JIMI ON THE LONG ROAD TO RESTAURANTS REOPENING
ICAN’T be the only one who has experienced this past week of post-roadmap excitement as a feeding frenzy of social planning followed by something like an overawed sugar crash. Five-a-side pitches are being secured by mates. The complex timetable of Easter holiday grandparent visits is back. WhatsApp thrums with pointed screenshots of festival ticket booking pages. Life is rebooting, in other words, and I find myself both exhilarated and slightly terrified at the prospect of an existence far, far away from the shearling-lined slippers that I’ve become perhaps uncomfortably attached to.
And then, of course, there is the grand (re)reopening of restaurants, pubs and cafes. Commencing — bar any more of those fun new mutant variants — with the return of outdoor dining on April 12, it marks a hugely significant signpost on our path out of this prolonged disaster.
But, for chefs and owners, reviving London’s stricken hospitality industry won’t be a case of simply flicking a giant switch; reopening brings a tangled mass of considerations covering everything from the best date to resume trade to the long-term future of meal kits. And it’s important, I think, that those of us who enjoy restaurants have a clear sense of what’s at stake — and where we might be heading.
“Just to have a [reopening] date has made an enormous difference,” says James Lowe, chef-owner of Lyle’s, Flor and delivery-only lockdown success story ASAP Pizza. “I’m not going to get too excited because if a couple of things slide by a week or two then we’re looking at June rather than mid-May. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I believe that it’s happening and I’m optimistic about it.”
This feeling of playing the long game, it turns out, is a common position. “I didn’t want us to open too quickly and then have to shut again almost immediately,” says Adejoké Bakare of Brixton’s Chishuru. “I didn’t want that inconsistency.” Ditto Andrew Wong — of Victoria’s freshly two-Michelinstarred A. Wong — who notes that: “We will open at some point, so we’ve got to make sure we use this time wisely.”
Part of this philosophical approach, you’d wager, stems from the fact that restaurants have already lost and invested so much during this hellish year (Wong — who is still considering opening a newly constructed outdoor terrace for April — estimates his restaurant has spent £5,000 on face masks alone) that reckless quick fixes won’t make much difference. Another is that a careful, slow-paced lifting of lockdown gives these newly multi-faceted food businesses time and space to slim back down to something like their pre-pandemic selves.
“With regard to Lyle’s, the [meal kit] boxes will be gone and I can’t wait to see the back of them,” says Lowe, with an audible grin. “I’m really proud of [the ones] we did. But I think it’s very much brand-dependent and restaurant-dependent when it comes to whether they’re a good idea.” Again, it’s a running theme that the frantic, perma-pivoting hustle of the past 12 months has helped to tell restaurateurs the kinds of businesses they want to run and the ones they absolutely do not.
In fact, you could go further and suggest that the ever-shifting, stuttering landscape of Covid-era dining — the lurching swing from takeaways and curfews to DIY boxes and sandwiches on shivering park benches — has run like one long advert for the simple, uncomplicated magic of a friendly server and thoughtfully prepared food in a warm, well-lit dining room. “I think we’ve realised that dining out isn’t perfunctory,” says Wong. “There’s an X factor to it. And we’d not really appreciated that until now.”