SAFETY-SANITY BALANCE
Critic Alison Cook swallows pandemic fear to connect with friends at an old haunt.
The vintage metal door handle at Spanish Village, “Established 1953,” curves out toward an approaching guest in a darkly tarnished swirl. I bet I’ve pulled that handle and popped its latch five or six hundred times since I began frequenting this old-school Tex-Mex restaurant back in the late 1960s. I never gave that little ritual a moment’s thought.
But this past Friday night, I did. I nervously clutched a Lysol wipe in my fist as I approached, wondering if a staffer might see me and swing the door wide. Nope, a skeleton crew was otherwise occupied on the first night of Spanish Village’s reopening since Gov. Greg Abbott ordered all Texas restaurants closed on March 20. Clammy disinfectant wipe unfurled, I gingerly tugged the handle and walked in.
Two masked employees materialized near the entryway, and we exchanged muffled greetings. I thought I recognized them from before, but it was surprisingly hard to tell.
It had been a week since Abbott allowed restaurants to reopen under restrictions meant to inhibit the spread of the coronavirus. Dining rooms are limited to 25 percent of their normal occupancy, first and foremost. Tables must be 6 feet apart, menus disposable, parties limited to six or fewer diners.
I wondered how it would feel to dine under such circumstances, but the risk seemed too great for a person of my age and unfortunate bronchial history. All week I searched the first-person accounts of younger or more eager Houstonians, both in my own newspaper and on social media, to see how the reopening went.
Some of the photos and accounts concerned me — the inconsistent use of social distancing and masks and gloves made me think I had better wait. The scenes from Cinco de Mayo were unsettling. Some of my friends urged me to wait, too. I got alarmed messages from no fewer than three people in my age cohort literally begging me not to go to a restaurant.
Don’t worry, I won’t, I told them.
So what changed my mind? Maybe it was the dispiriting week I’d had, the nadir of my 54 days of self-isolation. As Texas reopened while COVID-19 cases kept mounting, I suspected we were jumping the gun. The headlines that week plunged me into despair. I found myself wondering, for the first time, if my country were worth saving. It doesn’t get darker than that.
When my friends Jerry and Cliff proposed a Friday-night dinner at Spanish Village — just five of us — my first reaction was, “no way.”
But then my brain began racing through an intricate calculus of risk. All five of us had been self-isolating since mid-March. That made it safer. Cliff, who booked a table, said that the restaurant was not anywhere close to 25 percent capacity for Friday night. Safer still.
I knew getting to hang with my friends over margaritas and enchiladas — it was Friday night, the sacred time for Tex-Mex, after all — would be a boost for my flagging mental health. I bargained with the odds: Just this one night, and then I’ll be good for another two months at home, I promised the gods.
So, yeah, I talked myself into it, despite my serious reservations.
I feel a little ridiculous admitting how excited I grew as the hour approached. I took out a new spring dress — a dress! — after weeks in oversized T-shirts and disreputable leggings and washed my seriously unwashed hair. I applied some blush and a little powder and even some lip gloss. After weeks of little to no grooming, it felt like getting ready for prom.
I was the first to arrive at the restaurant, and when the manager directed me toward a big table in the back dining room, which I have always avoided in favor of the warmer, more Christmaslight-bedecked front, I almost balked before I remembered, “social distancing, Cook. Don’t be demanding.” I would sit where I was told.
Two older gentlemen sat at a two-top table about 10 feet away. We greeted each other in a spirit of … I don’t know exactly … pandemic cameraderie? Otherwise, the room was empty at 7:15 p.m., and aside from my party of five and the two top, it stayed that way for most of the evening, until one last diner straggled in.
I was impressed that the staff had managed to move the restaurant’s heavy concrete-and-mosaic-tile tables well apart. That cannot have been easy. I’ve always adored those festive tables, which give off a colorful, outsiderart vibe. When the young couple who bought Spanish Village from the Medina family, the longtime owners, decided to scrape off paleolithic layers of yellowed varnish to restore the original tile colors, I took it as a sign all would be well at this sentimental favorite.
“Not everybody gets Spanish Village,” I would tell naysayers pityingly when they tried to inform me the restaurant wasn’t all that good.
The five of us gathered over those mosaic tiles on Friday — we got it. We’ve all celebrated birthdays and Friday nights galore at Spanish Village, so it seemed fitting (and even a little sacred) to be here for our first restaurant dinner since things closed down.
We bumped elbows in greeting and sat a little too close around the table. We rejected plastic utensils in favor of silverware bundled into cloth napkins. We laughed and told funny stories and swapped Netflix recommendations and gossiped. We traded intelligence about the vicissitudes of this curbside setup and that one, about the roadworthiness of different frozen margaritas to go, about setting up a socially distanced happy hour in one’s driveway.
It felt like old times, interrupted by flashes of the gallows humor that makes this era easier to bear. “I tested negative yesterday,” volunteered one of our party. “Of course, that was 24 hours ago.”
Of course, it wasn’t old times. The handful of employees running the floor were getting accustomed to their masks. One staffer’s kept slipping beneath his nose, to be hauled up repeatedly. Another young woman headed for the kitchen unslung her mask from one side in the doorway. Under the light, her face shone bright with perspiration.
I felt bad for her, and I worried for her and for all her peers across the city. Reopening was not going to be easy.
Remembering the hundreds of little details to keep myself safe was not going to be easy either. Halfway through my second margarita, I realized I had just taken a swig from my tablemate’s glass. No bueno. I had the sinking feeling it might be months before I ate in a restaurant again.
“Maybe this isn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done,” I told myself defensively. “But it’s one of the most necessary.”
The bill arrived. Credit cards were exchanged. I broke out another Lysol wipe from the baggie I take with me everywhere now, cleaned the plastic, wiped down my phone. As we left, we took a few selfies in front of a wall plastered with huge papier-mâché flowers.
I’m saving one as a souvenir. Not of Before. Not of After. But of a weird and uncertain In Between.