Michael and Yelena Barnhouse have managed to keep their two small North Side restaurants, Lola Bistro and Leo, afloat and their staff and customers safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they’ve felt a crushing weight on their shoulders, and not in any figurative sense.
“We’re seeing a chiropractor now because we’ve had so much stress in our necks and shoulders. Literally the tension was causing us constant, chronic physical pain. It's like a weird side effect that’s come with this whole thing,” he said Wednesday evening, sipping sparkling water after briefly stepping out of Leo’s kitchen.
“For a year it was just darkness. I’m still going to carry with me pure anger at the way this whole thing was handled, from the top. It could’ve destroyed my life. Those first three months were just incredibly stressful. And the whole year has been this dystopian nightmare. I’m really lucky that I have a good community that’s supported me.”
And yet, as the one-year anniversary approaches of the day that the pandemic closed bars and restaurants worldwide, there is a genuine but cautious sense of optimism, even in an industry that has been decimated financially and on a human level.
“You can tell. People seem a little less [edgy] — like the pressure is off — now that it’s being handled properly,” Mr. Barnhouse said. “A neighbor that we hadn’t seen this entire time came in and got a beer and said his second [COVID-19 vaccination] shot was in a couple days and said, ‘You’ll be seeing more of me.’”
This past week, as the weather became more springlike, diners and drinkers emerged en masse. The North Shore was so busy Wednesday night that one might have thought a ballgame was going on; in Lawrenceville and on the South Side, Butler and East Carson streets were abustle.
More than 2 million vaccination shots are being plunged into American deltoids daily. New COVID-19 cases and deaths have fallen considerably since January’s deadly nadir.
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes $28.6 billion for restaurant and food service relief, and the application period for grant money from the state-run COVID-19 Hospitality Industry Recovery Program begins Monday.
In addition, Gov. Tom Wolf has said he won’t impose additional restrictions on bars and restaurants on St. Patrick’s Day, as was the case with Thanksgiving eve and Christmas and New Year’s eves. And the end of daylight saving time this weekend yields more opportunity for outdoor seating.
It’s not quite “Happy Hours Are Here Again,” to coin a phrase, but much of the news is encouraging, even if those in the service industry feel like the walking wounded.
Big Burrito restaurant group president Bill Fuller said things have been on a slow but steady uptick since the end of January at the company’s 18 restaurants, which together employ about 1,000 people. The company had anticipated and planned for a rise in COVID-19 cases late last year and the subsequent restrictions that would follow.
“We all knew that was going to come around the holidays, and our biggest worry was that the surge would persist and the closures would persist and that January and February would be really, really horrible.”
But it wasn’t as bad as they feared.
“At the end of January we started to breathe that sigh of relief because at that point, it's like running a race. We’d run our 23.2 miles and we had three to go and it hurt and everything was rough but there was only so much left.”
The first round of stimulus checks last year coincidentally went out the day before Mad Mex started offering margaritas to go, and “we got annihilated” with business, he said. The second round didn’t really register, and Mr. Fuller speculates that “with this new check we’ll feel a little surge, but I’ll be surprised if it's a spike because there are people that have some back bills to pay.”
Even so, “We’ve had these things come along that have been these great little positive zaps — this week’s going to be another positive zap, so we’ve been looking up and looking forward.”
At Insurrection AleWorks in Heidelberg, management made the decision to close the kitchen indefinitely after the second wave of restrictions last summer. The business reopened its kitchen Wednesday, confident that the worst was over.
It’s a small operation, but the owners have been able to bring back some employees and hire a few others. They’ve retooled their menu a bit — no more pizzas, but more sandwiches — and will require reservations. Customers are limited to 90-minute stays for the near future.
“It’s a good feeling,” co-owner Matt Messer said. “I’m a little jittery about the first few days, but as far as overall anxiety about are we going to make it or are we not, that has gone down. I’m optimistic that the worst of this is behind us.”
Anthony Falcon, chef and co-owner of Gaucho Parrilla Argentina in Downtown’s Cultural District, agrees, but only to a point.
“I would definitely agree that the optimism is palpable,” he said Wednesday as an intoxicating perfume from the wood-fired grill at Gaucho wafted out of the broad open windows onto Penn Avenue.
“There are people that are coming out, our guests are primarily very gracious and follow the guidelines and restrictions that we have. We’re often booked on Friday and Saturday night based on our occupancy.”
The problem, he said, is that “it’s just not enough.”
Gaucho, like scores of Downtown restaurants, suspended daily lunch service altogether owing to the fact that so many people are working from home, and that has bled into weeknight dinners.
Mr. Falcon quipped that the experience has been akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, “but it’s not even post. If they do lift the restrictions then it becomes PTSD. I’m living every day with this stress.”
A few blocks away, employees at Nicky’s Thai Kitchen were setting up their outdoor seating for the season and work is nearing completion at The Eagle, a Southern-influenced fried chicken and beer hall that’s been delayed for a year. Across Penn Avenue, Scott Shaffer, general manager at Bridges & Bourbon, is bullish on the months to come, even if his voice sounds weary from the year that’s passed.
“Last year, every time we thought we were progressing in a positive way and starting to breathe a little easier, the threat of another shutdown came,” he said. “Some days were worse than others, but it challenged [us] to adapt and get very creative to maximize biz potential and at the same time keep the staff in a safe atmosphere and make it comfortable for guests.”
Piyo Boonyarat, a manager at Thai Me Up on the South Side, said the business had done well throughout the pandemic, with takeout and via sales at their Sweet Panda Asian market. The business did, however, sell its food truck and stop BYOB for reasons both magnanimous and pragmatic — they didn’t want to take business away from neighbors that offer alcohol, and with only 16 seats, they needed to keep turning tables.
He said he’d noticed a sense of people being more at ease now because of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We’re more of a mom and pop restaurant so we do OK. We’re very optimistic and hope everyone can get a vaccine and move on with their lives,” he said.
Keyla Nogueira Cook is chef and co-owner of Casa Brasil in Highland Park. Both her home country, Brazil, and her adopted one have been the hardest hit in the world by the pandemic in terms of total lives lost.
Her restaurant is part of Allegheny Eats, a program that sells prepared meal kits to customers from restaurants that use products from local farms while contributing to a fund that offers free meals to struggling service industry workers as the pandemic rages.
They’ve treaded water with takeout and outdoor seating, but she said that even if virus restrictions were dropped tomorrow, plenty of questions would remain.
“I think hope comes with the vaccine, but [some] may not want to take it,” she said. “So how do we approach that? If only half of my staff is vaccinated, how does the future look?”
Gumby-like elasticity, an ability to pivot like LeBron James, and the force of sheer will have gotten Mr. Barnhouse and so many others through.
He said he simply made up his mind that “I’m going to survive this. There was no other way. I put a lot of money into this and the whole design is me. I wasn’t letting that go and I wasn’t going down without a fight. I’m a little battered and bruised, but I’ll get out of it.”
And he’s almost there, even if his shoulders ache from the effort.
Dan Gigler: dgigler@post-gazette.com; Twitter @gigs412.
First Published: March 12, 2021, 10:15 a.m.
