FERN’s Friday Feed: For restaurants, ‘a time to improvise’
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The precarious future of a neighborhood restaurant in the coronavirus era
The New Yorker
Il Posto Accanto, a restaurant and wine bar in New York’s East Village, had remained open through 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. But when Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all dine-in restaurants and bars to close due to the coronavirus, “Il Posto Accanto had no platform to accommodate mobile orders, delivery, or takeout,” writes Sean Lavery. “It was time to improvise.”
Farmworkers, and the food supply, at risk
In the coming weeks and months, tens of thousands of migrant farmworkers will arrive in agricultural centers across the nation, from Washington’s Yakima Valley to the coastal plains of North Carolina and Georgia, where they will live and work in conditions that are prime for a coronavirus outbreak, as Liza Gross and Esther Honig explain in FERN’s latest, published with HuffPost.
How to feed America through the pandemic
The New York Times
“Our fate as a nation depends on how we feed our most vulnerable citizens through this crisis,” writes the chef and restaurateur José Andrés. “If our leaders step up now with federal aid, food can be the solution — supporting millions of jobs while also feeding millions of people in desperate need … Today we need a [Works Progress Administration] to feed America. In honor of one of its food programs, I suggest calling this new emergency relief America Eats Now.”
Forget pesticides. This vineyard has ducks.
Atlas Obscura
At the Vergenoegd Low wine estate in South Africa, ducks are used as pest control. “When the gate between the estate and the duck residences is opened, the birds march along a fenced path, all the way to the fields,” writes Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey. “The spectacle is unbelievable. Hundreds of ducks, all slender and walking upright rather than waddling, just keep on coming.”
‘The bizarre case of India’s first and only agave spirit’
1843 Magazine
“Desmond Nazareth, a 62-year-old from Mumbai, has spent the past 20 years working to perfect an Indian equivalent to tequila and other mezcals,” writes Alex Travelli. “It is made from semi-wild agave, more than 16,000km from tequila’s cultural and legal home. A cartoon motif of Nazareth appears on a range of orange plastic screw-capped bottles labelled “Indian agave spirits” under the brand name DesmondJi or DJ. Though it is still a fairly small operation — some 13,000 cases, each containing nine-litres, were sold last year — demand is growing.”
Restaurant workers open up about the toll of coronavirus
Vox
Writer Gaby Del Valle “spoke to seven current and former food-service employees about their experiences working in restaurants, bars, and cafés as Covid-19 spread to all 50 states — and about how they’re faring now. Some are still showing up to work; others have filed for unemployment. Some are worried about being exposed to the virus or exposing someone else. And they’re all worried about paying their bills now that food-service jobs are disappearing everywhere, with no end in sight.”