From the Editors
Posted by estiator at 10 October, at 07 : 25 AM Print
A Tale of Two COVIDs
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” So wrote Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities.
As we close the door on our second pandemic summer, we are certainly past last winter’s despair and hold out that things are on the upswing. However, there are few things of which we can be certain. Although business levels are improved from last year, the Delta variant (or its spectre) is causing trepidation on the part of dining patrons in many parts of the country. But that’s not the story everywhere. For some regions, it’s the Roaring Twenties, with many restaurants recording record sales numbers. This dichotomy, of course, isn’t exclusively delineated by an interregional divide: It’s not unusual to find one town with empty restaurants and the next with eateries sporting lines out the door.
In our cover story, “Diner Chronicles,” senior contributor Michael Kaminer revisits some restaurateurs he interviewed a year ago and caught up with others for the first time in an effort to discern the commonalites experienced across the restaurant spectrum. With a consensus that we’re not out of the woods, these restaurateurs share how they have navigated through the pandemic and what they anticipate for the coming months.
For this month’s “Managing for Success,” our resident restaurant consultant, Constantine Kolitsas, dives deep into the cliched proverb that “honesty is the best policy” and its real-life implications in the restaurant setting. He is basically saying, “Don’t lie,” but give it a read; we think you’ll get some good insights out of it.
Over the “limni,” Estiator’s Athens-based correspondent, Gina Kallitsi, is in search of the next big Greek food craze and comes up with a product that takes sesame seeds to a new level. If your Greek is good, you’ll enjoy it. If not, find Papou—we’re sure he can translate.
Finally, in spite of the pandemic, children continue to be born, and so, too, new restaurants. In New Arrivals, we check the materinity ward for Greek restaurant babies and have come up with a half-dozen new entries spread out between Boston and central Utah.
Cheers, dear readers. We hope you enjoy the issue, and we look forward to a brighter tale to tell in the coming weeks and months!
The Editorial and Publishing Staff
