Fauci: Shutter bars, not classes
On-demand sushi is the lates craze for the city's rich
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that bars should be closed to prioritize getting children back in school in New York City and other regions that have experienced rising COVID-19 cases.
“Close the bars and keep the schools open,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, told ABC’s “This Week.”
“The default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school.”
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added that schools haven’t played a significant role in driving community spread of the coronavirus.
“If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all — not like one would have suspected. So let’s try to get the children back,” he said.
He called for officials to focus on imposing restrictions on more high-risk settings, such as bars and indoor dining without masks.
“The best way to ensure the safety of the children in school is to get the community level of spread low,” Fauci said, “so if you mitigate the things that you know that are causing spread in a very profound way and robust way [and] bring that down, you will then indirectly protect the children in the school.”
Where there’s a will, there’s a wagyu.
The latest pandemic dining trend is “homakase”: a sushi chef ’s prime tasting menu prepared in the host’s own kitchen. It’s a portmanteau of “home” and “omakase,” which loosely translates to “chef ’s choice” and is traditionally served at a bar with the chef presenting and explaining each course. For New York’s most discriminating diners — who have found creative ways to indulge in luxe eating experiences since dining as we know it paused in mid-March — homakase serves as a way for sushi-starved city-dwellers to feast on exotic delicacies without risking setting foot in a restaurant.
“When I moved into New York, I got into the omakase scene,” said Stephen Deckoff, who, before COVID-19, regularly patronized upscale Japanese eateries, including Sushi Lab and Nobu. When he heard about Ten Homakase — a roving pop-up that promises the freshest cuts of fish, plated and presented in apartment kitchens — he jumped. In October, he sprang for their 17-piece seasonal tasting menu and invited seven college buddies to join him, each of whom shelled out $250 for the fresh feast.
“I told everyone to wear a suit or at least a sport coat,” said the 25-year-old hedge funder who lives in Midtown East.
Deckoff said the “unique experience” was worth it. “They let me play with the blowtorch,” he said.
Jake Poznak had a feeling Ten Homakase would catch fire when he started it in September.
The 28-year-old owner of Moonrise Izakaya on the Upper West Side paused his plans to open a brick-and-mortar omakase spot next door after the pandemic hit. Instead, he pivoted to small-scale events.
“People who really want to experience omakase are hibernating right now in Westchester, Connecticut and the Hamptons,” said Poznak of the idea to start Ten Homakase. “I thought, why not go a little higher-end and into people’s homes?”
Poznak said they’re averaging two to three events per week, including regular weekly and biweekly dinner parties for three separate families. They’re taking reservations outside New York, driving as far as Boston and Baltimore with specialty gear such as napkins, blowtorches, chopsticks, rice cookers and coolers brimming with high-end fish, including salmon from Scotland and tuna from Tokyo. Home cooking in haute haunts allows for improvisation, too: “One of our clients stocks caviar and truffle in their fridge, so they brought it out for us to experiment with,” he said.
Although home catering services aren’t subjected to the same health requirements as restaurants, Poznak said Ten Homakase is careful: The staff willingly wears masks and gloves, and they all go for weekly COVID-19 tests.
And other vendors are hopping on the homakase trend.
Catherine Rivera said she was “on the hunt for a fun birthday idea for my boyfriend” when stumbling upon Homakase, a pop-up sushi restaurant run out of a couple’s Crown Heights apartment.
The 30-year-old arranged for a night out with her boyfriend and two other couples. They paid $45 a head for prime sushi cuts, including chutoro and hirame, and ponied up the additional $20 each for sake pairings. Although the duo behind Homakase — who declined to comment — generally serve guests outside in their backyard, this group ate inside the hosts’ apartment because it was raining.
“We were super-impressed with their sushi expertise,” said Rivera, who added she’s a big fan of the city’s “hole in the walls.”
But don’t expect hole-in-thewall pricing. Poznak said, “The sky’s the limit” for many of his clients, who have splurged on 43piece menus that last up to four hours.
Deckoff, who has saved money since the pandemic started because he’s not paying for cab fare and nights out, said homakase is well worth the cost.
“There’s some excess free cash flow that I could allocate toward sushi,” he said.