laid everybody off and those people aren’t around anymore to take their jobs back if they even want to go back.

And then you throw in the complications of depending on what city, state. In Atlanta, for example, where the business takes more responsibility of helping the worker with unemployment, when they’re ready to call you back, you have to come back to them versus other cities that have different rules and the job seeker can manage to that and what works best for them. So, you might get called back. You might not want to return there. You might find a job somewhere else. So, there’s that.

I think it’s a delay in job seeker activity. It’s not like the government gave the businesses three or four weeks lead time to say, “Okay, a month from now, you’ll be able to open up 50 percent capacity.” A lot of times businesses were getting notified a week ahead of time: “Okay. You can open”.

A lot of things go into just opening as you know, and from a worker standpoint, maybe priorities have shifted for them. Maybe they’re currently employed in something that is not as exciting as their previous job in hospitality, but it’s helping them get by now and they’re going to wait and see a little bit. A lot of the data that we see is there’s so many people looking at jobs, more so than in the past and waiting. So, the data implies that people are looking, saving, clicking, curious, but they’re not taking action as quickly as they did in the past, for various reasons.

I saw Washington City Paper covered this and they were talking about how workers don’t just want to sit at home and collect unemployment. They just want to be very selective and very careful and are taking more time and don’t feel super rushed.

Right. You can’t blame them. I mean, that’s kind of what you would expect people to do. Especially, if some of them are considering relocating or going back home, or using this as an opportunity to move to the city that they’ve been wanting to. So, being a little bit more thoughtful, looking for different things, perhaps in what an employer can offer.

Almost a whole year has passed. As we kept in touch with and supported a lot of the workers during this time, individuals went through their own personal development and their own kind of re-prioritizations and folks who have temporarily chosen to do something else, I personally believe that this industry is one of those centers of gravity. People may go do something else and after a while, they might be like, “Well, I really do miss this,” or their buddy is back in the industry and they pull them back in.

I feel really confident that, yes, at this very moment when every single business is chomping at the bit to hire and to staff up that the workers are there. They’re watching. They will come back in waves and on their timeframe, and when they need to, and that’s just going to take a little bit of time. Nobody wants to hear that.

What else is the data telling you?

In certain cities, we are able to see, for example, in the New York Tri-State area, for the most part, the majority of the applicants and the job speakers are in New York. But in states and cities like Atlanta, Georgia, we can see that, yes, there are a lot of people in Atlanta that are looking at jobs, but then people that are in Florida, people from New York, you can see people that are physically in other cities that are looking for a job in that state.

This industry has always been very nomadic, for the right job, working for the right person, or just if the timing is right, people are willing to move for the opportunity. That’s one of the wonderful things about this industry. I think what 2020 also showed was that some people who physically had to move, either permanently or temporarily, found other ways to fulfill what they wanted, either temporarily or permanently.

Based solely on your own internal data, you could make a claim stating which cities actually had the greatest supply demand differential for workers?

Correct.

What are those cities right now?

That’s a great question. I’ll twist it a little bit with my answer and say the surprising cities that have just kind of popped were ones that were growing. Texas, so Austin, Houston, Dallas, lots of job opportunities, lots of people looking at those jobs from all different cities. That was kind of surprising. The other one is Nashville. Again, lots of opportunities.

The other interesting data point for us is in Chicago. With Chicago we saw the number of jobs spike up very, very, aggressively. The volume of people looking at jobs remained stagnant and didn’t spike up with the number of jobs we usually see. However, the number of applicants spiked up. So to us, the data says it’s the same people that are applying to all of these jobs. There’s so many more opportunities. So, if you’re a business, what I would recommend is respond to those applicants as quickly as possible. Put your best foot forward and schedule your trails and follow through with them.

We did a survey earlier this year in anticipation of this kind of mass hiring frenzy so that we can highlight some things that were top of mind for job seekers and share that with businesses. It was interesting from a job seeker standpoint. Priorities definitely changed. A lot of them, the number one fact that people were looking for in an opportunity with what an employer could offer, was career opportunities. Am I going to have job security? Is there growth for me here, or should I spend my time and effort with this particular employer? Is that going to pay off for me?

What are some of the incentives you’re seeing restaurants offer or hospitality companies offer to get more, be more competitive?

There are the immediate ones, like the quick fixes that we’re seeing and then we’re seeing the longterm more structural ones. We do see businesses reevaluating their benefits packages. That may include things like flexible scheduling, childcare, those types of things. A little more longer term. We do see people offering retention bonuses for more near term, signing bonuses in certain situations, or referral bonuses, like giving their existing employees bonuses if they bring on one of their friends or they help recruit for them and then that person stays on for X amount of time. So, not so dissimilar to some of the incentives that people had in place pre-COVID, but a little bit more sense of urgency now, I would say.

