Irish Rover set up a tent on its parking ot when outdoor dining resumed in May 2020.
Slowly, gradually, with some stutter steps, Louisville’s restaurant scene, like the nation’s, is edging back toward normal, and I for one am delighted to see that.
But even with widespread vaccination and declining positivity rates that mean many of us are pocketing our masks much of the time, it’s a new kind of normal. Some restaurants have been lost. A few new ones have arrived. Takeout, delivery, even curbside service seem likely to stick as more frequent options than ever before.
Meanwhile, a lot of eateries are reporting serious difficulty hiring enough servers and cooks, and these shortages are showing up in reduced menus and, on occasion, slow service. Nobody likes that! The notion that folks are staying home on the state’s limited unemployment payment is a pile of steaming bovine excrement, but it’s a fact that some former restaurant workers have found better paying work with more comfortable hours elsewhere, and some of them aren’t coming back.
Quite a few longtime restaurant patrons, too –vaccination to the contrary notwithstanding – remain wary about going back inside a restaurant for an indulgent sit-down dinner.
So it’s an optimistic but still bumpy scene for diners, restaurant workers, and restaurant owners too. But how about the restaurant critic? What’s different over here, and does anybody care? ...
Read the complete article on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/resta ... new-normal
This was actually my contribution to a larger LEO Weekly burger issue, but it's burgerish for sure.