And our account rep, Marie Elena Corrao — we met when I was her first account 20 years ago; she came to our wedding in 2016 — put the order through without even clearing her throat, sending the truck to a now-shuttered business. And that crew of knuckleheads you adore are counting on you for their livelihood. Or, you know, someone gets married and has a baby and leaves Prune, whatever, when people move on on their last day, I never I never do the whole, like, ponderous hugging, and, I just treat it like any other day. After the meeting, there was some directionless shuffling. The sad testimony gushes out, confirming everything that used to be so convincingly denied. Everything was uphill. As the economy shut down, few American cities were hit harder and faster than Las Vegas. I meant to create a restaurant that would serve as delicious and interesting food as the serious restaurants elsewhere in the city but in a setting that would welcome, and not intimidate, my ragtag friends and my neighbors — all the East Village painters and poets, the butches and the queens, the saxophone player on the sixth floor of my tenement building, the performance artists doing their brave naked work up the street at P.S. There was no Eater, no Instagram, no hipster Brooklyn food scene. Everyone in my industry encouraged me to apply for an S.B.A. Of gentle but nervous pleas from my operations manager to consider signing up with a third-party delivery service like Caviar. It instantly turns 180 degrees: Even famous, successful chefs, owners of empires, those with supremely wealthy investors upon whom you imagine they could call for capital should they need it, now openly describe in technical detail, with explicit data, how dire a position they are in. Her sunglasses. I thought having run $2.5 million to $3 million through my bank each year for the past two decades would leave me poised to see a line of credit quickly, but then I remembered that I switched banks in the past year. See more ideas about gabrielle hamilton, nyt cooking, recipes. Even though I can’t quite take part in it myself — I’m the boss, who must remain a little aloof from the crew — I still quietly thrum with satisfaction when the “kids” are chattering away and hugging one another their hellos and how-are-yous in the hallway as they get ready for their shifts. But Prune at 20 is a different and reduced quantity, now that there are no more services to add and costs keep going up. Just a daily sort of checking to make sure that all the systems are working. Prune is in the East Village because I’ve lived in the East Village for more than 30 years. Then, as I was running a last tray of glassware before mopping the floors, Ashley leaned over to announce: “Hey, he just called it. I cannot see myself excitedly daydreaming about the third-party delivery-ticket screen I will read orders from all evening. Gabrielle Hamilton Recipes is a group of recipes collected by the editors of NYT Cooking There were individual campaigns being run all over town to raise money to help restaurant staffs, but when I tried to imagine joining this trend, I couldnt overcome my pride at being seen as asking for a handout. It felt like a popularity contest or a survival-of-the-most-well-connected that I couldnt bring myself to enter. I was bombarded with an astonishing volume of texts. Early supper, home before midnight. Dec. 9, 2020; My very first solo apartment in Manhattan was a miniature studio on East 11th Street, nothing more than a quiet room with tall windows and a stove. He still runs his only restaurant,17-year-old Hearth, on First Avenue. He intended to file for damages, as he would if this shutdown had been mandated because of a nearby flood or a fire, but he doubted I would get any money. I’d poured bleach and Palmolive and degreaser behind the range and the reach-ins, trying to blast out the deep, dark, unreachable corner of the sauté station where lost egg shells, mussels, green scrubbies, hollow marrow bones, tasting spoons and cake testers, tongs and the occasional sizzle plate all get trapped and forgotten during service. My body has a thin blue thread of electricity coursing through it. By Gabrielle Hamilton. They gotta go. On a snowy afternoon in January, I caught the F train downtown to meet Gabrielle Hamilton … Ashley texted me from home that our dog was limping severely. We are not open for brunch. Gabrielle Hamilton has shuttered her Manhattan restaurant, Prune, amid the pandemic, but the doors will reopen when things are back to normal, right? So here’s her white denim jacket hanging on the back of her chair and her clogs. Hastily, fellow chefs and restaurant owners were forming groups, circulating petitions, quickly knitting coalitions for restaurant workers and suppliers and farmers. Grab our knives? I would cook there much the way I cooked