Are you noticing that it’s a certain type of job that is particularly in demand or is it just across the entire industry, front of house, back of house, dishwashers, everybody?

It is across the board, but the surprising point of data that we did that wasn’t consistent with pre-COVID is that front of house positions, servers and hosts. Whereas, in the past, line cooks and specific back of house positions were always notoriously the number one pain point. Some businesses were open throughout this time and they retained and kept some of their back of house staff. There is a little bit more negotiating power for employees in general. For front of house, potentially, there’s more exposure so that there is a safety factor that’s a little different that may come into play still here. And for folks who are on tipped wages, it’s very unpredictable right now, depending on the city and state.

I do see that there’s a little bit more urgency. I’m also seeing that businesses, historically, who are looking for even a certain level of experience with the host, hostess or an entry level position, are really now focusing on positive can-do attitudes.

Is pastry on the rise or the decline post-COVID?

I have seen more savory folks beefing up their pastry skills. So, kind of this focus on cross-skilling and up-skilling across the board. We do see pastry positions, all levels like executive level to prep level, still actively on our site. That’s an indicator that that is still a position that is valued. Baking has been folded more into it in a way. So, instead of before just being like a pastry, now it’s like Baker, a Baker/Pastry, etc.

What do you say to restaurateur that comes to you for advice on this stuff? Is it just about the perks and the money?

A couple of things that are very practical, things that are helpful, is something as simple as just taking a look at your job descriptions and just making sure that your employer value prop or your culture or something is highlighted in there and that you’re actually representing yourself the way that you would want to be represented as somebody who wants to work for you.

A lot of businesses do amazing jobs focusing on all their guest-facing things, but when it comes to their employee or potential candidate facing things, sometimes, there’s room for improvement. I actually encourage people to be as transparent as possible because that is something I think is top of mind to job seekers is like, “Give me my information. Don’t try to beat around the bush and give me a job description that molds four jobs into one. Just tell me what I’m signing up for and then let’s have a conversation.”

I also encourage them to be responsive and as responsive as possible, even though everyone’s very busy. If you see an applicant that you’re interested in, jump on it and connect with them and be responsive because you never know who else is reaching out to them. Those first impressions are important. And then keep at it. You can’t just post one job or tell your team or put an Instagram post up and then be done with it. I always quote. I think Google said it best, which is, “If you can’t be found, you don’t exist.”

Well, Alice, thank you so much. This is so insightful and I think really useful for any of our restaurant industry listeners, as well.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Laid-off chefs used the platform to sell food during the pandemic. As restaurants reopen, many former staffers are reconsidering their career paths.

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

This post originally appeared on April 24, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

Last week the New York Times podcast The Daily published an episode all about the struggles of pandemic parenting, including recordings from the parenting section’s open phone line where they asked readers to share what it’s really been like to raise children over this last year. It’s ... a lot, and I 100 percent wept as I listened to it at 4:30 am the other day (when I woke up for the day because my kid wouldn’t go back to sleep).

That has nothing to do with food, but it did inspire me to actually pay attention to Mother’s Day this year and procure nice things for the mothers in my life. A tin of cookies isn’t going to make up for a year of zoom school, burnout, loss of identity, and emotional fatigue, but it doesn’t hurt.

Some things I’m thinking about:

• Melissa Funk Weller, maybe my favorite baker of all time, just launched a cookie box, available for Brooklyn pickup or national shipping.
• This is a trio of sophisticated linen napkins, made by an Asian-owned, mission-driven company, that I’ll be gifting.
• This is highly specific, but I’m going to get a Baltimore mom friend the first issue of PalatePalette, an “homage to newsprint and the foodways of Baltimore City,” but there are a lot of other fun indie food mags that would make for a great gift.
• This maybe only works if you live with the mom in question, but Levain, the cultishly loved cookie maker, just launched a line of pre-baked cookies at grocery stores.
• I bet there’s a person in your life who would be obsessed with the idea of a Tokyo Treat box.
• Everything is Under Control is an incredible book about the food industry and motherhood that includes a sharply accurate description of what it feels like to give birth (twice) and keep a baby alive during the first few months.

• One idea: Make a donation in someone’s name to The Abundance Setting, a nonprofit focused on the advancement of working mothers in the culinary and hospitality industry.
• The best gift I’ve given myself lately has been a one-night solo staycation at the Standard Hotel (where if you pay an extra $50, you get a bottle of Champagne, a room service credit, and are guaranteed a room with a tub).
• And last but least, the shameless plug for Eater’s Wine Club, a monthly subscription box curated by a different incredible person in wine every month. The wines are all from fun, small producers (who sometimes make exclusive bottles just for us). Plus, we do a monthly zoom event with all our members, and I’ve seen so many mother-daughter pairs (as well as cute couples and pets and babies) on there.

