Read on Twitter
I don’t know who needs to hear this but, DON’T FUCKING GO TO RESTAURANTS AND PUBLISH RESTAURANT REVIEWS WHILE PEOPLE ARE DYING IN A FUCKING PANDEMIC https://www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/brunch-restaurant-review-zaguan-latin-bakery-oak-lawn-11921826
"Take a lunch break and have brunch on a Tuesday? Why not?”
I don’t know, maybe because you’re putting people who likely don’t have a choice about whether to bring you a little snack in serious danger?
Is this supposed to be cute, @TaylorinDallas? This is fucking embarrassing.
I don’t know, maybe because you’re putting people who likely don’t have a choice about whether to bring you a little snack in serious danger?
Is this supposed to be cute, @TaylorinDallas? This is fucking embarrassing.
Safe for who? White food critics who ran out of shitty listicle ideas? Christallfuckingmighty
Imagine knowing that Texas is doubling COVID hospitalizations and thinking “What my readers need now is a very poor exploration of how my feelings about brunch have shifted somewhat"
In the absence of government leadership on this thing, we have to support each other, and advising people to lounge around for a midday meal while the new COVID infection rate is roughly parallel to the Y axis is not the way to do it!
Review some takeout and spend 700 more words helping people understand how they can advocate for protections + cash for service workers in a pandemic! How is this hard? You don’t actually have to go out of your way to put people in danger! Come on now!!!!!
At the MINIMUM at least report back on how staff are or are not being protected! Not whether you, a diner, “feel” safe. Do staff have paid time off? Health care? Knowing that shit might be pretty valuable for people considering dining out during a pandemic.
Also? Most restaurants are not going to survive the pandemic. Period. It’s not about food writers cheerleading for local businesses or telling people to have leisurely brunches. They'll go under b/c the gov’t didn’t float small businesses so that everyone could stay at home.
People act like it’s a choice between “supporting” local businesses and those businesses dying.
The businesses are dying. They are. Vast majority of them. The only volume that will keep most restaurants open is one that is essentially fatal.
The businesses are dying. They are. Vast majority of them. The only volume that will keep most restaurants open is one that is essentially fatal.
Which is why it’s particularly irresponsible to suggest dining out during a pandemic is some kind of civic duty.
The kind of danger you put workers in by eating and drinking around them is not worth the money the restaurant *owners* (likely not the workers) will make.
The kind of danger you put workers in by eating and drinking around them is not worth the money the restaurant *owners* (likely not the workers) will make.
We’re yelling about this D.O. article right now, but the Statesman had one a couple weeks ago that was the same kinda “Isn’t it great to be out and about again! Boy I was tired of washing dishes!” nonsense.
Food writers are not doing service workers any favors with this shit.
Food writers are not doing service workers any favors with this shit.
It’s telling that Matt Odam’s piece in the Statesman had only a glancing look at a server — who informed Odam he was at work despite being scared to infect an immunocompromised partner — and that this DO piece does not at all take service workers into account.
I said this months ago and I will say it again, which is that food journalists have probably the best opportunity in many lifetimes to do serious impact journalism around COVID
and instead here we are at “maybe brunch is fun in a pandemic"
and instead here we are at “maybe brunch is fun in a pandemic"
