The Harsh Reality for Restaurants in the Age of COVID-19

It’s been an amazing decade for both America’s and Austin’s restaurants. Diners have been able to indulge themselves in a gastronomic cornucopia of amazing concepts, with flavors from around the world crafted by brilliantly creative chefs. This unprecedented largess seemed infinite. Spectacular new restaurants opened around the country leaving restaurant critics, myself included, virtually speechless as we scrambled to find different non-redundant ways to say “unbelievable.”

And then, three months ago, the restaurant scene was devastated by a virus that brought life in the United States and around the world to its knees. Intimate, exotic dinners became memories. In New York, Eleven Madison Park, the world’s #1 restaurant, closed and its reopening is at best uncertain.

Thus it is with a discordant irony that Austin’s Dip Dip Dip Tatsuya has been named by GQ as one of the 20 best restaurants in the country. But there is no throng of enthusiastic diners lining up at the door. The banner on their website homepage says “Temporarily closed.”And one only has to wonder if that wording is a stab at optimism.

Many of these shuttered restaurants are using their diminishing food supplies to feed hungry people in their communities. Austin’s Chinatown has served hundreds of meals to people in need. And owner Ronald Cheng says he will continue to do so.

Yet as economies around the country are reopening, restaurants are struggling to keep pace with the realities of diminished demand and the difficulty of refitting their operations to the constraints of social distancing. For many, the cost of reopening has strained cash reserves to a point that has left them questioning the feasibility of even doing so.

Welcome to the world of the new normal. For the restaurant community it is a gigantic paradigm shift that may permanently alter what many of us have taken for granted.

So please do not underestimate the costs, both financial and emotional, that local restaurants who have reopened have expended along with their commitment to their staffs and customers.

Support them because they are an integral part of the Austin aesthetic that we all treasure.

And as always, bon appetit!