Matt Preston on quarantine and COVID restrictions – News + Articles

The past six months have been one massive acid trip, and not the good kind. Things that you relied on and took for granted – like flour, pasta or toilet paper – became illusory. As did everyday pleasures like coffee with friends in a cafe, or holding hands across a candlelit table as the waiter pours chardonnay. For anyone who works in food or hospitality, this has been a terrifying time. Work has dried up and so have the customers, and the future looks bleaker than a pre-Glasnost Eastern European love tragedy, with crippling restrictions on numbers even when you are allowed to open.

If there has been one spark of joy, one ember worth fanning, it has been the way that so many producers, restaurateurs and cafe owners have deftly…