at home: whole roasted veal breast and torn lettuces in a well-oiled wooden bowl, a ripe cheese after dinner, none of the aggressively conceptual or architectural food then trendy among aspirational chefs but also none of the roulades and miniaturized bites Id been cranking out as a freelancer in catering kitchens. You need a social media presence! Prostitutes are working the tunnel and the avenue too. I turned and spotted the royal blue heel of my youngests socked foot poking out of the black soil only after it was too late. It instantly turns 180 degrees: Even famous, successful chefs, owners of empires, those with supremely wealthy investors upon whom you imagine they could call for capital should they need it, now openly describe in technical detail, with explicit data, how dire a position they are in. Prune, my Manhattan restaurant, would close at 11:59 p.m. on March 15. OK. I’m going to start walking down the block to the restaurant. This time I’ve been sitting still and silent, inside the shuttered restaurant I already own, that has another 10 years on the lease. Gabrielle Hamilton is living practically on the west side highway and there is a lot of heavy commercial traffic going in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel. What will happen come Valentines Day? I am not going to suddenly start arguing the merits of my restaurant as a vital part of an “industry” or that I help to make up 2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product or that I should be helped out by our government because I am one of those who employ nearly 12 million Americans in the work force. I emailed my accountant: This is weird? The other option, the Paycheck Protection Program, would grant you a loan with forgiveness, I learned, but only if you rehire your laid-off staff before the end of June. I opened it in 1999. The line of credit I thought would be so easy to acquire turned out to be one long week of harsh busy signals before I was even able to apply on March 25. With no clear directive from any authority public schools were still open I spent those 10 days sorting through the conflicting chatter, trying to decide what to do. The phone rang throughout the day, overwhelmingly well-wishers and regretful cancellations, but there was a woman who apparently hadn’t followed the coronavirus news. Gabrielle Hamilton's Swordfish Piccata is the most delicious dish you can make from prep to completion in 25 minutes or less. And now I understood abruptly: I would lay everybody off, even my wife. You can sort of feel that it hasn’t been lived in. But I know she would be outraged if charged $28 for a Bloody Mary. I don’t know whether to be in the present or past, and it’s in itself confusing. Prune is a cramped and lively bistro in Manhattan’s East Village, with a devoted following and a tight-knit crew. Do my sweetbreads and my Parmesan omelet count as essential at this time? And God, the brunch, the brunch. I want round tables, big tables, six-people tables, eight-tops. Links to low-interest S.B.A. And then, finally, three weeks of adrenaline drained from me. She pickled the beets and the brussels sprouts, churned quarts of heavy cream into butter. Our beloved regulars and the people who work so hard at Prune are all still my favorite people on earth. And that doesnt seem to me like a bad thing at all; perhaps it will be a chance for a correction, as my friend, the chef Alex Raij, calls it. Genevieve Ko has an ace recipe for sheet-pan bacon and eggs that’s sure to be a game-changer. It was dark outside when Ashley and I finally rolled down the gates and walked home. After being forced to shutter the restaurant that was her life’s work, Gabrielle Hamilton asks: Will there be a place for it in the New York of the future? The next stack of five arrived a week later. The owner of the New York restaurant Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton, wrote an essay about this recently – describing how, for so long, so many of us … The conversation about how restaurants will continue to operate, given the rising costs of running them has been ramping up for years now; the coronavirus did not suddenly shine light on an unknown fragility. In the meantime, I made a phone call to Ken, my insurance broker of 20 years, who explained in his patient, technical, my-hands-are-tied voice that this coronavirus business interruption wouldnt likely be covered. 