And it looks like it’s going to be a very beautiful Spring day. Hastily, fellow chefs and restaurant owners were forming groups, circulating petitions, quickly knitting coalitions for restaurant workers and suppliers and farmers. Eleven envelopes arrived, bearing the unemployment notices from the New York State Department of Labor. But then the coronavirus hits, and these same restaurant owners rush into the public square yelling: Fire! My kids are covered under their fathers policy, but there was no safety net for us. Or, you know, someone gets married and has a baby and leaves Prune, whatever, when people move on on their last day, I never I never do the whole, like, ponderous hugging, and, I just treat it like any other day. When we are sorting through the restaurant obituaries, will we know for sure that it was not because the weary veteran chef decided, as I have often been tempted myself in these weeks, to quietly walk out the open back door of a building that has been burning for a long time? I called Ken about this, and he got them to postpone the draw. She knew as well as we did that it would be a long while before the bill was paid. By the time of the all-staff meeting after brunch that day, I knew I was right. Ive joked for years that Im in the nonprofit sector, but that has been more direly true for several years now. There is no more brunch. Or will they be the same ones that would have failed within 16 months of opening anyway, from lack of wherewithal or experience? She cut me off in the middle of my greeting with, “Yeah, you guys open for brunch?” Then she hung up before I could even finish saying, “Take care out there.”. The first time she saw it, her mind was blown. On a snowy afternoon in January, I caught the F train downtown to meet Gabrielle Hamilton … Unexpectedly emotional. From Lauren Kois, who waited tables at Prune all through her Ph.D. program and is now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Alabama: 2 dark and stormiesshrimp w anchovyfried oysters (we’re pretending it’s a special tonight)Leo Steen Jurassic Chenin Blancskate wingtreviso saladpotatoes in duck fatbrothy beansbreton butter cake2 black coffees+ 50 percent TIP. They now had a new system to handle the overload of calls: You call based on the first letter of your last name, and her next possible day would be a Thursday. I meant to create a restaurant that would serve as delicious and interesting food as the serious restaurants elsewhere in the city but in a setting that would welcome, and not intimidate, my ragtag friends and my neighbors — all the East Village painters and poets, the butches and the queens, the saxophone player on the sixth floor of my tenement building, the performance artists doing their brave naked work up the street at P.S. If I triaged the collected sales tax that was sitting in its own dedicated savings account and left unpaid the stack of vendor invoices, I could fully cover this one last week of payroll. It felt like a popularity contest or a survival-of-the-most-well-connected that I couldn’t bring myself to enter. Everything was uphill. What was I imagining 20 years ago when I was working all day, every day at a catering job while staying up all night every night, writing menus and sketching the plating of dishes, scrubbing the walls and painting the butter-yellow trim inside what would become Prune? A less-than-500-square-foot studio apartment rents for $3,810 a month. As word trickled out, some long-ago alumnae reached out to place orders for meals they would never eat. I turned and spotted the royal blue heel of my youngests socked foot poking out of the black soil only after it was too late. Bills unpaid. The proliferation of television shows and YouTube channels and culinary competitions and season after season of programming where you find yourself aghast to see an idol of yours stuffing packaged cinnamon buns into a football-shaped baking pan and squirting the frosting into a laces pattern for a tailgating episode on the Food Network. Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S. Should we collect our things? Everyone says: You should do to-go! In the meantime, I made a phone call to Ken, my insurance broker of 20 years, who explained — in his patient, technical, my-hands-are-tied voice — that this coronavirus business interruption wouldn’t likely be covered. The line of credit I thought would be so easy to acquire turned out to be one long week of harsh busy signals before I was even able to apply on March 25. It would be nigh impossible for me, in the context of a pandemic, to argue for the necessity of my existence. It would make me feel terrible if Prune was nicely funded while the Sikhs at the Punjabi Grocery and Deli down the street were ignored, and simultaneously crushed if it wasnt. We feed the world one plate at a time! Two weeks afterwe closed, Ashley still had not got through to unemployment, and I had been thrice-thwarted by the auto-fill feature of the electronic form of the loan I was urged to apply for. The waiter became the server, the restaurant business became the hospitality industry, what used to be the customer became the guest, what was once your personality became your brand, the small acts of kindness and the way you always used to have of sharing your talents and looking out for others became things to monetize. For Prune‘s regular clientele, who