Respect Yourself.

I'm just the beer guy, and so I can't speak for everyone at Pints&union, but it's a great feeling to know you're working for/with people who take public health seriously, who are NOT science doubters, and who are doing their very best to observe pandemic protocols, and to implement best practices for the benefit of customers and workers alike.

If a food service establishment's or bar's priorities are in the right place, it doesn't matter that these various governmental pandemic mandates lack the necessary enforcement mechanisms to dissuade miscreants from mayhem. You follow the mandates because it's the right thing to do in a public health emergency.

We all know some establishments aren't, and to be perfectly frank, I struggle mightily with the "code of silence" as traditionally observed by the food and drink sector pertaining to withholding comment about what occurs elsewhere in the hospitality business.

I appreciate those of you who have sent me accounts, photos and videos of incredibly unhealthy scenes at local eateries and bars. I applaud your candor and grasp of the issues.

However, I won't lie to you; there's nothing I can do to help. You might try informing your elected and appointed local government officials, although in all honesty they'll probably do little apart from kicking the can a bit further down the road. Regrettable, but true.

I know that there are no sure things in life. Perfection isn't attainable, but the object is to bust your ass pursuing it, and this is what Pints&union is doing with respect to dining and drinking indoors during a pandemic. I can attest to it.

Those of you who have no intention of visiting a restaurant or bar any time soon, you have my complete support; my own household still is doing curbside carry-out (Dragon Kings Daughter and Legacy Pizza and Bakery most recently), and because I'm extremely grateful to Pints&union for allowing me to do my work in the morning, and remotely from home whenever possible, I will not be shaming anyone else for refraining from old haunts until the pandemic is under control.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a community-minded, responsible place to have a sandwich and a drink, and you have not given Pints&union a try, please do. We're doing everything in our power to make the experience safe and enjoyable. Give us feedback, and let us know what you think about your visit.

(I have no ownership stake in Pints&union. As noted, I'm just the beer guy, and I didn't tell anyone else I was planning on writing this. COVID is real, and it's going to be with us for a while. We should be taking the virus seriously; what's more, we should be positively recognizing the efforts being made by those who DO accept their responsibilities toward this end. Thank you for your support.)

Open Arms: Indiana enthusiastically welcomes COVID-cuted Kentucky diners, drinkers.

"Duh" just doesn't do it justice. Not only that, but every now and then, 125% is the new 75%.

Some Louisville bars report losing business as Indiana competitors face less stringent restrictions, by Sara Sidery (WDRB)

Some Louisville restaurants say they're losing business to competitors across the river, as Indiana has less stringent restrictions on patrons.

Indiana is keeping bars and restaurants at 75% capacity for another month, but Kentucky establishments are still stuck at 50% and likely will be for a while.

Natural's Not in It.

I suppose it's time to update the scorecard. I believe there as yet are one or two eateries that have not reopened since the pandemic, but also have not announced a definitive closing.

ON THE DRAWING BOARD
Agave & Rye (former Hull & High Water, story below)
Monnik Beer Company (former Bank Street Brewhouse on Bank)
True North Coffee House (new ownership for Quills)

OPENED IN 2020
8th Street Pizza (Breakwater; reopening)
Board and You Bistro & Wine Bar
Legacy Pizza & Bakery
Recbar 812
Fistful of Ale (nanobrewery/beer bar extension of pre-existing Fistful of Tacos)

CLOSED IN 2020
Longboard's Taco & Tiki
Primo's Delicatessen
Roadrunner Kitchen
The Standard (will function as event space)

What have I forgotten? Meanwhile, here's the Agave & Rye story.

Agave & Rye taking over former Hull & High Water space in New Albany at WLKY

Less than a year after opening its first Louisville location, Agave & Rye has already signed another lease to expand the concept into Southern Indiana, Louisville Business First reports.

The Cincinnati-based restaurant concept opened its Baxter Avenue eatery in February, and is now planning to open its second area location at the former Hull & High Water space at 324 E. Main St. in New Albany, Indiana.

Agave & Rye tweeted the news on Friday, along with the news of its new Rookwood, Ohio restaurant opening in September, and another location in Troy, Ohio, planned for November 2020. The new eateries would brand's total locations to seven, with four already-established restaurants in Louisville, Lexington and Covington, Kentucky, and Liberty Township, Ohio.

Birds of Prey.

True; the whole class is losing recess because of the actions of a few. At the same time, local governments have refused to enforce their own laws (as Steve notes), and the responsible majority within the food and drink economic sector has looked the other way while the scofflaws deny science and shirk voluntary restrictions. 

Change has to come from both directions. This being America, it likely won't, with the pandemic lasting longer and causing more suffering than it should. 

Opinion: Closing, Opening Bars And Restaurants Hastens Their Avoidable Deaths, by Steve Coomes (The Whiskey Wash)

 ... In 2020, anyone with any sense knows that packing the house is reckless. Still, some insist on rolling the dice and betting their immune systems are superior to an invisible microorganism that’s killed more than 150,000 and infected more than 4 million people in the U.S. alone. Pour alcohol on such stupidity and the gambler just gets gutsier ...

Sunday Fact Fest, Episode 04: Robin's right. Some Louisville (and SoIN) restaurants are not taking the COVID-19 pandemic as seriously as they should."

The link:

Robin Garr’s Taj Palace review at LEO: Great food and pandemic precautions, by me at Food & Dining Magazine.

My Saturday morning post at Food & Dining Magazine came about because Robin Garr did something that writers should strive always to do. His words at LEO Weekly stood me up, slapped me down, and said to me what needed to be said.

Restaurant and bar owners who aren't tasking the pandemic seriously are helping to put others at risk.

The majority of media mavens covering the restaurant and bar industry aren't holding them accountable, including me. Maybe it's time for this to change; I'm not sure it even matters given the culture of abject denial hereabouts, but what I know is that denial can only make it worse. What I can do about it as just one person isn't yet clear to me. In the meantime, it makes me even more grateful to work for people who GET IT.

My words:

 ... Billy Joel was right; honesty is such a lonely word, inside or outside “the business.” Speaking as one who owned a restaurant and brewery for 25 years, your peers function as a professional family. We stay together, and we take care of our own. There are times when some of one’s brothers and sisters err, and the understandable instinct is to keep it in the family. I’ve done so in the past, and on some occasions, I’ve come to regret it. Telling the truth might have forestalled subsequent, larger problems for everyone.

Little white lies, fudging, averting the gaze, looking the other way? They’re incompatible with the duties of journalists, analysts and reviewers, for whom credibility is dependent on being truthful. It doesn’t mean click bait, cultivating confrontation or trolling, although there might be occasional heated discussions with the folks who sell advertising.

