Niagara school boards hope grad ceremonies can be held in fall
Bowing to the inevitable, both Niagara school boards have cancelled high school graduation ceremonies normally held in June.
Both are pinning their hopes on holding in-person celebrations in the fall, provided social distancing guidelines imposed across Ontario to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are relaxed by then.
The possibility of staging virtual graduation ceremonies online this month was considered, but rejected, by both District School Board of Niagara and Niagara Catholic District School Board.
“When we reached out to students and families … many indicated that it’s important to them to celebrate their graduation with their families, classmates and staff members in attendance,” DSBN said in a statement.
Niagara Catholic education director John Crocco said “with the experiences we have in our board with graduations taking place in the fall, and the creativity of staff,” he’s confident memorable graduations can be organized later this year.
A trick of insomniacs desperate to shut off their brains and sleep is to remind themselves that no problem gets solved at 3 a.m.
Ryan Crawford debunks that mantra. It was in those wee hours that the chef-owner of Backhouse restaurant and its Italian pop-up, Ruffino’s, came up with an idea to boost business during the novel coronavirus pandemic that closed his Niagara-on-the-Lake dining room.
The way through this modern day crisis was to hearken back to a dining phenomenon of old: Operate Ruffino’s as a drive-in on weekends alongside its brisk takeout service the rest of the week.
People could park in the lot out front of his restaurant after neighbouring businesses closed. And servers could bring them pizza, pasta and milkshakes on trays they affixed to a rolled-down car window. No reservations necessary.
So at 3 a.m. one morning a few weeks ago, rather than try to lull himself back to sleep, Crawford started Googling drive-in trays. It led him down the proverbial rabbit hole to a company in Michigan selling the throwbacks, properly known as carhop trays, that channel the era of poodle skirts and greasers.
Crawford ordered 36. Then on a Friday night two weeks ago, he put out the call to anyone with four wheels to pull up to his restaurant at the corner of Mary Street and Niagara Stone Road for Ruffino’s
Carhop, the most social dining experience in this time of takeout and sheltering — and eating — in place.
“The loss of that human connection really got me thinking ‘What can I do?” Crawford said. “I thought, ‘What if I could serve people in their cars?’ ”
That idea has been around since 1921 when the first drive-in opened in Dallas, Texas, serving chicken fried steak sandwiches with onion rings and milkshakes. The drive-in had its heyday about 30 years later as the model of choice for serving fast food. But it, along with the carhops balancing on roller skates achieved relic status with the advent of the drive-thru.
Until now.
Despite being rained out a few nights, the Ruffino’s Carhop has been a calling card for people eager for a night out. Parents pull up for Ruffino’s wood-fired pizzas and handmade pasta while their kids watch a movie in the back seat.
Couples park next to each other, roll down their windows, and gab and graze at a safe physical distance. Or they tune into Ruffino’s playlist on Spotify, curated by DJ Marinko, and get as close to a dining room experience as they can right now.
“It allows (guests) to see their friends and not over Zoom,” Crawford said. “That’s why people have dinner together. It’s to be with other people. This lets you have dinner with friends again.”
Setting food on window trays protects Crawford’s serving staff, too, allowing them to shoot the breeze without having to get too close. They can also ensure everyone is enjoying themselves — something they miss as a takeout-only operation.
“Being a restaurateur, we want to make people happy and serve good food. We’re serving this takeout food but we’re not seeing the smiles on people’s faces,” Crawford said. “They might post it to Instagram later but the interaction is gone. There’s no gratification that people are enjoying it.”
Operating as a drive-in on weekends also meets another need for Crawford and his kitchen staff: They can properly plate their spaghetti and meatballs, even if it’s on compostable bamboo dishes rather than reusable ceramic when the restaurant operates at full tilt.
“Putting food in boxes is not what we want to do,” Crawford said. “At least we can plate the food and it looks nice.”
It’s expensive, though. Crawford shells out about $1,800 a month for disposable containers that respect the environment and serve as a vehicle for his food. Still, those bamboo plates and aluminum carhop trays are an investment that’s enabled Crawford to keep seven people working at the restaurant on Carhop nights. That’s down from the usual 25 working in his bustling dining room under normal circumstances. But there’s room to grow his staff again if the Ruffino’s Carhop keeps gaining traction.
“I don’t know when we’re going to open the restaurant. It’s going to be patios first but we don’t have a patio, so we’re going to keep doing this,” he said.
Meanwhile, doing it under the Ruffino’s brand, named for Crawford’s
dog, allows the chef to fully transition to a casual farm-to-table Italian restaurant and bid adieu to the more formal fine dining of Backhouse.
Crawford, who cooked at the location when it was the Stone Road Grille, came back to open his own place after the popular local haunt closed in 2014.
Crawford built Backhouse on the idea of integrated cool climate cuisine, a concept fiercely dedicated to cooking and serving only local food. Though the restaurant beckoned tourists, it didn’t resonate with locals the same way Stone Road Grille had.
Last February, he decided to launch Ruffino’s as a pop-up within Backhouse, converting to an Italian eatery two nights a week.
As many as 80 people would show up on Ruffino’s nights, milling about the dining room to chat with others, and keep Backhouse — and Crawford — afloat in the process.
“It became the local place again,” he said. “I think I missed that place where people wanted to come and eat good food and be that place for locals.”
It also signalled a shift in dining trends for Crawford, who announced Monday that Backhouse was no more.
It will be replaced permanently by Ruffino’s, and temporarily by takeout service, a mercatto selling wine and food items, and the weekend carhop.
“I think dining’s changing. Noma (the two-Michelin-star restaurant in Denmark) is doing a burger joint. The top restaurant in the world is doing a burger joint. People want comfort food. They want to go out with friends … They don’t want fine dining. They want value,” Crawford said.
“And for me, this is more cooking from the heart, for the soul. That passion is back.”