In Kentucky, linens may be off the table

With Kentucky restaurants preparing to reopen their dining rooms at limited capacity on Friday, one staple of the fine dining experience will be notably absent – tablecloths and cloth napkins.

The state’s new requirements for restaurants, which can open at onethird capacity on Friday, explicitly say that the use of table linens should be discontinued. Instead, restaurants are being told to use disposable napkins and tablecloths “to the greatest extent practicable.”

That’s unusual.

States around the country are laying out guidelines for reopening businesses safely. But so far, Kentucky appears to be the only state in the country that is whipping tablecloths out from under restaurateurs.

No other state is recommending against table linen use entirely, according to the Textile Rental Services Association, which lobbies on behalf of companies that supply professionally laundered linens.

“We just think that it’s wasteful and it’s unnecessary,” association President Joe Ricci told The Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, “and draconian in some ways in the sense that these restaurants already have access to all these reusable products and now they can’t use them.”

Asked Tuesday about the table linen ban, Gov. Andy Beshear called the guidance “incredibly important,” but said he was open to suggestions on how to use tablecloths safely.

“You can’t sit down at a table without touching the table,” Beshear told reporters. “It’s almost impossible. The next person who comes up can get the virus from that.”

John Varanese, owner of his namesake restaurant Varanese, the River House Restaurant and Raw Bar and Levee at the River House, says that’s not quite right.

As they are at most fine dining establishments, tablecloths at his restaurants are replaced after each guest leaves. The used linens are then bagged and sent off to be washed at a large third- party plant that also serves, among other customers, hospitals and medical facilities.

“If their product can be safe enough to be put in there, I don’t know why it’s not safe enough to put in restaurants,”