That’s where experience comes to the fore; been there, seen that, able to synthesize information, and capable of saying what needs to be said – factually, sans hyperbole. It’s neither calling out, nor cancel culture. It’s very much about rewarding the positive performers, not the negative deniers.

I’ll shut up now. Kudos to Taj Palace, a restaurant I’ve yet to patronize but intend to visit soon for carryout, now that Robin has explained to me exactly what I need to know: “Taj Palace takes tasty Indian fare and pandemic safety seriously.”

Robin's words:

There’s no way to put this but bluntly: I don’t think some Louisville restaurants are taking the COVID-19 pandemic as seriously as they should. Why the worry?

You probably saw the news item about 11 Louisville businesses that got inspection blasts from Metro Public Health & Wellness over the Fourth of July weekend for failing to follow COVID-19 safety guidelines.

This matters: When I’m deciding where to dine during this pandemic, I want to have confidence that the restaurant’s management doesn’t slack off on health and safety.

Shut up and mask up -- but first, this Twitter user documents sweet freedom in a restaurant setting.

@libbyjones715 wrote these words on Twitter.

---

Welcome to the Freedom Cafe! We trust you to make your own choices if you want to wear a face mask. And, in the same spirit of individual liberty, we allow our staff to make their own choices about the safety procedures they prefer to follow as they prepare and serve your food.

We encourage employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but understand that some people may be allergic to certain soaps or may simply prefer not to wash their hands. It is not our place to tell them what to do.

We understand that you may be used to chicken that has been cooked to 165 degrees. We do have to respect that some of our cooks may have seen a meme or a YouTube video saying that 100 degrees is sufficient, and we do not want to encroach on their beliefs.

Some of our cooks may prefer to use the same utensils for multiple ingredients, including ingredients some customers are allergic to. That is a cook’s right to do so.

Some servers may wish to touch your food as they serve it. There is no reason that a healthy person with clean hands can’t touch your food. We will take their word for it that they are healthy and clean.

Water temperature and detergent are highly personal choices, and we allow our dishwashing team to decide how they’d prefer to wash the silverware you will put in your mouth.

Some of you may get sick, but almost everyone survives food poisoning. We think you’ll agree that it’s a small price to pay for the sweet freedom of no one ever being told what to do - and especially not for the silly reason of keeping strangers healthy.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: What is a "bar" and what is not; who can open now, and who must wait?

The Frozen Weenie Chronicles of 2014.

Last week my friend Jeff at Riverside Cigars/Match Cigar Bar in Jeffersonville posted a conundrum at this Facebook page.

So, Governor Holcolm says:

Restaurants and bars that serve food may open (on May 11) at 50% capacity with operational limitations. Bar seating will be closed with no live entertainment. Servers and kitchen staff must wear face coverings

But ATC (Alcohol & Tobacco Commission) says:

A business that merely meets the minimum food requirements outlined in 905 IAC 1-20-1 of having hot soups, hot sandwiches, coffee, soft drinks, and milk available does not qualify to open for on-premises sales during stage 2.

So, I have a question. Since when does "meeting requirements" mean one "does not qualify"? Their words, not mine!

The answer: Whenever the ATC says it does -- or doesn't.

However, in fairness to the ATC, if making sense of the laws handed by legislators to the agency is confusing during non-pandemic times, it can only be more impenetrable when some rules have been suspended, others have not, and there exists no real road map for wandering through the maze.

According to the governor's Back on Track economic reopening plan, bars without full food service cannot reopen until Stage 4, which lands on June 14th.

The ATC's official clarification can be found here.

May 8, 2020: Frequently Asked Questions on EO 20-26, Roadmap to Reopen Indiana

1. What is a “bar area”? The bar area for the purposes of Executive order 20-26 is the counter over which drinks are served. During Stage 2, this area should be for employees only. Chairs should be removed or marked as unavailable. Ordering, serving, and consuming food and drinks for on-premises consumption is prohibited in this area. To the extent that this area is being used for ordering and serving of carryout food orders, a business may continue to do this while following the CDC guidelines.
2. What is a bar or tavern that must remain closed under Paragraph 10. e. during Stage 2? A bar or tavern is a premises that prohibits the entry of anyone under the age of twenty-one and is not in the business of providing in-person full dining service. A business that merely meets the minimum food requirements outlined in 905 IAC 1-20-1 of having hot soups, hot sandwiches, coffee, soft drinks, and milk available does not qualify to open for on-premises sales during stage 2.
3. Can a retail restaurant permittee that is limited to customers twenty-one and over allow on-premises dining during Stage 2 at 50% capacity and following other social distancing and sanitation measures? Yes. The bar area must remain closed and the business must provide in-person full dinging service. A business that merely meets the minimum food requirements outlined in 905 IAC 1-20-1 of having hot soups, hot sandwiches, coffee, soft drinks, and milk available does not qualify to open for on-premises sales during stage 2.

It's clear enough to me. Bars not normally engaged in food service on-premise cannot reopen until June 14, and the ATC isn't allowing the frozen weenie dorm fridge or even a food truck to alleviate this interpretation.

My personal view is that all these reopenings are happening too soon, but no one asked me. However, if it's to be now, then it needs to be consistent. My former brewers' guild board mate Shane Pearson (Daredevil Brewing) said it best, encapsulating his viewpoint as well as mine:

"Some of this deciding what is in which stage seems random or just not trusting people to do the right thing. If you have social distancing then most retail businesses should be able to open at the same pace. Lots of room for people to stay under the radar. I've got no issue if they maintain social distancing & other requirements."

LIVE TO EAT: 50% of Indiana goes first. Getting your queue on, or keeping to the curbside?

Habana Blues.

These past few days I've been reminded of forgotten topics in history, as in the late 1980s, when those in the profession of analyzing Eastern Europe commonly debated what would happen if communism ever fell.

Essentially: We already know how to transform a capitalist economy into a communist one. But we don't know how it's done the other way around. 

Similarly, today is RO Day, the grand reopening for Indiana's restaurateurs. If food service operators so desire, they may place 50% of your ass in a seat and begin the process of implementing a new normality, subject to a great many mandates and restrictions, few of which will be clear to anyone -- operator or customer -- until doors actually are unlocked.

ON THE AVENUES: COVID tolls for thee -- whatever, so hurry up and get your ass back into this seat.

It is my personal belief that this reopening process is coming too soon in terms of public health, and inescapably, there'll be a social/political/cultural aspect to it which stands to be divisive -- although it might be plausibly argued that American society already is divided and wasn't about to come any closer together, pandemic or not, in an election year.

I continue to marvel at the results of The Fat Lamb's informal polling over the weekend at Facebook, in which the Louisville eatery asked its customers how they felt about a possible return to on-premise dining, as opposed to the curbside carryout regimen that has evolved over the past two months.