122. And then another six. That guy who strolls in and wont remove his sunglasses as he holds up two fingers at my hostess without saying a word: He wants a table for two. But I know she would be outraged if charged $28 for a Bloody Mary. Meanwhile, my inbox was loaded with emails from everyone Ive ever known, all wanting to check in, as well as from colleagues around the country who were only now comprehending the scope of the impact on New Yorks restaurants. In the beginning I was closed on Mondays, ran only six dinner shifts and paid myself $425 a week. There were surveys to fill out, representatives to call, letters to sign. My kids are covered under their father’s policy, but there was no safety net for us. Knowing the balance, I snorted to myself:Good luck with that.I called Ken about this, and he got them to postpone the draw. For sales taxes, liquor invoices and impending rent, I hoped to apply for a modest line of credit to float me through this crisis. In a large bowl, mix the salt, rosemary needles, peppercorns and 1 cup water together with your hands, crushing the peppercorns a little … You should sell gift cards! I went into the empty restaurant for a bit each day to push back against the entropy a light bulb had died, a small freezer needed to be unplugged and restarted. I texted a clip of her mini-operation to José Andrés, who called immediately with encouragement: We will win this together! I cannot see myself sketching doodles of the to-go boxes I will pack my food into so that I can send it out into the night, anonymously, hoping the poor delivery guy does a good job and stays safe. And that crew of knuckleheads you adore are counting on you for their livelihood. Ashley worked the grill station and cold appetizers, while also bartending and expediting. For the past 10 years I’ve been staring wide-eyed and with alarm as the sweet, gentle citizen restaurant transformed into a kind of unruly colossal beast. Some were turning their restaurants into meal kitchens to feed hospital workers. A few of our favorite and most popular episodes of the narrated article series from “The Daily.”. Preparation. In economic terms, I don’t think I could even argue that Prune matters anymore, in a neighborhood and a city now fully saturated with restaurants much like mine, many of them better than mine — some of which have expanded to employ as many as 100 people, not just cooks and servers and bartenders but also human-resource directors and cookbook ghostwriters. I am not going to suddenly start arguing the merits of my restaurant as a vital part of an industry or that I help to make up 2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product or that I should be helped out by our government because I am one of those who employ nearly 12 million Americans in the work force. And right when I started to feel backed against the ropes, I got a group email from a few concerned former Prune managers who eagerly offered to start a GoFundMe for Prune, inadvertently putting another obstacle in front of me: my own dignity. I dont know whom to follow or what to think. For restaurants, coronavirus-mandated closures are like the oral surgery or appendectomy you suddenly face while you are uninsured. Prune is in the East Village because Ive lived in the East Village for more than 30 years. See more updates Updated 6h ago. It has only 14 tables, which are jammed in so close together that not infrequently you put down your glass of wine to take a bite of your food and realize its on your neighbors table. Among us chefs, there have been a hundred jokes over the decades about our medical (and veterinary) backup plans — given our latex gloves and razor-sharp knives and our spotless stainless-steel prep tables — but my sense of humor at that moment had become hard to summon. As word trickled out, some long-ago alumnae reached out to place orders for meals they would never eat. I want to bring to their tables small dishes of the feta cheese I’ve learned to make these long idle weeks, with a few slices of the saucisson sec I’ve been hanging downstairs to cure while we wait to reopen, and to again hear Greg rattle the ice, shaking perfectly proportioned Vespers that he pours right to the rim of the chilled glass without spilling over. Anna waited and hosted and answered the phone. There was no serious restaurant that would allow a waiter to wear a flannel shirt or hire a sommelier with face piercings and neck tattoos. What will happen come Valentine’s Day? It turned out that abruptly closing a restaurant is a weeklong, full-time job. Eleven envelopes arrived, bearing the unemployment notices from the New York State Department of Labor. I thanked my former managers but turned them down: I had repeatedly checked in with my staff, and everybody was OK for now. I spend hours inside each day, on a wooden chair, in the empty clean space with the windows papered up, and I listen to the coolers hum, the compressor click on and off periodically, the thunder that echoes up from the basement as the ice machine drops its periodic sheet of thick cubes into the insulated bin. What delusional mind-set am I in that I just do not feel that this is the end, that I find myself convinced that this is only a pause, if I want it to be? And God, the