On Eater

— In COVID news: Many restaurants in Detroit voluntarily paused indoor dining as cases continue to surge; London allowed outdoor dining for the first time in over four months; the SBA issued guidance on the $28.6 billion in grants they’ll be releasing within the month; and restaurant workers in New York are accessing shots via mobile vaccine units.

— Big openings this week: Chef Vivian Howard’s first Charleston restaurant Lenoir; Lyle, a compelling-looking dining room in a newly revamped hotel, The Point, a seafood spot with waterfront views, and The Freshman, an all-day cafe near the soon-to-open Amazon HQ, in D.C.; Little Goat Kitchen, a private event space and test kitchen from Stephanie Izard, in Chicago; One Steakhouse, a dramatic 9,000-square-foot steakhouse in the new Virgin Hotels, in Las Vegas; Bar Cecil, a luxe destination in Palm Springs; Hoi An Quan, a restaurant showcasing central Vietnamese cuisine, in Houston; Eataly in London; and Haidilao, a hotly-anticipated hot pot spot, in Dallas.

— Meanwhile, can someone please take a look through the interiors (and patios) and ZZ’s Sushi Bar and Strawberry Moon and tell me what is going on in Miami right now?

— The Bastianich clan sold Del Posto to its chef Melissa Rodriguez, GM Jeff Katz, and Katz’s business partner at his other restaurant Crownshy, James Kent.

— Chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo will handle the food at LA’s new football stadium (and serve items like this long burger).

— The Michelin guide is back in the U.S. First up: D.C.

— Singapore’s new generation of hawkers may save the industry but at the cost of old traditions.

— In a four-part series hosted by the Smithsonian in May and June, some of the country’s foremost experts in Asian-American food will explore the disconnect between how mainstream American culture enjoys cooking from the continent and how it treats the people who produce it.

— A new Netflix show featuring culinary historian Jessica B. Harris and writer Stephen Satterfield called High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, will debut in late May.

— Why does Mare of Easttown from Mare of Easttown drink Rolling Rock? An investigation.

— How talented pitmaster Bryan Furman is going to rebuild ... again.

— This week I hosted a panel on the reopening with restaurateurs from Boston, Dallas, and Brooklyn. Read some excerpts from our convo or watch the full video here.

— And on the Eater’s Digest podcast this week we focused on the labor shortage, getting insights from worker advocate Saru Jayamaran, Culinary Agents CEO Alice Cheng, and restaurateur Jenn Saesue.

Off Eater

• Come for the intimate look at what enigmatic chef Joshua Skenes is up to out in the woods, stay for the sharpshooting, Silicon Valley bro-downs, and the line “My first mouthful felt like delicious, joyful strength and ease rushing through my veins.” [Outside]
• Power dining is baaaaaaccck in Hollywood. [THR]
• Here’s a cool interactive cocktail recipe database from Epicurious. [Epi]
• And for anyone who’s asked themselves the question “Is my brain broken?” in the past couple of weeks, according to The Atlantic and The Times, it is and you’re not alone. [The Atlantic; NYT]

Take care, and if you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. — Amanda

American Unagi founder Sara Rademaker developed the first eel growing facility in the U.S in order to sell the pricey fish locally to chefs and restaurants

On this episode of Dan Does, host Daniel Geneen visits American Unagi, the country’s only glass eel farm. Founder Sara Rademaker created her operation when she learned there was not a single eel growing facility within the U.S. Before American Unagi, glass eels eaten in America were caught locally as babies, flown internationally to be raised in facilities overseas, and then flown back to be served in American restaurants. Her facility aims to change that.

“The first eels that I grew were in my basement,” says Rademaker. “I hear all good startups happen there.” The operation began when she noted that the glass eel fisheries in Maine were among the most valuable fisheries in the US. Bags of eels can be sold for up to $2,000 a pound, so she knew there was a market.

Once a year Maine’s fishermen set out nets to catch the tiny transparent eels that are migrating along the shoreline. They filter, weigh, clean and sell them to Rademaker, who introduces them to her tanks, and starts the long process of growing them to be sold across the country, live or smoked.

In Maine, a wild eel can take five years to 30 years to reach maturity, but the eels in American Unagi’s tanks can mature from as little as seven months to two years thanks to her special attention and care to their habitat. “Our eels are happy; that way they grow the best and they taste the best.”