The result was not unexpected, but the veritable landslide came as a great surprise, even to me; the last time I looked, the score was approximately 145 in favor of continued curbside (with little or no likelihood of coming inside), and four, maybe five preferring to be seated again at a table. But even they expressed a cheerful willingness to continue take-aways if so ordained.

Treading lightly, I can imagine the results at a typical sports bar -- say, Hoopsters in Jeffersonville -- being slightly different, perhaps even 145 - 5 in favor of re-entry.

Not being critical, mind you; the choice to reopen or not is theirs, although you have to wonder what's going to be showing on the televisions at area sports bars.

Tiddliwinks?

I put together a pants-down survey at Food & Dining Magazine, listing restaurants intending to reopen this week, and some that aren't. Clearly, there is a division of opinion among owners and operators. It's to be expected. They're all different people, with different stories and personalities.

The food and drink industry plainly is divided, though not yet acrimoniously so. No one knows exactly how this reopening will play out, and beginning today, an experiment will begin yielding demonstrable results, which will inform further measures.

Individual conscience plays a role in all our lives, decisions and actions. We've arrived at one of those points in history, hopefully not to be forgotten, where individual conscience is of paramount importance, even more so than usual.

Here's the article. You'll have to click through to see the names of the restaurants.

Now or later? Reopening Southern Indiana restaurants — or not yet

Today is Monday, May 11. Indiana restaurants may reopen at 50% capacity, and the Indiana Restaurant and Lodging Association has released these guidelines for them, as outlined in the organization’s “Hoosier Hospitality Promise” and published at the Indianapolis Star.

Here’s what you can expect:

• All staff, including in the kitchen, will wear masks.
• All staff will pass a health check or complete a health survey prior to each shift.
• Hand sanitation stations will be available upon entry and exit from restaurants.
• All tables, chairs and common areas will be cleaned regularly.
• Menus and condiments will be single-use. Utensils will either be single-use or cleaned after every use.
• Each restaurant will have a designated employee to oversee safety and sanitation measures.
• Bar seating will be closed, with no live entertainment.
• Tables will be limited to 10 or fewer guests.
• Physical barriers will be used to separate tables, booths and bar stools.
• Communal serving areas such as buffets will be closed.

If patrons have been exposed to COVID-19 or have symptoms, they are asked to not dine in restaurants and order takeout instead. Restaurants will be limited to 50% capacity until June 14, at which time they will increase to 75% capacity. According Indiana’s plan, restaurants will be able to operate at full patron capacity beginning July 4. Bars will be closed until June 14 and will be able to operate at full capacity on July 4, pending continued positive trends.

Following in no particular order is a non-comprehensive seat-of-the-pants survey of independently owned establishments in Southern Indiana that have commented publicly about their reopening plans in the run-up to May 11.

I exchanged messages with a few of the owners, and otherwise gleaned information from their social media posts and local news reports. Even if not explicitly stated, it is reasonable to assume that all these restaurants will continue their curbside carryout and delivery programs during the coming weeks, but of course there is no substitute for contacting them directly to be sure.

Finally, to repeat, this is a survey; if your business has been omitted from either list, just e-mail me and I’ll update: foodanddiningmagazine@gmail.com

ON THE AVENUES: COVID tolls for thee -- whatever, so hurry and get your ass back into this seat.

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
-- John Donne

Wearing a mask doesn’t make you smart, it makes you a slave to oppression from draconian leaders. Wake up! #NoMasks
-- guy on Twitter ... or was it Facebook?

Put asses in seats, people!

We need to pack this place every night, or it’s gonna be curtains for us. What sort of event, concert or promotion can we plan to get this joint filled?

And people, we gotta upsell!

Once our customers are crammed together tight enough to get the fire marshal’s antennae quivering, they need to be so very damn happy that they spend an extra buck or three -- have another shot, eat some fries, buy a t-shirt.

Why? Margins, dummy. They’re so tight that we’re already hand to mouth, and any extra bit helps -- besides, there’ll be more tips for you.

Mind you, don’t do anything illegal.

But get some asses in seats, people!

---

There can be no doubt: COVID-19 has mercilessly exposed the majority of America’s socio-economic fault lines. While the restaurant and bar business has been devastated by containment measures, at least numerous overdue discussions finally are taking place about topics like sustainability, pay rates, pricing, supply chains and a host of other matters previously acknowledged but generally deferred substantively.

This being said, the single most jarring piece of evolving reality for those of us with careers in the restaurant and bar business has been the need to think differently about those asses in seats.

Our careers have been predicated on getting large crowds of people through the door, into the building (or out on the patio, into the garden, and so on). Asses in seats translate into profits, and of course those are required, even for the most reluctant of capitalists like me.

Yet there’s more to it than that. It’s not about the money alone. Rather, it’s also the energy, the vibe and the adrenalin. There’s a place for a quiet date by candlelight -- and places where the pulsating scrum is the whole point, when you squeeze into that last available seat and let yourself be carried away by the proximity of other human beings.

Sure, there’ve always been potential customers scared off by a restaurant or bar operating at cheek to jowl capacity, but far more of us have tended toward judgments to the contrary, thinking to ourselves that a deserted eatery might not be very good to begin with.

As a server or slinger of beers, being in the weeds can be horrible; it’s been quite a while since my own time regularly spent bartending and waiting tables, yet the literal nightmares about not being able to catch up with orders still consistently plague me.

Conversely, there’s nothing like the feeling of accomplishment when the staff just plain rocks a full house. It’s better than sports, if not sex.

Notwithstanding early bartending and package store gigs, I gravitated to the restaurant business later than most, at around the age of 30. What I came to like about it was the immediacy and relatively instant gratification. Serving folks on premise, you usually knew whether they enjoyed the experience or didn’t.

It wasn’t like a sales job where days or weeks might pass before you know the deal has been sealed. Of course, those were the times before poison pen anti-social media reviews and the all-purpose tomfoolery of the internet. Folks ordered food and drink, ate, drank and paid.

Usually you could tell if they were satisfied with it. They’d tip well, we’d thank each other, and most of the time we’d see them again.

Alas, it hasn’t been that simple for a good while, although one fact is crystal clear: for the foreseeable future, the marketing situation for the dine-in food and drink segment has been flipped on its head as humanity grapples with a novel virus.

These days we can put only 25%, 33% or 50% of your ass in a seat -- spaced, masked, sanitized and hygienically sealed from the other half- or quarter-ass located socially distant from you.

It’s not the same, and I’m anguished, but in spite of this overwhelming feeling of loss, I’ve mourned long enough. Intellectual honesty demands principle, not blinders, whether it's surveying local politics or fathoming a pandemic.

COVID is very real. It’s dangerous. It’s not a coin toss conspiracy touted by dimwitted dupes, and by the way, if you’re buying into that "viral" Plandemic video, unfriend me now, because I must question your sanity.

