The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Reinventing dining for ‘a new society’
NORWALK — It’s the kind of spring day to give you hope that the mounting COVID-19 death toll, so conveniently out of sight, has reached some sort of crescendo and is subsiding.
The sun is shining on the people, two, three, four, swanning across the little one-lane span over the Silvermine River on their therapeutic cabin-fever walks.
The dogwood flowers are just opening, while the last vestiges of the bright pink magnolia petals are rusty, shriveled wrecks on lawns and curbs. Some people are wearing masks and those who aren’t maintain a respectful social distance as they saunter across the Perry Avenue bridge.
To me, this has always been an upscale netherworld, where you can’t be sure if you’re in New Canaan, Wilton or Norwalk. All you know is the houses are big and nice, if you like the $700,000-plus price tags. There’s also a lot of history here.
That’s what got Andrew Glazer, a builder, interested in tackling the restoration of the old textile factory that for a long time was the Silvermine Tavern, which he bought back in 2015. On the adjacent two-acre parcel he built four houses to subsidize his interest in keeping alive the inn where celebrity guests included the actors Spencer Tracy, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Liz Taylor and Katharine Hepburn.
The landmark Silvermine Guild Arts Center, a short walk away, was founded by Solon Borglum, a sculptor whose betterknown, racist brother Gutzon created the Mount Rushmore National Monument.
Glazer, and his Tavern at Graybarns, an Americana restaurant, should be in the vanguard of the effort to reopen and bring back to work the 160,000 people in the Connecticut restaurant business who lost their jobs in the coronavirus pandemic and might be the last to come back to an industry that’s on the verge of devastation.
But the first round of openings that Gov. Lamont would announce Friday, focused only on outdoor dining. That isn’t going to save anything, Glazer and others, such as Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, warn. April was cold and had 20 rainy days.
We’re sitting socially distant at a four-top that Glazer plans to bookend with Plexiglas, in the bar area of the Tavern complex. Outside the window, the river down below is a 20-yard-wide pond, then constricts to go over a small falls as it heads south to the Norwalk River. Glazer is nursing a cappuccino and he’s talking about the 40-plus things he has come up with to bring back indoor dining and revive an industry where the profit margins, even in good times, are single-digit.
Behind Glazer is a stack of cardboard boxes that on Mother’s Day will be packed with salmon or standing rib roast for 200 people. It’s Thursday and the $225 holiday dinner for a family of four has already sold out. They’ll be delivered by three servers among the dozen or so people Glazer, 67, has kept on after receiving his forgivable federal loan.
The way he sees the future, the Graybarns valets show patrons where to park. The restrooms have attendants who clean and sanitize after every use. The lobby has a hand sanitizer station. The hosts present diners with printed statements on protocols. Staggered reservation times keep the lobby flowing and departing diners go out a different door. Glazer is ready to take the temperatures of patrons if the state wants it.
It’s about giving patrons confidence that they can go out, eat and have a good time, again.
All staffed will be masked and gloved. Servers handle the full plates and the bus crew only touch dirty plates and utensils.
“We are not the same people that we were two months ago. No one is,” Glazer says. “There is no going back to normal. We all know that. There’s a new normal, or probably the word normal shouldn’t be used. There’s a new society that’s come with this, and we will never go backwards. So to think that people will go back to their old behavior, in this area? These people know. They’re not going to take risks. I understand you’re going to have isolated incidents and knuckleheads. People in this area, Fairfield County, will mitigate their risk. They’ll assess the situation and decide whether it’s OK or not.”
A frequent patron of the big-box hardware stores, Glazer says there’s no reason why restaurateurs can’t make their customers feel comfortable.
He thinks that restaurateurs like him should have more of a say in the soft reopening of Connecticut on May 20. “It’s hard, I get it,” he says. “But they should ask for help and I do not feel like they’re asking for the right help. Because those of us who have the largest stake, not only are we happy to do it, we have to do it. That’s where the restaurant businesses is really going to have to get to. This was the iconic country inn.”
Lamont is the first to admit he’s living and learning in this public crisis, but unless restaurants can get a lifeline quickly, they’re going to become another statistic of the pandemic.