Once they’ve grown close to market size, the bigger eels move to a room with bigger tanks and bigger feed. They then get graded by hand and sorted, and those that need time to grow are put back in the tanks. The mature eels get shipped out live to restaurants and chefs when they’re ready, or they get shipped two hours south to Community Shellfish in Bremen, Maine, where owner Charlie Walsh processes them and prepares them for smoking. After butterflying, cleaning, and deboning the eels, he vacuum seals some to sell as is, and smokes the rest for those who wish to buy them ready to eat.

Other Door wants to provide a safe space for indoor drinking and revelry

Get in on Eater Wine Club, a monthly wine subscription

One of the things we love most about food is wine. Specifically, the wine you get to drink while dining out at your favorite restaurant, be it your go-to local joint or the fanciest place in town. This is wine selected by someone who knows what they’re doing — a professional who understands how to decode a label and what kind of grapes will make your food taste that much better. So what if, we wondered, we made it possible to experience that kind of hospitality right at home?

Get to know Eater Wine Club, a monthly wine subscription box. Our extensive network of local editors have teamed up with sommeliers and beverage directors from some of our favorite restaurants, bars, and shops across the country to curate a new experience each month, with ever-changing themes and bottles (two or four per box, your choice!) and plenty of perks. Sign up and you’ll get a box full of surprising and highly drinkable wines on your doorstep every month, plus an exclusive newsletter and an invite to our monthly wine party.

For May 2021, our wine curator is Chelsea Coleman, the cofounder and self-described proprietress at the Rose wine bar and bottle shop, arguably the center of San Diego’s natural wine universe. Coleman is a hometown booster, meaning her Eater Wine Club picks showcase the best of San Diego wine (hello, Los Pilares) while also serving as an educational exploration of grenache. One grape, as our May wines prove, can take all different kinds of turns, depending on where it’s grown, how it’s picked, and what the winemakers do to it.

So join the club and invite your friends — from the one who geeks out over cool labels and funky tastes to the one who just wants you to hand them a glass of something delicious that’ll make their food pop. Sign up for Eater Wine Club here — we’ll see you at the party.

The cookies that inspired lines around the block are now easier to get, but you have to heat them yourself

We can largely thank Levain for ushering in the trend of humongous, warm cookies that are chewy on the inside, but crispy on the out. The popular bakery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side has inspired numerous other bakeries and copycats, but have now made it so that you can get your hands on an original Levain cookie, no matter where you are in the country. The bakery announced last summer that it’d be selling pre-baked, frozen cookies at Texas’ Central Market, but this week expanded into Whole Foods nationwide.

Whole Foods will carry three flavors: Chocolate Chip Walnut, Two Chip Chocolate Chip, and Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip, the dark chocolate option exclusively available at Whole Foods. “Whether we’re meeting customers in our bakeries or in the freezer section, we know they’re getting a true Levain Bakery experience,” founders Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald said in a statement. Levain “will expand only as quickly as we are able to maintain the quality of the product,” said CEO Andy Taylor.

One priority for the bakery is making sure the cookies stay frozen the entire time before reaching the customer. Levain first experimented with a shelf-stable cookie, but it didn’t have the same texture as the cookies straight from the bakery. If the freezer cookies take off, Levain is hoping to add other products like cake and brioche to the frozen aisle.

Taylor previously told reporters that Levain is planning to open brick-and-mortar locations across the country. Currently, there are seven locations in New York, and one in Washington D.C. The bakery is among the latest artisanal snack shops that once traded on exclusivity to expand to a national market with more stores or by moving into grocery markets. Milk Bar is now available in groceries nationwide, as is Jeni’s ice cream, and Carbone pasta sauce. Usually these products cost more than a bag of Chips Ahoy or a jar of Prego, so the exclusivity is still there. But it raises questions about accessibility (good!) versus the homogenizing of food culture (weird!).

Then again, we shouldn’t exactly be encouraging people to travel yet, so go ahead and enjoy the cookies.

The fried potato spheres make for the perfect airy bite

Is one type of French fry ever enough? The answer is a resounding no. On this episode of Plateworthy, chef Nyesha Arrington demonstrates her methods for making 10 different styles. But here, we’re focusing on the most complicated and playful version of the crispy potatoes: the pommes soufflées. “This is a technique that really takes some time and a lot of care,” says Arrington of the time-consuming process. “The reality is sometimes these potatoes don’t puff, but then you got yourself some snacks while you wait.”

Using the thinnest setting on her (very sharp) mandolin, Arrington begins by slicing rounds of Yukon gold potatoes, and matching them up into pairs by those similar in size. She dusts one side of the pair with corn starch, and one side of the other piece with egg white, and sandwiches them together. She slices through the layered slices with a ring mold to shape them into a perfect circle. Next she fries them in oil heated to 325 degrees for five minutes, spooning the oil on top of the floating crisps. She finishes them off by sprinkling them with some fine salt.