In my view, the economic reopening is coming too soon, whether in Indiana or Kentucky. As attorney/educator Joe Dunman remarked at Twitter, “This is all going to end up being the biggest disaster capitalism boondoggle in the history of disaster capitalism.”

Yes, it is my fervent wish to awaken tomorrow to a one-off, shot on the dark miracle, one that means we can go back to putting the entirety of your ass in a seat.

Except I’m not a fantasist.

Some sweet day we might get back to a semblance of the joy, pain, revelry and aching feet that characterized my life’s work as it worked it earlier in my life, right up until March of 2020.

It may well be the case that the food and drink business survives, but moving forward exactly the way we were?

Nope. That’s gone. Let’s bury it and create something new. It’s really the only choice, because whether we want to admit it or not, everyone isn’t coming “back” to the future.

The question: Who will?

---

I say this not because it pleases me. Facts are facts, and people are people; at times the facts elude the people, and at different times it’s the other way around.

Next week, subject to “distanced” terms of engagements, those restaurants in Indiana that so choose may reopen to the public. Kentucky follows shortly thereafter.

Some places will reopen. Others won’t, at least yet. Bars are supposed to be shuttered for a few more weeks in both Indiana and Kentucky, with the key consideration in these establishments being the presence of food … and the persistence of the prohibitionistic impulse in government.

(As an aside, for those bars in Indiana cannily contemplating the ploy of using their statutorily required frozen weenies, cup o’ soup, dehydrated milk and instant coffee as “food” in order to reopen, be aware that the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission already has publicly frowned on it.)

Given the limitations of on-premise patronage imposed by the state as a prerequisite to begin again, most observers are focusing on numbers: will restaurant economics even allow profitability if -- yes -- all those seats can’t be filled with asses?

I’ve been thinking about it differently. For me, it’s attitudinal as much as numerical. Next week, when the doors at certain eateries are unlocked, who will their customers likely be?

If we’re to believe the piquant graffiti adorning the blue state, red state anti-social media silos, two points of view already are selected, divided and entrenched.

One is made up of the clamorous COVID doubters, who haven’t believed the epidemiologists from the start -- never conceded the need for social distancing, or stay-at-home orders, or mask-wearing as a simple courtesy to others, or hand washing. Simply stated, they can’t wait to pick up precisely where they left off on St. Patrick’s Day Eve.

The other camp is populated primarily by those who’ve chosen to trust modern medical science on COVID, accepting the need to flatten the curve now as well as expressing a willingness to modify future behaviors until testing, treatment and vaccinations make headway against COVID. They’ll be doing curbside pickup for quite some time to come.

In my view, these two pandemic-driven polar opposites are absolutely real. But I also see the existence of a middle ground. It might not be a majority, just a sizable minority: Americans who believe the science, are willing to be cautious, and also would like to ease their own asses back into regular seats at their favored haunts to enjoy a meal.

I think they’ll be waiting and watching to see how the reopening goes, and their perception of the outcome will go a long way toward determining the extent of their participation in the reopening.

As such, what’s in store?

---

If there exists one sizable group of potential diners who’ll refrain from returning to on-premise restaurants owing to an excess of caution, and another segment that might be willing to leave the house, although surely not in droves from the outset, can we assume that the bulk of patrons returning during the first few weeks of renewed operations will be those same COVID doubters who’ve been flashing their #NoMasks memes and protesting on behalf of their right to pretend that nothing ever happened?

And, if so, isn’t it perfectly reasonable -- if horribly disconcerting -- to assume that this contingent of COVID deniers taken to emitting primal screams of eternal hostility against matters of pandemic protocol, probably will be openly and aggressively manifesting their feelings as they reappear in restaurants?

(They've taken to saying “my body my choice,” an odd sentiment for folks who also are anti-abortionists, but okay. Americans always struggle with logic.) 

How conducive will the “it’s just the flu, libtard” crowd be to the restrictions embraced by restaurateurs in terms of capacity and spacing -- not to mention masks and an absence of bar stools?

How cooperative will they be with modes of conduct they’ve spent the past months violently denouncing?

I can hear it loud and clear.

“Whaddya mean, you don’t want all 20 of our asses to come inside, be seated and spend money? Isn’t our money GOOD enough for you? Why are you letting the guvmint tell you what to do? It’s a plan-damn-demic, anyway. Now are you gonna seat us, or what?”

If rejected, will they smirk, sulk and slither away … to the other establishment down the street with fewer scruples about covidiocy, and a willingness (understandably, perhaps from financial desperation) to bend these recommendations?

In perfect candor, I hope I’m wrong. Unlike the mayor of New Albany, if I’m proven wrong then I’ll take my medicine and admit it publicly.

However, based on the current level of antebellum degradation, the likeliest outcome for the first weeks of restaurant reopening will be shrill scenes repeated in the upholstered booths of eateries and atop their tables, riotous tableaux eerily similar to the dunderheaded drone-bot triumphalism of Trump rallies, accompanied by a determined pushing of FOX news envelopes and a mass flaunting of whatever safety guidelines strike "down with science" diners as disposable.

By the way, the first party of 46 asses has arrived, and they're waiting to be placed in seats. They'd like to bring their flags inside.

I almost forgot -- we also heard from the McMichaels, and well, unfortunately they had to cancel their reservation. Something about an unexpected reckoning, but at least their asses have seats ... in a courtroom somewhere.

---

Recent columns:

April 30: ON THE AVENUES: A week that was wooden like Pinocchio and dry as an unused water park or an unfilled glass.

April 23: ON THE AVENUES: Hemingway in a time of mercifully silent thunder.

April 16: ON THE AVENUES: Bunker mentalities, bunker abnormalities; bunker dreams, bunker screams.

April 9: ON THE AVENUES: #VoteEwwNoMatterWho, or when being realistic means being radical.

Georgia restaurateur nails premature reopening: "This is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping us."

Who is John Gianoulidis? At Mother Jones, Maddie Oatman tells us: Reopening a Restaurant Will Take a Lot More Than a Governor’s Order.

For the last five years, John Gianoulidis satisfied Atlanta-area residents’ craving for Greek food with gyros and baklava from his two diners, both called Kafenio, and a coffee shop. As paralysis from the coronavirus took hold last month, he made the tough decision to shut down one of the diners, which catered heavily to now-furloughed Delta Airlines employees, and laid off 14 employees from all the locations. He turned another location into a counter-service-only affair, and is now working seven days a week at both the diner and the coffee shop. Though he’s seen some demand for takeout meals, business has dropped off dramatically. “I’m just keeping my head above water,” he says.

But Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s announcement on April 20 that certain businesses in the state, including restaurants with dine-in service, would be allowed to reopen at the end of the month—and that no local ordinances can prevent them from doing so—did nothing to assuage Gianoulidis’ angst.

