The Great Indoors

On restaurants, individual responsibility, and government failure.

It’s been a while since I wrote about restaurant pandemic politics, in any substantial way that is. Though not necessarily planned, I do believe this break was subconsciously intentional—a result of the natural burnout that comes from reporting on an industry that is crumbling before your very eyes.

One could say that I have perhaps grown too jaded. In the time following my first pandemic-related piece on Grub Street, I became the person to whom many relayed their negative restaurant experiences, frustrations with management, and growing health concerns. I received inquiries from old high school classmates about how to dine out safely (the answer, by the way, is don’t) and notes of bittersweet camaraderie from people in the food industry whom I had never met. This was simultaneously encouraging and extremely emotionally draining, and therefore warranted a few months of rest.

All this is to say that my recent hiatus from covering such things as indoor dining policies or the exploitative nature of traditional hospitality models amidst a public health crisis is certainly not for a lack of continued political tension, government failure, or public discontent. There is plenty still to be said about the challenges facing the restaurant industry—there are simply very few new things to say.

This is because, in many ways, nothing has changed. Restaurant workers are feeling just as neglected and disrespected (if not more so) and diners remain largely uninformed or willfully and blissfully ignorant. Business owners continue to call out into the endless void that is our Great American Government, begging for financial support which likely will never come, or which will be far too little and far too late. At the moment it feels like we are running in circles, endangering lives along the way.

As New York City ponders another lockdown, I have found myself stirred from my journalistic slumber and once again enraged. We are undeniably in the midst of yet another wave of rising case numbers, with rapidly increasing hospitalizations surely soon to follow. And still, with the same infantile energy of two siblings bickering on a long road trip, our spineless leaders continue to increase their threshold for tolerable risk, calling on the public to save itself without providing the tools to do so.

It is not that evidence or warning doesn’t exist. Doctors and scientists have been raising alarm for quite some time now, pointing to a public health system on the brink of yet another collapse. Likewise the case against indoor dining has been strong since the start, as experts continue to identify dine-in restaurants and bars as being some of the most common COVID hotspots.

When indoor dining was introduced, it was under the conditions that a 3% positivity rate would mean putting it on pause. Now, with positivity rates averaging closer to 4% (and rising) and hospitalizations starting to reflect the increase, we still see little to no action on the part of our government. If the goal of reopening the economy in phases was really to gauge success and adjust or back-track accordingly, it seems that now would be the time to do so.

Instead, things like the recent 10 pm restrictions serve as a pathetically performative move, adversely affecting restaurant sales which were already unstable, while also having no real impact on the incoming wave. The latest set of criteria gives a region five days to stabilize its hospitalization rate before indoor dining must be shut down, essentially mandating that the health sector reach its breaking point before any action is taken. Rather than the sort of decisive leadership that was seen and celebrated in March and April, we now appear caught in an endless and deadly loop of protecting public appearance over public health.

What results is a self-sabotaging circuit of misinformation, fatigue, and increased risk—a manifestation of the more general “pandemic spiral” (a term coined and used expertly by journalist Ed Yong) which has defined the broader American COVID-19 response. The reality is that the only way many of these businesses will be able to get back on their feet in any lasting way is if the cycle is broken and the virus is successfully eradicated, something which proves to be impossible as long as such high-risk operations stay open.

While the refusal to shut down indoor businesses and activities appears to be based on public appearance and an interest in short term economic survival, the fallout of such patterns of fear and lack of support are a diminishing customer base, particularly for dine-in restaurants. Businesses are now being expected to continue operating at an increased loss with no end in sight, struggling with further dwindling patronage as temperatures drop and positivity rates climb. In simple terms, the risk has now become exponentially greater than the reward.

And still, the general narrative surrounding restaurants being open—much like the rest of the pandemic—remains rooted in the importance of individual responsibility, something far from the silver bullet solution that many of us crave. Cuomo’s catchy slogan of ‘New Yorkers Protecting New Yorkers’ only goes so far without the New York government also lending a hand, or at the very least not making things worse. It seems that those individuals choosing to eat inside of a restaurant right now are the same individuals that would be more likely to treat staff poorly, leave a bad tip, or ignore mask regulations. To leave our fate in the hands of such privileged and uninformed peers is careless and irresponsible at the very least.

And so, as we head indoors for the winter, it seems that solutions and options are once again slim. Like a broken record we spin around, playing the same scratchy song on repeat. Perhaps we can revert to the good old days of jarred signature sauces, meal kits, gift cards, and T-shirts. Maybe we can find more sustainable ways to order takeout that don’t involve corporate delivery services and their exploitative fees. There is still some hope that our individual choices may impact the choices of other individuals, and maybe that has to be enough.

For now, there is nothing very new to say—but that hasn’t stopped me before.