“Obviously it takes a lot of time, you’re not trying to make like 100 pommes soufflées,” Arrington says, as she describes how she might serve them as an amuse-bouche for a gathering of friends. “This is like that showstopper. You serve a little caviar on top, and it’s like the perfect tiny little bit to make your mouth happy.”

See the pommes soufflées recipe below, and check out the video to see Arrington make more styles of French fries, including potato wedges, steak cut, Belgian style, cottage fries, crinkle cut, waffle fries, shoestring, curly fries, and a “potato tornado.”

Pommes Soufflées

Dina Avila/Eater

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 pounds Yukon gold large potatoes
6 cups canola oil
1 egg white, beaten
½ cup cornstarch
Fine salt for garnish

Instructions:

Step 1: In a deep fryer or Dutch oven, preheat your oil to 325 degrees.

Step 2: Wash the potatoes and pat dry. Working in batches, use a mandoline to slice the potatoes about 1/8 of an inch thick.

Step 3: Working in batches, line up the slices in two even rows on a large cutting board or clean work surface. Using a tea towel, pat both sides of the potatoes dry. On the top row of potato slices, sprinkle cornstarch to coat the top side of each slice, brushing off any excess with a dry pastry brush. On the bottom row, brush the top side of each potato slice with egg white. From the top row, lay each slice of potato cornstarch-side down on each bottom slice to create a double thickness, with the cornstarch and egg white sandwiched between the two layers.

Step 4: Cut each double layer with a 2- or 2 ¼-inch round cookie cutter with sharp edges to create circles. (You can place the leftover scraps in a container of cold water and reserve them for hash or curly fries.)

Step 5: Add 3 circles at a time to the hot oil. For the first minute, baste the potatoes constantly with oil, spooning it over the top so that the starch sets and won’t deflate. Using 2 wooden skewers or a set of chopsticks, flip each round frequently until they begin to puff up. Cook for 4-5 minutes or until light golden or golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon or spider (a type of long-handled wire basket skimmer) to a paper towel-lined plate or a cooling rack with a tray underneath to catch the oil. Season with fine salt.

*Note: The temperature of the oil may change while you work, so adjust the heat accordingly.

Dina Avila is a photographer in Portland, Oregon.
Recipe tested by Ivy Manning and Marisa Robertson-Textor

Attaboy’s Sam Ross returns to help CH launch a new cocktail experience

Big-shot chefs, cookbook authors, farmers, and activists will explore the future of Asian food in America on a series of Zooms

Five restaurants join the elite list, including two-starred tasting room Jônt from Ryan Ratino

TikTok and Instagram star George Lee shares his method for the easiest — and tastiest — hot-weather treat

Summer in Taiwan made George Lee’s skin itch: The humidity trapped the sweat on his body, the air thick and heavy. On these “dreadful” days, Lee dipped into a convenience store, making a beeline for the freezer, its door soaked with condensation. He’d pluck one of the perforated plastic bags and re-emerge into the sweltering heat, pulling a frozen sweet potato out of the freezer bag, biting into the custardy cold flesh. Then — and only then — summer was bearable. “It’s so nostalgic,” says Lee, a 19-year-old cook, who has amassed an immense fanbase on Instagram and TikTok for his vegan cooking videos and recipes. “It has this caramel ice cream flavor and texture.”

In Taiwan, Lee says that the wonderfully simple treat of a frozen baked sweet potato (冰烤地瓜) is easy enough to find in a convenience store’s freezer, or in some places, sold on the street from coolers. In California though, where Lee now goes to school, he can’t just walk into a gas station and leave with a sweet potato popsicle. “You can’t find it anywhere. You just have to make it on your own,” he says.

Recently, Lee shared a video explaining how to prepare this snack with his half-million Instagram followers, and there were more than a few confused comments. Many of his followers, he realized only after posting the video, had never eaten a still-frozen sweet potato. They couldn’t picture the texture of the icy tuber: “Would it be solid… when I eat them the next day,” asked one commenter. “Eat frozen or let it defrost?” asked another, with a confused hand-to-chin emoji. “I didn’t expect people would be so surprised,” Lee says. “A lot of people were like, ‘What is this?’ A minority of my audience who are based in Taiwan were like, ‘This is my favorite thing ever.’ I just love to see that people feel like they can reconnect with part of their childhood or their culture, through watching some of my videos.”