Kemp, backed by new guidelines released by President Donald Trump for reopening the economy, framed his decision as an effort to “get Americans back to work.” But as far as Gianoulidis was concerned, Kemp’s policy was just a way to shift the burden of the virus from the state back onto people like him. “Guys, this is about screwing the working class and small business,” he posted on Facebook that night, “not about helping us.”

Following is the referenced Facebook post by Gianoulidis.

April 20 at 10:18 PM

Here’s the deal.

Kemp mandates restaurants reopen, whether I reopen dining rooms or not.

I file for business interruption insurance, it does not go through since I am “allowed” to operate full capacity.

My landlord can demand all their money, since I am allowed to fully operate.

Furloughed staff that is collecting unemployment insurance have to come back to work or I have to let them go. Their unemployment insurance then goes on my tab.

If things blow up again, they are still on my tab not on the states, since they are no longer employed.

Guys, this is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping us.

Thank you so much to everyone that voted this malignant tumor into office.

Before you don your camo and march off to protest scientific reality, take a moment and read the piece at Mother Jones. There remains a distant possibility you might learn something. The closing paragraph is striking.

Gianoulidis doesn’t feel ready to follow suit. When he does, he imagines he’ll pull half of his tables and make sure to continue asking himself: “Have I served the public in good conscience?” He thinks often of his parents, Greek immigrants who emigrated to New England in 1963. They “worked their tails off” in factories to save up enough to open a little pizza joint in Connecticut. Their story reminds him to keep moving forward right now. And if things in Georgia continue to unravel, he says, “Thankfully, I also have Greek citizenship.”

The solution in Vilnius -- and "a REALLY efficient way of killing locally owned restaurants."

Close the streets and let us spill out onto them. Get those cars the hell out of the way. Governor Holcomb may wish to keep those alcohol rules relaxed for a great deal longer.

Lithuanian capital to be turned into vast open-air cafe, by Jon Henley (The Guardian)

Vilnius gives public space to bars and cafes to allow physical distancing during lockdown

Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, has announced plans to turn the city into a vast open-air cafe by giving over much of its public space to hard-hit bar and restaurant owners so they can put their tables outdoors and still observe physical distancing rules.

The Baltic state, which has recorded 1,344 cases of the coronavirus and 44 deaths, allowed cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating, hairdressers and almost all shops to begin reopening this week as part of a staged exit from lockdown.

But the health ministry has imposed strict physical distancing rules and safety measures. Shops must limit the number of customers at one time, masks will remain mandatory in all public spaces, and cafe and restaurant tables have to be placed at least two metres apart.

That posed a problem for many restaurateurs in Vilnius old town, Senamiestis, a Unesco-listed world heritage site whose narrow streets make it almost impossible to place more than a couple of tables outside – prompting the mayor’s offer.

“Plazas, squares, streets – nearby cafes will be allowed to set up outdoor tables free of charge this season and thus conduct their activities during quarantine,” said Remigijus Šimašius. Public safety remained the city’s top priority, the mayor said, but the measure should help cafes to “open up, work, retain jobs and keep Vilnius alive”.

The preceding is the appetizer. Here's the main course; dessert can be the beer or bourbon of your choice (dutch treat, natch). Maybe just another Twitter tweeter, but with an exceedingly clear explanation of where we stand in the indie restaurant biz, and where we may or may not be going. I've combined her 12 tweets into a readable whole.

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As someone who grew up in the restaurant industry (my dad managed locally owned restaurants for 40+ years), forcing restaurants to reopen with limited capacity for social distancing purposes is a REALLY efficient way of killing locally owned restaurants.

And when I say forcing here, what I mean is that if a state/municipality lifts the portion of the stay at home order that has been affecting restaurants and instituting these rules, they take away the restaurant's leverage to negotiate with landlords/creditors/etc.

Or to pursue any form of grants/SBAs/PPP funding to try to retain or pay staff during this. So they don't really have any choice but to reopen.

BUT, even at the best of times, restaurants run on helluva tight margins. They count on mostly full houses to pay bills -- bills like rent, utilities, insurance, suppliers (food/liquor/linens/paper goods/cleaning products), salaries, and taxes.

A slow couple of weeks of the house being less than full means some or those bills might not get paid. Too many weeks and restaurants fold.

So when you tell restaurants to reopen at diminished capacity, you're taking the legs out from under them, and even if they can hope to stay afloat, you're also asking them to create systems for dealing with that limited capacity from whole cloth.

Let's say Mom & Pop's place has a normal capacity of 30, but now they can seat 25% of that. That's 7 people. Maybe 2 tables. Who gets those two tables? You probably can't have people sitting around waiting for them.

So is everything reservation only now?

Anyone who has hostessed somewhere with reservations can tell you what a nightmare they often are. You take them assuming people will only be there a certain amount of time and they stay too long. Or have more in their party. Or they no show.

But if you can't have people trying to do walk ins, how else can you do it with appropriate social distancing? So you take reservations and tell people they have strict time limits? Then if they're staying too long, you force them out?

They'll take that out on servers.

In A LOT of these states, those servers are making $2.15 an hour plus tips. So if the servers have to rush people through meals to get tables turned to try to get the meal counts to make this remotely viable for the restaurant, their tips are going to suffer.

That will get passed back up to the restaurant who will then have to make up the difference up to minimum wage. To do that and have any possible hope of staying afloat, you're probably looking at menu prices going up.

Add in the idea that Americans who have been out of work for the last two months aren't all going to have the money to go rushing back out to eat, and this whole thing is a going to push a LOT of local restaurants to the tipping point.

(And possibly some large corporate chains, given the way some of them have also been struggling, but my experience is primarily in locally owned restaurants).

If you want to KILL small restaurant and bar businesses, this is how you do it.

My homes away from home are gone, so the SOCIALIST is having BEERS WITH himself.

And with his wife, of course. Let's take a look at the calendar.

Oktoberfest? Nope.

The Fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona? Canceled.

Poperinge Hop Fest? No word yet, but "no go" would seem to be a foregone conclusion.

I'll concede to no longer being the type who enjoys large gatherings like Octoberfest and San Fermin. Poperinge's triennial paean to the magic cone is vastly smaller and better suited to my preferences. It's clear that all such gatherings will succumb to the coronavirus in 2020.

That's part of the reason why as years go, 2020 already has ceased to exist. For all intents and purposes, we're playing for New Year's Day, 2021.

My reaction to the global pandemic response recalls the words in 1914 of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, who remarked to a friend as the United Kingdom's prepared to enter the First World War, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, (and) we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

The lamps were lighted again, though it took a while. 106 years is one thing, 75 another (since the end of WWII), so nine years is sufficient for the rehash of an essay, given my inability at this late date to even remember the rationale for the original column.

