The dining room at Longoven (Photo by Justin Chesney)
Inside Longoven, the chairs are stacked in neat rows in the mostly empty building, waiting for guests to sit in them since March 14. Later this week, Longoven will reopen for the first time since the COVID-19 shutdown began under a sub-brand called Together. Instead of the chef’s tasting and a la carte menus that earned the restaurant a spot on Bon Appetit’s 2019 Hot List, owners Patrick and Megan Phelan and Andrew Manning have come up with something to meet the needs of guests right now: a combination of pop-ups and grocery offerings, available curbside.
“We went back to the story of the pop-up, of how we started,” Patrick Phelan says. “What was beneficial about doing that for seven years, much like the environment we’re in now, is there are no rules.”
Together will begin with takeout three days a week, a menu plucked from Manning’s popular Brasa pop-ups, which featured wood-fired chef’s favorites — grilled mushrooms, allium and seafood with punchy sauces and big, fire-born flavor.
Phelan says they’re open to changing concepts. The trio plan to introduce features as they go, including Boo’s Bakery, which will sell cookies, breads and ice cream from pastry chefs Megan Phelan and Meredith Herrera out of Longoven’s back window; chef-sourced provisions like sauces and miso for retail sale; and meal kits with themes like "A Night in Paris."
“Like everybody,” Phelan says, “we’re trying to figure out how to bridge this time and get through it.”
As the two-month mark since restaurant closures began approaches, more and more owners have come to a crossroads: Reopen and generate some revenue or close their doors for good.
“Ultimately, we waited so long [to receive] PPP that we had to do something,” says Heritage Chef-owner Joe Sparatta, emitting a series of expletives over the phone and lamenting the delay in his Paycheck Protection Program funds. “We’ve been living on nothing. The stimulus money was all we had because I wasn’t eligible for unemployment.“
Heritage plans to open this week and offer a limited takeout menu in addition to pantry items such as fresh pasta and pizza dough, along with other staples. Sparatta says bluntly, “If we don’t do this, we have to close the business. That’s the bottom line.”
When Secco Wine Bar owner Julia Battaglini received a $10,000 advance on a Small Business Administration loan, it was “go time.” With those funds, Battaglini bought the product she needed to achieve Secco’s retail-based relaunch online. For the past month, she and Nota Bene owner Victoria DeRoche have been working together to create online stores for their businesses that meet the needs of customers while providing some financial relief.
Nota Bene launched its to-go program with pizza and pasta kits two weeks ago, and last week, Secco introduced an online store with cheerfully named wine packs including the “Patio Pounder” and “Rosé All Day.”
“It’s a stop-gap, but we wanted to get something going by Mother’s Day,” Battaglini explains. The former owner of River City Cellars is returning to her retail roots with plans to offer over 150 items online including wine, cheese and charcuterie.
According to the first phase of Gov. Ralph Northam’s reopening guidelines, which go into motion Friday, May 15, restaurant and beverage establishments may offer outdoor dining at 50% occupancy and staff must wear masks. However, many chefs are leery of being first-wave guinea pigs.
“I don’t want to put my staff in charge of monitoring other people's health,” says Brittanny Anderson, who recently reopened her Church Hill restaurant Metzger Bar & Butchery after being closed for eight weeks. “That’s not what we’re trained for, and I don’t feel comfortable about it.”
Perly’s Restaurant & Delicatessen co-owner Rachelle Roberts echoes that thought: “Everyone’s anxious to get back to normal, but I don’t think we’re there yet,” she says. “We have slowed the spread of the virus by taking what seemed like extreme measures, but there are still new cases every day. It’s too soon to be serving dine-in guests.”
She and husband Kevin Roberts recently reopened Perly’s with a skeleton crew, fewer hours and a scaled-back menu. “It will sustain us for a little while,” Rachelle says, “but I don’t think that it would sustain us forever or even for a year.”
Clayton Navarre of Poor Boys hadn’t even celebrated one year in business when COVID-19 struck. Navarre had always dreamed of a to-go po’boy shop, and the shutdown presented the opportunity to test the concept through Poor Boys Express. “It’s like I’m starting all over again,” says Navarre, who adds, “We do have some idea how we want to reopen, but we are taking it slow.”
For the first few weeks of the shutdown, restaurants and guests clung to the idea of "when things go back to normal," but as social distancing continues, it has become clear that there won’t be a normal to go back to, that food service will be forever altered.
“It’s going to be a bizarro world to step into,” Phelan says of the months ahead. “The dine-in world is going to be crazy, and it’s going to have a really messy learning curve as we ramp up into it."
"Service is a collection of little, intimate moments that make guests feel cared for, and there’s no clear future in which those moments can return," he continues. "Coat check is gone. Valet is gone. My days of free tampons in a bathroom are probably gone for a while. Those things that can make a restaurant experience a little more special are going to be hard to execute under the new structure we’re in.”