The process, as Lee outlines in the recipe on his website, is really quite simple. If Lee were still in Taiwan, he’d start with a certain orange sweet potato variety which he hasn’t been able to find in America. In the States, he opts for Japanese sweet potatoes, the purple-skinned satsuma-imo, with its pale yellow flesh. “You have to choose small- to medium-size sweet potatoes, because larger ones tend to be starchier and harder to cook evenly,” he says. Lee turns the sweet potatoes over in his hands, making sure they haven’t started sprouting — once they begin to sprout, he says, the sugars leech out. He scrubs the skin, polishing away any dirt, so it’s good to eat once the potato is baked. (“The skin is really, really good. Like, so tasty.”)

Lee then balances the cleaned sweet potatoes directly on an oven shelf, the temperature set to 450 degrees, so the high heat can circulate evenly. The sweet potatoes cook for about an hour, but Lee says he knows they’re done when he squeezes them with his tongs and “the skin feels hollow, because we didn’t poke any holes or anything in the skin. The moisture in the sweet potato will come out and push the skin outward. So the flesh will separate from the skin.” When sugars begin to ooze from each sweet potato — you may want to put a sheet tray on the shelf below — the smell of dark caramel fills the kitchen.

From here, there are two options. On days when he doesn’t feel like waiting hours to eat, Lee places a sweet potato on an uncovered plate — to prevent condensation — in the freezer. After five or 10 minutes, a chill has set through to the center. This makes for a good, refreshingly chilled sweet potato, but it won’t bring on that ice cream texture — it’s worth seeing this process through to the end. When he has more time, and his craving isn’t so ferocious, Lee lets the sweet potatoes cool completely in their skin on the countertop before putting them in a freezer-safe bag. “Around five hours is the perfect freezing time,” he says. You’ll know they’re ready when the sweet potatoes take on a “soft and creamy texture. When you feel the sweet potato, you can feel that it’s firm, but it’s still soft, like grabbing ice cream that has a skin on it. Like a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar.”

Without easy access to convenience store freezers loaded with sweet potatoes, Lee keeps a batch of home-baked ones in his freezer at all times. (There’s a good case to be made for keeping sweet potatoes in the freezer before baking, too.) “I eat one every morning while I have classes, or I’m doing work. It’s still frozen so you have to eat it slowly, and just savor the morning,” Lee says. As the comments on Lee’s Instagram video proved, it’s difficult to imagine just how creamy, how soothingly cold, how ice cream-y the freezer transformation of a sweet potato really is until you’ve tried it for yourself. As Lee puts it when I ask him to elaborate on the flavor: “It just tastes like summer.”

‘High on the Hog,’ debuting May 26, is a celebration of African foodways and “Black America’s resilience”

When it comes to African foodways, and the vast diaspora from which those foods come, there are few people with as much expertise as food historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris. Luckily for viewers everywhere, Harris — who holds more awards and accomplishments than one can fit into a single sentence — is bringing her trove of knowledge to a new Netflix original show called High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, that will debut on May 26.

The docu-series, adapted from one of Harris’ many books, this one of the same name, is “part culinary show, part travelogue,” according to a press release. The show will be hosted by Stephen Satterfield, the founder of Whetstone, a magazine and media company sharing stories of food and its culture across the globe. Throughout the four-episode series, Satterfield “embarks on a vibrant and powerful culinary journey alongside chefs, historians, and activists that celebrate the courage, artistry, and resourcefulness of the African American people,” according to the release.

Too often, food and travel shows fall back on the tired trope of Food As Unifier, a feel good concept, sure, but one that tends to erase and glaze over issues of racism, class disparity, and labor, that are so often core to who eats what, and why. This show, it seems, is committed to telling the full and unadulterated story of “America’s deep-rooted history of slavery, and the impact on American food as we know it today.”

High on the Hog will offer a history lesson from one of this country’s finest historians, and one of its most respected food journalists, and promises to untangle and unpack these topics over beautiful West African stews, soul food, barbecue, and fine dining meals. The show, directed by Academy Award winner Roger Ross Williams, is, the press release says, “a story of Black America’s resilience, enduring creativity, and vital contribution to America’s kitchen.” A month feels like a long time to wait for a Netflix show, but if their past work is any indication, Harris and Satterfield are sure to make the wait worthwhile.

Restaurant owners get candid about the various challenges they face in getting back to “normal”

The journey that restaurant owners and workers have endured over the last 14 months has been well documented — from having to make a case for outdoor dining and dealing with impossibly high diner expectations to handling mask enforcement when their spaces began to reopen. Such stories from restaurant owners and workers (and the wider industry conversations they’ve prompted) serve as a reminder of how hard it is to work in restaurants — this year, and always.

