Safer in the Kitchen Cooking in the time of Corona. By Bria Manning Art by Marissa Espiritu
On Friday the thirteenth of March, I had my last meal dining in at a restaurant. It was for my friend Andrew’s birthday and it was sushi. Andrew and another friend, also named Andrew, ordered a 15-course meal each as I sheepishly snacked on gyozas and garlic edamame; I’m not a fan of seafood. But three bottles of hot sake in and I found myself shoveling Oliver’s baked salmon rolls in my mouth. This is the only way to experience food, I thought to myself as I reached into a food coma-induced nirvana: with your loved ones, venturing your palette out a little more. The head chef John came out to our table to personally greet the Andrews, who were regulars, to ask how everybody enjoyed their food and inquire about family members. Just a couple days after, dining in became shut down for the foreseeable future. Since that evening, our government has told us what to do but not how to behave, as anyone who has frequented a grocery store in the last month should know. I’ve bared witness to the entire spectrum of apocalyptic behavior: unnecessary hoarding of toilet paper on one end, the parading on
10
Instagram stories of clearly not adhering to social distancing rules on another. The absence of the simple pleasures we had taken for granted — like going out to eat, for instance — has been an odd thing. By now we’ve all pretty much adjusted to it, but the absence of one thing doesn’t necessarily equate to it’s complete obsolescence. I may not be able to share food with friends in our favorite milieu, but that doesn’t mean that food cannot transcend this virus. I came to this realization on a cozy and wet evening after opening my Discord app, where my friends and I have been in nearconstant convene since quarantine began, and sent a picture of my dinner: an arugula spring salad with garlic and aioli on wheat sourdough toast and chicken gnocchi soup. Richard replied with a picture of his steak (cooked well done, which immediately ensued a debate) and one of the Andrews replied with homemade tacos doused in house salsa. It was during this intimate pastime that had become regular for us that I felt a jolting pang of how much we thoroughly all missed each other. “We are so starved for touch that we’re sending pictures of our meals as our way of reaching out for human connection,” I replied on our chat. Oliver thankfully steered this random turn of glumness away by responding with a picture of his dinner: a McPick Two. (Just two 10-piece chicken McNuggets standing forlornly side by side.)