First published in October of 2011, this essay was an attempt to explain the central place that pubs, libations, travel and their wonderful third spaces have occupied in my life.

However first a few words about the current fate of these third spaces.

During the pandemic an atheistic Dionysian public imbiber like me finds himself just as deprived of religious worship as any conventional believer. Without exaggeration, all the things I've truly cherished outside the boundaries of my own home are gone, with their return utterly uncertain, or whether they’re to come back in any recognizable form at all.

Depressing isn’t the word. It’s worse than that, of course in a metaphysical sense and not to be confused with a clinical diagnosis.

Seldom do I reference motion pictures to make a point, but I’m reminded of the Star Trek reboot a few years back wherein Spock watches as the planet Vulcan disintegrates before his eyes.

That’s the last six weeks for me, and for so many of us in the food and drink industry. 40 years and an entire working career, suspended in a flash. Forgive me if I’m unwilling to contemplate life without boisterous pubs with pints in Dublin, or relaxing beer gardens in Bavaria with 2,000 of your best friends. Being unable to go to places and experience them? Might as well amputate a limb or two.

Right now, I can’t fathom it. For me, here in America, pub culture always was the one sure antidote to our failed political experiment. Now the coronavirus has exposed the latter beyond any shadow of doubt, while also depriving us of the means to cope with (cov)idiocracy.

Hemingway’s empty bottle as a means of sovereign action serves no purpose if it cannot be thrown at the oppressor -- and if your oppressor is with you sheltering at home, your problems are far larger than a garden-variety hangover.

I’m not tremendously well. I’ll get better. Revolution works for me; it always has.

As Vonnegut would say, so it goes.

Here’s the 2011 rumination, touched up just a bit to fit my circumstances a decade later.

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Homes Away from Home (2011 - 2020)

We went for a stroll one Sunday a few years ago and passed a fly-by-night evangelistic church occupying an old shotgun house that had witnessed better days.

A graying middle-aged man I’d never seen before was standing out front, and he waved animatedly as we passed. I stopped and looked at him with as dull an expression as I could muster, but he was undeterred.

“Some Sunday, why don’t you come to church with us?”

I stopped and thought about it.

“Sure, as long as you’ll come to my church with me.”

Now he was the one pausing to think.

“Where’s your church?”

Got him.

“Any pub will do.”

We kept walking. I never saw him again.

---

Often in this space I write about otherwise forgettable days both near and far, and the fact of these days being forever marked in my memory by the presence of beer.

Well, isn’t beer always involved?

Whether opening a growler of lager on my own porch with a cigar nearby, or schlepping bottles filled with ale via bicycle panniers through the Belgian countryside, times are better with beer.

Human life spans are long and short all at once, and most of our days and nights are passed and beyond recall, and yet I’ll never forget that one time in Bohemia, walking to the neighborhood rail station pub tap for pitchers of draft beer, and then spending the afternoon drinking with good, kind, giving people, even though communication was a challenge owing to our linguistic divergences.

On that occasion, we brought the beer back with us, but during the course of my decades as a professional drinker, I’ve preferred my consumption to be on premise, out in the open, and part of the public record. It’s a tightrope I enjoy walking, even if such openness sometimes has resulted in less than flattering recollections, both on my part and in the minds of those forced to witness my drunken antics.

Most of the time it doesn’t come to that, and there is a fundamentally positive dynamic at play. The reason why bars, pubs and other watering holes are the only places I’ve ever truly felt comfortable – my natural habitat, as it were – is in part a statement about my innate proclivities, and also owing to the historical function of those places as third spaces.

Nowadays most of us in America have living rooms of our own, but a social instinct still impels us to find another milieu to spend time apart from home and work, another comfortable spot – perhaps a gym, coffee shop, park bench … or even a church, in a pinch derived from sheer desperation.

Well, churches can be interesting to look at, preferably while drinking at a sidewalk café across the square.

These are functional examples, but all of them a bit dry for my taste. I prefer my third spaces to offer the possibility of consuming beverage alcohol, most often beer. When I’m surrounded by people who feel the same, anything is possible. This is especially true when you’re a wandering stranger, and find yourself welcomed, albeit temporarily, into the public living room of the locals.

It never gets any better than that.

An inviting barroom shifts the perspective of the traveler from the expansive outside looking in, to the inside looking back out ... at times, tightly. From five thousand miles away, you enter a cozy room and ask for a tankard of whatever is made right there, whether in the building, the town or the region.

Granted, one might have a lovely experience in Munich at a mock Pampas restaurant specializing in the beef and wines of southernmost South America, but really, shouldn’t you be going somewhere else for those?

---

The late Bostonian ward-heeling politician Tip O’Neill rather famously commented that all politics is local, and in like fashion, my pathway is leading me inexorably to this conclusion: All beer drinking culture is local.

Although I’m no longer a craft brewery owner, and allow myself a broad range of geographical libational constructs, there remains an essence and primacy to what is being brewed at or near the place one drinks beer.

Truthfully the homebrewer’s self-made bounty is the purest possible example, followed by local commercial brewers and their products. If the beer comes from elsewhere, whether down the road or around the globe, there remains a commensurate importance in choosing genuinely local ownership of the establishments serving it.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to drive all the way to Chico, California, and drink Sierra Nevada at the “neighborhood” chain restaurant, Applebee’s. They may serve it, but chains don’t deserve my patronage.

Returning full circle to the man’s invitation those many years ago to come to church, it may sound as if I’m formulating commandments and theological doctrine. You bet it does. What do you think this philosophy major has been pondering all these years while balanced, at times precariously, atop those thousands of bar stools?

Beer drinking is my sacrament, and pubs are my sanctuaries. When the collection tray was passed, I put all of my money into beer. I got the true religion for sure, but it came from drinking the beer … not the Kool-Aid.

Sam is stepping away from Sam's, but the institution abides with new ownership.

Photo from Payne-Koehler Road in 1980, with
the Fourth Dam Tavern (future Sam's) on the left.

Sam Anderson is stepping away from the restaurant biz. Below you'll find the local chain newspaper's coverage.

Sam as an individual and Sam's as a bar/restaurant are iconic institutions in New Albany. "Legend" is overused, but entirely appropriate in this instance. How many local eateries have been in business for the better part of 37 years under the same name and ownership? Sam is the link between the Lancaster's and South Side of old, and the explosion of new dining and drinking establishments today.

I believe the footprint of the original Sam's now lies beneath asphalt near the intersection of Charlestown Road and Blackiston Mill Road. In olden times it was called Kamer's Tavern, then became Fourth Dam Tavern for a very long period. It's what the business was called when I attended university at IU Southeast.

It will suffice to say that the Fourth Dam Tavern was a dive in the old-school sense, not at all cuddly in the contemporary parlance. The door on the Blackiston Mill Road side, which was used by customers, was less than a sidewalk's length from passing cars. It was insane.