So we asked restaurant owners to get candid about it all, with a focus on where they’re at in this very moment of national reopening: Tiffany Derry of Roots Chicken Shak and forthcoming Roots Southern Table, both in Texas; Douglass Williams of Mida in Boston; and Michael Schall, the owner of Locanda Vini e Olii in Brooklyn.

Below are lightly edited excerpts from the conversation, part of our Eater Talks event series, as well as a full video recording. For restaurant owners looking for more helpful information, check our this explainer on the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund. And for diners looking for ways to support the restaurant community, check out Eater’s How to Help guide.

Restaurant employees have mixed feelings about going back to work.

Tiffany Derry: “I had an employee that we just hired that was making $8.75 an hour at his last restaurant for the last two years where he was considered an assistant manager... you can’t really do anything with that. So obviously, he was really happy to come on board [with us] where he would almost be making double of that us.

But the truth is, it’s not necessarily just about the money right now. I think there is a lack of trust within the industry, a fear of ‘I need to find something more stable, that won’t close down on me.’ And I think that people are realizing that they’re needing a lot more.”

Michael Schall: “It’s tough in New York. We were having trouble finding people for both front of house and back of house. Some people left the city, but I’ve talked to a few people who are just thinking they don’t want to work in restaurants anymore. But we’ve been able to maintain our employees. Through the winter, even before I knew what was going to happen, I knew we couldn’t afford to lose our kitchen team. So I said to them that I’d guarantee their salaries through the winter. Which is why I was pushing this grocery program and the meal kits — just finding things to keep them busy, whether doing a new paint job on our outdoor structure or just any way I could find hours for them to keep them. Because I knew once we got through it, we might not be able to get them back.”

Derry: “I do believe, though, that people will come back. I think that in a few months, it will settle and we will get an influx of people who are trying to work — and hopefully they don’t start jumping around more than they have in the past.”

The shutdown forced restaurant owners to rethink the old ways.

Schall: “We lost a few employees, but that coincided with us streamlining our operations. Pre-pandemic, for a full house, we used to have six to seven chefs in the kitchen, and now we have four; we used to have six to seven servers on the floor, and now we have four. Our restaurants been in operation for over 20 years, and it was a machine where everything was exactly where it should have been and it moved seamlessly. Then come March, it’s like a bomb went off. When we came back, it felt like we’re picking up the pieces of this old restaurant and figuring out: Do we want to put things back to how they were? Or might there be a better, more efficient way that we could offer service and still maintain hospitality and compassion?”

Douglass Williams: “COVID has taught us a lot about operations and about what’s needed and trimming the fat where we don’t need it. We were already pretty lean and mean, we thought we were this Little Engine That Could — and we still are. But now we have to grow up into a new version of ourselves.”

One thing restaurants are reexamining: third-party delivery services.

Williams: “[When the pandemic started] we already had Grubhub and all that stuff; it wasn’t a huge part of our sales but it didn’t need to be, because we had regular indoor dining. ... Hopefully it’s not a part of our business forever, that we have to depend on as a main part of our sales. It got us through and it did its job during the pandemic; now that we’re coming out of it, we’re seeing the [share of revenue from third-party delivery] shrink back down as we’re seeing indoor dining increase.”

Schall: “I actually just made the decision about two weeks ago to get off of Grubhub, Seamless, Caviar, and Doordash. They were taking 20 percent, and as we’re getting busier now that it’s nicer out, my kitchen was getting backed up with all of these orders from those platforms where we’re making zero profit. Because 20 percent, if you’re lucky, is really your profit margin on an order. So why should my kitchen get backed up on all these things, even if, yes, I’m reaching customers? Now that we’re starting to see the other side, it’s like hold on, I don’t want to spend that much anymore, and there’s an alternative that is a lot more friendly to restaurants.”

Derry: “We’re always pushing everyone through our website, because that’s the best value for us versus them going through the other sites. I think you just have to figure out if it’s worth it for your business or not to use them. For us right now, it’s worth it, as it’s a large chunk of our business. And we’re just figuring out which sites we prefer to stay with.”

Reopening also means re-setting norms with customers.

Schall: “The customers are out of practice as well. There’s a lot of new rules that are new to everybody. So as much as we need them to follow the rules, we also need to try to approach them as compassionately as possible. To come together, as we’re all in this together, and still be able to provide hospitality feels different now, but I think it’s possible. We had to reinvent everything, from our menus to online ordering.”

Williams: “It’s about making it feel as safe and normal as it needs to be. We try to make it as good as we can for the person who feels the least comfortable in a given situation and try to base our decision of how to proceed off of how that person feels. I think that mindset had worked well for us. It’s less about how every person that walks through the door might feel about a [mask] mandate [or another policy]; it’s just about us as a community.”