brunch, the brunch. My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. The proliferation of television shows and YouTube channels and culinary competitions and season after season of programming where you find yourself aghast to see an idol of yours stuffing packaged cinnamon buns into a football-shaped baking pan and squirting the frosting into a laces pattern for a tailgating episode on the Food Network. You cant buy a $3 can of cheap beer at a dive bar in the East Village if the dive bar is actually paying $18,000 a month in rent, $30,000 a month in payroll; it would have to cost $10. I, like hundredsof other chefs across the city and thousands around the country, are now staring down the question of what our restaurants, our careers, our lives, might look like if we can even get them back. But even in that moment, gasping for air through the T-shirt I had pulled up over my mouth, I could see vividly what it could become, the intimate dinner party I would throw every night in this charming, quirky space. Everything was uphill. Casey Kelbaugh for The New York TimesGabrielle Hamilton, second from right, was named Best Chef for New York City on Monday evening at … The proliferation of television shows and YouTube channels and culinary competitions and season after season of programming where you find yourself aghast to see an idol of yours stuffing packaged cinnamon buns into a football-shaped baking pan and squirting the frosting into a laces pattern for a tailgating episode on the Food Network. If Covid-19 is the death of restaurants in New York, will we be able to tell which restaurants went belly up because of the virus? Saved from nytimes.com. The work itself — cooking delicious, interesting food and cleaning up after cooking it — still feels as fresh and honest and immensely satisfying as ever. The sad testimony gushes out, confirming everything that used to be so convincingly denied. But then the coronavirus hits, and these same restaurant owners rush into the public square yelling: Fire! Grab our knives? Heat the oven to 400 degrees. The purebred lap dogs now passed off as service animals to calm the anxieties that might arise from eating eggs Benedict on a Sunday afternoon. It was a thrilling and exhausting first 10 years with great momentum. I turned 43 in 2008 and finally became the majority owner of my restaurant. I want the girl who called the first day of our mandated shut down to call back, in however many months when restaurants are allowed to reopen, so I can tell her with delight and sincerity: No. I’ve just written a piece for The New York Times Magazine about this experience of shutting down your restaurant, which many, most of us have done due to the coronavirus pandemic and um. I was turned down a week later, on April 1, because of “inadequate business and personal cash flow.” I howled with laughter over the phone at the underwriter and his explanation. Even after seven nights a week for two decades, I am still stopped in my tracks every time my bartenders snap those metal lids onto the cocktail shakers and start rattling the ice like maracas. Let’s all make it! Maybe it’s the auxiliary industries that feed off the restaurants themselves — the bloggers and agents and the “influencers,” the brand managers, the personal assistants hired just to keep you fresh on “Insta,” the Food & Wine festivals, the multitude of panels we chefs are now routinely invited to join, to offer our charming yet thoroughly unresearched opinions on. After a couple of weeks of watching the daily sales dwindle a $12,141 Saturday to a $4,188 Monday to a $2,093 Thursday it was a relief to decide to pull the parachute cord. I checked all the pilot lights and took out the garbage; I stopped swimming so hard against the mighty current and let it carry me out. It gets so confusing. What was I imagining 20 years ago when I was working all day, every day at a catering job while staying up all night every night, writing menus and sketching the plating of dishes, scrubbing the walls and painting the butter-yellow trim inside what would become Prune? It was advertised for weeks on a … The word family is thrown around in restaurants for good reason. You need a social media presence! If I triaged the collected sales tax that was sitting in its own dedicated savings account and left unpaid the stack of vendor invoices, I could fully cover this one last week of payroll. And there’s some traffic on Houston Street. This was the scenario that made me sweat: a medical emergency. When we are sorting through the restaurant obituaries, will we know for sure that it was not because the weary veteran chef decided, as I have often been tempted myself in these weeks, to quietly walk out the open back door of a building that has been burning for a long time? 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