I turned 21 in 1981, which proved briefly embarrassing when revealed to staffers in the joints where I already was a regular. Around the same time Fourth Dam Tavern closed, and the new owner remodeled it into a German-themed eatery (no joke) called the Gasthaus. The redesign includes stucco and exterior murals of Bavarian scenes, pained by a local artist Rene Delisle, who died in 2002.

Gasthaus lasted maybe two years, and was followed by a short-lived bar and grill called Ye Olde Mill Inn. Then in early 1984 came Sam's.

Friends of mine knew Sam from high school, and we all became immediate barflies. This will come as a shock to some, but one of the beers Sam kept around for us was Michelob Classic Dark in bottles. We drank the living hell out of that one, along with St. Pauli Girl, Beck's and (yes) draft swill when money was tight.

Sam's under Sam was an institution. Let's hope it stays that way under the news owners -- and, by the way, the fire at the original location of Sam's was in December 2013, not 2014. Minor point, I know. The reason I remember is that is happened right before Christmas.

Sam's Food & Spirits founder stepping away from business, by John Boyle (News&Bune)

After nearly four decades, Sam Anderson is selling his namesake restaurant, which has been a part of the Floyd County community since opening in 1984.

VIDEO: Longboard's Taco & Tiki has closed, but Ian Hall has good news, too.

Ian Hall made the announcement via video this morning on Facebook. Trust me, I know what it feels like to lose one, so best wishes to Ian, Nikki and the Brand Hospitality restaurant group. Overall Brand's brand remains strong at The Exchange Pub + Kitchen and Brooklyn and The Butcher.

There is no word yet as to the next configuration of the soon-to-be vacant space on the corner of Market and Pearl.

You'll notice that in the video Ian is seated in the space many readers will recall as Feast BBQ's original location in New Albany, adjacent to The Exchange on Main Street. The building changed hands after Feast BBQ closed in 2018, and now the top-to-bottom remodeling is complete.

It will be known as the Tavern Hall at The Exchange and function as a dining room and special events space. Kitchen space at The Exchange also has been expanded.

LIVE TO EAT: Longboard's Taco & Tiki will open this Friday, July 27.

From the folks who brought you Exchange and Brookyn, Longboard’s Taco & Tiki is coming to downtown New Albany in 2018.

Let's start a list.

OPENING IN 2020
Board and You Bistro & Wine Bar (TBD; 430 Pearl, where the Cidery was to have been)
Monnik Beer Company (TBD; former Bank Street Brewhouse on Bank)
Recbar 812 (February 3; former La Rosita's on Pearl)
Tavern Hall at The Exchange (event space in the former Feast BBQ)

CLOSING IN 2020
Longboard's Taco & Tiki

Here is last year's summary.

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New Albany's restaurant and bar openings and closings for 2019.

December 30, 2019

Following is our crowd-sourced list of restaurant/bar openings and closings in New Albany for 2019: Indies only; no chains, and just businesses within city limits.

Here's a special category: Floyd County Brewing, which expanded into the Biergarten after launching Grain Haus in 2018. They're still all common ownership, but deserving of note for organization of available space.

Did we miss anyone? There are two reasons why Our Lady of Perpetual Hops isn't on this list: (1) it doesn't have a kitchen, and (b) I'm still not sure whether it's city, fringe area or county. The beers are good, though.

OPENING IN 2019 ... 8 + 3 (see below) = 11
Boomtown Kitchen
Chicago City Pizza
Fistful of Tacos
Get It on a Bun at Booty’s
La Catrina
Tacolicious To Go
The Earl
The Standard Plate & Pour

CLOSING IN 2019 ... 6 + 3 (see below) = 9
Bank Street Brewhouse/Taco Steve
Cox’s Hot Chicken
Hull & High Water
Mandarin Cafe
Red Men Club
Sinaloa

BOTH OPENING AND CLOSING IN 2019 ... 3
Bliss Artisan
El Rico Taco
Mirin

New Albany's restaurant and bar openings and closings for 2019.

I had to pick one of them for the photo.

Following is our crowd-sourced list of restaurant/bar openings and closings in New Albany for 2019: Indies only; no chains, and just businesses within city limits.

Here's a special category: Floyd County Brewing, which expanded into the Biergarten after launching Grain Haus in 2018. They're still all common ownership, but deserving of note for organization of available space. 

Did we miss anyone? There are two reasons why Our Lady of Perpetual Hops isn't on this list: (1) it doesn't have a kitchen, and (b) I'm still not sure whether it's city, fringe area or county. The beers are good, though.

OPENING IN 2019 ... 8 + 3 (see below) = 11
Boomtown Kitchen
Chicago City Pizza
Fistful of Tacos
Get It on a Bun at Booty’s
La Catrina
Tacolicious To Go
The Earl
The Standard Plate & Pour

CLOSING IN 2019 ... 6 + 3 (see below) = 9 
Bank Street Brewhouse/Taco Steve
Cox’s Hot Chicken
Hull & High Water
Mandarin Cafe
Red Men Club
Sinaloa

BOTH OPENING AND CLOSING IN 2019 ... 3
Bliss Artisan
El Rico Taco
Mirin

Chief edible tourism bourbonist Greg Fischer is "praying" that restaurant meals will be taxed higher because that's "easiest" for him and his oligarch friends.

Is he daft?

Fischer Says Restaurant Tax ‘Easiest’ Option For Covering Pension Obligation, by Amina Elahi (WFPL)

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said budget talks are already underway and will pick up in earnest in the new year. City leaders will again need to contend with a large pension bill that is expected to grow another $10 million in the fiscal year starting in July. The question is whether they will turn to cuts for a second year in a row, or successfully raise taxes instead.

The easiest option would be a 3% restaurant tax, which could cover most of the city’s pension costs for the next few years, Fischer said in a year-end interview with WFPL. That move would require authorization by state legislators, which he said would be easy to do. It wouldn’t need a Constitutional amendment, and smaller cities already have the power to implement it.

“I pray for that,” Fischer said. “And we’ll, we’ll see if that happens.”

Short of that, he said the Metro Council may need to reconsider the insurance premium tax they voted down last spring. Fischer said it’s the only real option they have for increasing taxes without state approval. And he said public backlash to cuts that resulted from that vote may encourage Council members to reevaluate ...

LIVE TO EAT: "Dear Restaurants: This Chair Sucks."

"The banquettes are designed for one-hour meals, my boss explained. To keep the tables turning, they had to make sure people wouldn’t be comfortable for too long—a time period (and bench angle) that varied from restaurant to restaurant. Certain chairs and benches indicated how long the restaurateur expected the meal to take."

