A Hunt for Hope

I sit, writing this, in my empty restaurant, trying to think of the thing that could go wrong in a rushed “re-opening” now that Regional Victoria is allowed to.

My restaurant is a mess. Chairs around me stacked on top of tables, kitchen fans off, doors locked. It's a sunny windy Saturday afternoon here in Regional Victoria, a day that should see my 60 seater space full of bustling chatter and clanging of silverware on crockery. The bubbling hissing sound of a coffee machine steaming wand, & my Italian sous-chef yelling “service please!”

But on this particular Saturday afternoon my restaurant Lola - like the streets around it - is devoid of beating hearts and the warmth of a weekend crowd.

Coronavirus has hit us the way a lover tells you they’re having an affair; a little bit expected, but harder than we could have imagined. We’ve seen experts talk grimly about the effect of COVID-19 on business and the economy. Everyone now knows that hospitality and tourism are arguably the hardest hit industries, with a great number of people out of work and countless cafes and restaurants shutting their doors, perhaps for good.

With Australia to hit its first recession in 3 decades, things are looking pretty bleak.

When we went back into lockdown in July, we shut down as we were told to do by our Premier

Daniel Andrews and dived into trying to capture the take-away market by pivoting a business model that had never included the words, “UberEats."

From feeding and impressing 60 people a night with our award-winning modern-euro cuisine we were trying to figure out which cardboard BioPack would best suit our Boef Bourguignon and Confit Great Ocean Road Duck leg.

We started selling cryo-vac’d bags of home-made pasta to supermarkets and dropping the prices of our local wines to the bare minimum. We made all our casual staff redundant and tried desperately to keep our international chefs on visas employed.

We - like so many others - had gone from excitedly planning new degustation menus and seasonal wine lists to bartering with landlords and filling out Centrelink paperwork. Our business has been impacted beyond description. Both a passion for this industry and a sense of duty to our remaining employees kept us going.

Personally, aside from the mental impact of lockdown and the financial stress of JobKeeper, I find the hardest part to get a grip on is this idea that many of my favourite culinary haunts across the globe are shutting their doors forever. Food and wine are so intertwined with a culture that the fabric of these cities and communities that I’ve grown to love will be forever changed by the time we’re allowed to travel again. The unknown of this industry has always been a hard pill to swallow, but these times have that pill coated in Vegemite. The uncertainty of work and money and indeed simply being able to operate will surely have many hospo professionals changing "expert knowledge in French Beaujolais” to “Intermediate Microsoft Suite User” under “skills” on their CV.

But I ask them to wait, and recall on what's kept them here so far.

For me, its the fact that you never know what table you’re serving. They could be a couple on the first date of a 50-year marriage. It could be the last supper before some devastating news. It could be the dinner before they become grandparents, or a celebratory meal saved up for months. It could be their first experience of fine food; or it could be their last. You don’t know how long they’re going to remember that moment. 50 years from now that married couple could still look back on that dinner with nostalgic memory. What other industry transports you in both place and time with such intimate execution? That’s what I love about my industry, and that's why I won’t leave it.

Hospitality will undoubtedly be a different world post COVID. David Mackintosh (IDES, Lee Ho, SPQR Pizzeria & Pope Joan) in a recent podcast discussed his view that due to the fact that people have been stuck in their homes with either fast-food or home-cooked culinary experiments (#sourdough) that fine-dining will boom at the lifting of restrictions: and I completely agree.

There is a market of wealthy Australian’s waiting to spend money that they would usually have spent on an annual junket to Europe. An entire year of anniversaries, birthdays, celebrations and awkward dates all waiting to be able to book a table at their favourite restaurants.

Listening to all the negativity in newspapers it's easy as a venue owner in the hospitality industry to lose hope. But this is an industry used to hardship. This is an industry built on literal blood sweat and tears. We’re accustomed to jumping hurdles on an hourly basis. Chefs, owners, bartenders, kitchen hands, suppliers.. everyone involved knows the lyrics to “Tubthumping” like an anthem. We stay here because we love what we do. We’re here because we’re driven by passion, and no matter how grim the news is nothing can change that.

So, at the risk of hyperbole, I invite all the veteran Hospo’s such as myself to collectively raise a glass of vintage wine to our global family members that have shut their doors for good. And another glass to those who are persevering and planning to return. And yet another glass for those who have found a way to keep their doors just open enough to continue to support and employee their team. And one more glass to the wider community for supporting them.

Actually, for the unsung heroes to come out of COVID, you might need more than one bottle.

I encourage people to continue to spend whatever money they can on their local community. I count my blessings that my restaurant isn’t one that has drawn the blinds yet - touch wood - and as I sit here in my empty space looking out at the sun-drenched afternoon in my peaceful Goldfields town I’m reminded of one of my favourite quotes by Morgan Harper Nichols, and a fitting end to this lament:

How beautifully anchored is this hope, that does not change in changing winds.

Josephine Turner

@josephinemary_