Watch the entire panel conversation:

The tapioca pearls and more you’ll need to make your own boba, from the Strategist

My earliest memory of bubble tea is trying it for the first time on a family trip to Shanghai; I was seven or eight, and I was so obsessed with my new discovery that I couldn’t stop prattling on and on, bending my mom’s ear about how the Oriental Pearl Tower resembled the similarly shaped orbs in my drink. During high school in suburban Maryland, my friends and I would take advantage of the open-lunch policy and race to get in line at the Kung Fu Tea a few blocks away, where the lunch-hour rush was so intense that we always risked being late to fifth period (but it was worth it for the adrenaline rush alone).

To this day, I still drink bubble tea the way other people drink coffee or beer — sometimes with a meal, usually on its own. It always sort of hovered on the periphery of my social life, serving as an occasion to catch up with a friend or a treat to myself. Bubble tea was something I took for granted, and I certainly never thought of it as the complex cultural product that it is.

Two things happened simultaneously to change all of that. When the pandemic forced New York and the rest of the country to go into lockdown, many of my favorite bubble tea shops around the city began to shutter (some of them permanently, others for the months-long stretch between spring of 2020 and the first murmurs of a widely available vaccine). Of course, if the worst thing to happen to me during the pandemic was that I was slightly inconvenienced by my inability to access a drink, I would have been 1) extremely fortunate and 2) probably not still be talking about it right now. But there was also the rampant xenophobia — think back to the beginning of the pandemic and the conversation around wet markets in Wuhan — plus an uptick in hate crimes, and suddenly, the foods I had grown up consuming and the habits I never thought to question took on new meaning.

Partly as an act of defiance and partly of necessity, I began frequenting Asian grocery stores around the city to stock up on ingredients I had previously relied on restaurant takeout to experience: things like fresh okra and cellophane noodles and hot pot mix. On a trip to H Mart in Koreatown, I stumbled across an enticing-looking package that promised ready-to-eat bubbles in 5 minutes. (For the uninitiated, the “bubbles” in bubble tea are made from a starchy substance called tapioca, which is derived from the roots of the cassava plant. Left to its own devices, tapioca is flavorless and pretty much nutritionless, but it makes for a very satisfying, chewy addition to tea-based drinks.) Intrigued, I threw it into my shopping cart and took it home, and to my pleasant surprise, it did, in fact, live up to its promise.

I’ve since gotten the chance to refine my bubble-tea-making process, even as my favorite boba spots have largely reopened (and stayed open). The whole thing is very simple, even for someone like me who’s otherwise pretty culinarily challenged: I put on my electric kettle to boil tea, then I use two bags of (decaf, because I like having the option of drinking it before bed without getting jittery) Lipton black tea, a splash of half-and-half — bubble tea purists will tell you to use lactose-free milk or milk powder, but I prefer my tea a little more rich — and a teaspoon or two of table sugar. While the kettle is on, I use a small saucepan to bring about two cups of water to a boil, and I throw in the bubbles until they’re translucent. After scooping them out of the saucepan, they’re ready to be added into the milk-tea mixture. You’re free to drink your bubble tea while it’s hot, though I find that it’s much more satisfying to drink cold, so I like to pour it all into a cocktail shaker, add a few ice cubes, and give it a good shake.

I don’t mean to suggest that bubble tea has spurred some sort of cultural reawakening, or even that my identity and sense of self revolve around this one thing — in fact, if I’ve learned anything in the last twelve months, it’s that it’s dangerous to boil an entire population down to a few easily definable traits, and one of the most insidious ways of doing so is by reducing people to the things they consume. Frankly, I look forward to the day when I never have to think critically about what I’m eating and drinking again. I just want to be able to kick back, relax, and enjoy a glass of bubble tea on a hot, sweltering day — and do it in peace.

The pearls I use

Other things I use for bubble tea

Boba Guys Reusable Metal Straw

Just like some people carry around metal straws for cold brew, at some point I decided I needed to do the same for bubble tea. A lot of bubble tea shops carry them in-store, but if you can’t find one IRL, Boba Guys sells one on their website.

Lipton Black Tea Bags, Decaf, 50-count pack of 12

These are the tea bags I use to make bubble tea. I tend to double or even triple up on bags to get a stronger brew, but they’re so cheap and readily available that I don’t feel bad about going through them quickly. Theoretically, you can make bubble tea out of any tea you want — so if you’re looking for something a little fancier, the Qi founder Lisa Li wrote about her favorite teas for the Strategist. Each one has its own fascinating backstory, and I’m dying to try them all.