As a man of ample weight and height, I can concur that these trendy metal chairs are the worst ever, but this this principled rant at Vice about their intrinsic offensiveness is one of the finest in recent memory. I'm not pointing fingers, but for this reason (these chairs) alone, there are/were places I won't go unless I'm planning on standing for a beer at the bar.

Dear Restaurants: This Chair Sucks, by Naomi Tomky (Vice)

This uncomfortable and not particularly attractive chair has become a disease.

The Chair has been around for decades, but it was in the post-recession period, around 2010, that it became ubiquitous: its arching metal back wrapping just barely forward enough to intrude on your hips, the nearly flat seat inviting you to join it, coldly and bracingly, like Ursula inviting you into her underwater lair. The naked metal paired well with the Edison bulbs and exposed rafters of the era. As raw wood and vintage-style painting on brick took over décor, everything had to look perfectly minimalist. And the chair, usually in unpainted metal, completed that look.


Unfortunately, it didn’t complete the experience. Because I don’t have to touch the bare lightbulbs and there’s no danger of a splinter from a ceiling beam, those were of little consequence. But those chairs, they caused me plenty of pain. As a woman of ample size, I thought, as they first started spreading like the wildfire of mild annoyance into restaurants around the country, that I must just be too fat for these chairs. But as I silently suffered through another dinner in one of these low-level torture devices, my rail-thin friend Bill could no longer keep quiet on the horrors of The Chair. From his rant, I realized that everyone found these chairs to be fundamentally terrible: they’re cold, they’re hard, and they just don’t seem to be designed to fit a human body (and certainly not a large one).

To be fair, choosing restaurant seating is a tougher decision to make than you might imagine: chairs are expensive, they tend to fall apart, restaurants need tons of them, and they need to match the look and feel of the restaurant. The Chair managed to find a niche: cheap versions of the original French model were plentiful, they stacked, they had no fabric to stain or rip, and no wood to warp or twist. They seemed to slide into various restaurant looks fairly easily ...

"No official development plan has been submitted," but obviously there's a new restaurant coming to this vacant lot in Jeffersonville.

Hanson Bar & Grill?

Just curious here.

Does the News and Tribune actively seek to connect headlines to the content below them, or is it just blind editor's bluff?

For instance, this story. The header trumpets a restaurant in the works for a recently rezoned vacant lot.

But the story by reporter John Boyle mentions a rumored restaurant in only one paragraph, then offers an excellent account of transparency and planning issues in downtown Jeffersonville.

How does this story have anything to do with a headline touting a restaurant that the writer himself acknowledges is a rumor and absolutely nothing more?

How is the headline even remotely accurate -- unless it wasn't intended to be accurate, and was purposefully floated because any article about food draws more clicks than the ones about zoning changes?

Is anyone in charge at our local chain newspaper?

New restaurant in the works near Jeffersonville's Big Four Station Park

JEFFERSONVILLE — One of Jeffersonville's booming areas could see another addition in the coming years.

Last week, the Jeffersonville City Council approved the rezoning of a property at 300 W. Maple St., where Maple and Mulberry streets converge. The lot, which sits at the northwest corner of Big Four Station Park, has been a vacant strip of grass for years.

Though it hasn't been occupied in any permanent capacity, some city officials recall it being used as parking for Thunder Over Louisville and similar festivals. That could change now that the property has been sold, with a new project currently in the works.

No official development plan has been submitted, though early talks refer to the project as a sit-down restaurant and bar.

There won't be any new restaurants in New Albany this week.

Thanks for indulging this test of NA Confidential's theory that any post explicitly mentioning restaurants or food in the title can be relied upon to quintuple the views of the ones that don't.

A savory food porn image doesn't hurt. Consequently you might be interested in this link.

Agree or disagree?

Those of us in the biz know the struggle is real, and has been for quite a while.

We’ve just lived through the greatest period of restaurant growth in U.S. history. Here’s why it’s ending, by Laura Reiley (Washington Post)

A new book explains the sudden death of the golden age of dining out in America

We’ve just been through America’s belle epoque of restaurants.

What’s more, the party is over and most of us are blithely unaware. The restaurant industry is frequently the precursor for a market correction, an early harbinger of a bear market or even a recession to come. And some experts are saying that an unfortunate confluence of factors — oversaturated restaurant markets, rising labor and food costs, weak sales, changing consumer tastes and loyalties, a shrinking middle class, declines in mall traffic, bank and investor skittishness about returns on investments — means the near future looks bleak.

This is the thesis of “Burn the Ice: The American Culinary Revolution and Its End,” a new book by James Beard Award-winning food journalist Kevin Alexander ...

LIVE TO EAT: Chef Edward Lee's thoughtful essay "Restaurant Reviewing Needs a Revamp."

Marty Rosen points the way in a short post at Food & Dining Magazine, and Chef Lee takes it from there.

Writing for Mark Bittman’s new online food magazine Heated, Chef Lee recently penned an incisive essay that defends the importance of professional criticism but argues that our increasing diverse culinary culture calls for equally diverse journalism.

His tagline is telling: “For those of us who cook from a culture that is outside the European vernacular, we may own our recipes, but we never owned the words that described our foods. And it’s time we did.”

I suppose the future of the genre itself -- restaurant reviews as written by someone who knows something about food -- is up for grabs in a world where Yelp follies proliferate. When everyone knows everything, no one really knows anything, do they?

Restaurant Reviewing Needs a Revamp, by Edward Lee (Heated)

As chefs and diners move away from Eurocentric restaurants, food writing still needs to catch up

... I don’t want to dismantle a system that has documented America’s restaurants, but when the country’s most exciting restaurants are as diverse as the America we live in, how can we possibly rely on the old system? In the past two years, some of the best dishes I have eaten have been from restaurants that serve Sri Lankan food, Laotian food, Uzbek food, and Nigerian food. I am an expert in none of these cuisines. And I am going to make the bold assumption that neither is the food reviewer of the local paper who has been tenured there for the past 20 years. When diners are more interested than ever before in the foods of nations that have been ignored by history, how do we properly and intelligently review these restaurants?

One of the incredible byproducts of the food revolution in America is that we have an army of “foodies” that come in all shapes, colors, sizes, ages, and economic and social backgrounds. We are as discerning about our Michelin-starred meals as we are about our banh mi and our pupusas. In a near future, when Eurocentric restaurants may not be the dominant cuisine, when the new audience is going to demand more from a review than a list of italicized dishes, how do we adjust to this? At a time in the restaurant industry where we are going through a reckoning of what is right and wrong, is there a place where food criticism of “ethnic” cuisines can be more inclusive and respectful?

Edward Lee is the author of “Smoke & Pickles” and of “Buttermilk Graffiti,” winner of the 2019 James Beard Award for Best Book of the Year in Writing; the chef/owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky; and culinary director of Succotash in Penn Quarter, Washington D.C. and National Harbor, Maryland.