frequent the familiar, always-booked East Village bistro expecting to order their “usual” — say, a plate of octopus with drops of broken vinaigrette or splayed spatchcocked pigeon — a rude awakening awaits. Or will they be the same ones that would have failed within 16 months of opening anyway, from lack of wherewithal or experience? But the very first time you cut a payroll check, you understand quite bluntly that, poetic notions aside, you are running a business. There used to be enough extra money every year that I could close for 10 days in July to repaint and retile and rewire, but it has become increasingly impossible to leave even a few days of revenue on the table or to justify the expense of hiring a professional cleaning service for this deep clean that I am perfectly capable of doing myself, so I stayed late and did it after service. Ten days of being waterboarded by the news, by tweets, by friends, by my waiters. There were individual campaigns being run all over town to raise money to help restaurant staffs, but when I tried to imagine joining this trend, I couldnt overcome my pride at being seen as asking for a handout. The next day, a Monday, Ashley started assembling 30 boxes of survival-food kits for the staff. disaster loan I estimated we wouldnt need much; for 14 days, $50,000 so I sent in my query. And God, the brunch, the brunch. I started my restaurant as a place for people to talk to one another, with a very decent but affordable glass of wine and an expertly prepared plate of simply braised lamb shoulder on the table to keep the conversation flowing, and ran it as such as long as I could. A few years later, when I added lunch service on weekdays, it was a business decision, not a dream, because I needed to be able to afford health insurance for my staff, and I knew I could make an excellent burger. I’m Gabrielle Hamilton, and I’m the chef and owner of Prune Restaurant in the East Village of Manhattan, New York. Gabrielle Hamilton has a funny, wise and empathetic essay in The Times today about cooking at home during the coronavirus pandemic while married to … But I … Our beloved regulars and the people who work so hard at Prune are all still my favorite people on earth. Sign Up There used to be enough extra money every year that I could close for 10 days in July to repaint and retile and rewire, but it has become increasingly impossible to leave even a few days of revenue on the table or to justify the expense of hiring a professional cleaning service for this deep clean that I am perfectly capable of doing myself, so I stayed late and did it after service. I have been shuttered before. With no lifting of the mandatory shuttering and the Covid-19 death tolls still mounting, how could we rehire our staff? I thought having run $2.5 million to $3 million through my bank each year for the past two decades would leave me poised to see a line of credit quickly, but then I remembered that I switched banks in the past year. At that point New York didnt have an ambitious and exciting restaurant on every block, in every unlikely neighborhood, operating out of impossibly narrow spaces. disaster loans were circulated, but New York City wasn’t showing up on the list of eligible zones. Knowing the balance, I snorted to myself: Good luck with that. I didnt want to have waited too long, didnt want to crash into the trees. She packed Ziploc bags of nuts, rice, pasta, cans of curry paste and cartons of eggs, while music played from her cellphone tucked into a plastic quart container an old line-cook trick for amplifying sound. Meanwhile, my inbox was loaded with emails from everyone I’ve ever known, all wanting to check in, as well as from colleagues around the country who were only now comprehending the scope of the impact on New York’s restaurants. But even in that moment, gasping for air through the T-shirt I had pulled up over my mouth, I could see vividly what it could become, the intimate dinner party I would throw every night in this charming, quirky space. He intended to file for damages, as he would if this shutdown had been mandated because of a nearby flood or a fire, but he doubted I would get any money. Even though I can’t quite take part in it myself — I’m the boss, who must remain a little aloof from the crew — I still quietly thrum with satisfaction when the “kids” are chattering away and hugging one another their hellos and how-are-yous in the hallway as they get ready for their shifts. Id poured bleach and Palmolive and degreaser behind the range and the reach-ins, trying to blast out the deep, dark, unreachable corner of the sauté station where lost egg shells, mussels, green scrubbies, hollow marrow bones, tasting spoons and cake testers, tongs and the occasional sizzle plate all get trapped and forgotten during service. Of being rattled even by my own wife, Ashley, and her anxious compulsion to act, to reduce our restaurant’s operating hours, to close at 9 p.m., cut shifts. These closures will take out the weakest and the most vulnerable. 17M likes. Dec. 9, 2020; My very first solo apartment in Manhattan was a miniature studio on East 11th Street, nothing more than a quiet room with tall windows and a stove. I wanted a place you could go after work or on your day off if you had only a line cook’s paycheck but also a line cook’s palate. 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