Cake in the Time of COVID
By: Rick Bayless
Tags: Coronavirus, Restaurant, Chefs

I knew I had to bake a cake. Not just a cake, but a fancy cake, the kind that takes all afternoon. A dark chocolate cake, perhaps, with a chocolate pudding filling and rich chocolate buttercream that I’d frost with flourishes. Maybe I’d get out a pastry bag and fluted tip to make the cake worthy of a momentous occasion.

I’d driven through the deserted backstreets of Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood on an unexpectedly sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-March, returning home from a thrown-together meeting where a group of 75 chefs and restaurant owners wrestled with strategies for saving our starving businesses in the face of the looming coronavirus onslaught.

Chicago chefs gather to hear Gov. JB Pritzker announce stoppage of all dine in service at Illinois restaurants. March 15, 2020. Credit Monica Eng via Twitter

For most of us, business had dwindled to a small fraction of what it takes to keep us afloat, so news of this meeting shot through the restaurant community like a wildfire. Still, no one imagined that such a large group of independent restaurant owners would walk into a spot on Western Avenue at noon. The taut bodies, the cracking voices, the fire in some eyes, the distant gazes in others — they gave away the fear that coursed through our bodies. None of us could pay our bills from the few guests we were serving. Our servers weren’t making enough to pay their rent. We’d cut the cook’s hours to the bare minimum, but we were still spending more on payroll than revenue could cover. On top of that, the first two months hadn’t even offered the small amount of sales we had anticipated. My wife and I had already stopped taking a paycheck. That was before coronavirus had come on to our radar screen.

Back home, I sat on the couch next to my wife, her iPad propped on my lap, watching our governor tell us to stay home. There was an invisible coming onslaught, he said, and we had to close down the city. No one could collect in restaurants or bars anymore — those are the only words I picked out from the thousands that spilled from him that afternoon. He left the door cracked just enough for the light of potential carry out and delivery business to shine through, to offer some glimmer of hope for us. But of our four Clark Street restaurants, only the sandwich shop, Xoco — the one that generates among the least revenue in our small group — had ever done carry out. Doing food for take-out isn’t natural to me, so I recognized just how ill-equipped I was for the task at hand. I’d never even ordered a delivery pizza.

Explaining the pandemic’s effect on restaurants to our employees in March 2020.

As the governor signed off, I knew one thing for sure: I had to get into the kitchen and start baking that cake.

But before I got up, Deann and I made a plan. We didn’t vet it with anyone — our top staff, our controller, our financial advisors, our attorney. We just did what we felt was the right thing for people who’ve given us so much for so long. The common restaurant worker stereotypes that get regularly volleyed about don’t begin to describe the folks I work with every day. Most of our staff have worked with us for years — some for 30 or more — and they are highly skilled, dedicated family people, a great many of whom have cobbled together enough money to buy homes and send kids to college. But almost none of them have savings to weather the storm I saw brewing.

So Deann and I decided to keep Xoco open for take-out and continue to pay all 160 of our staff, though at a reduced rate. After all, the governor said we were only going to be closed for two weeks.

By the end of our first day back at work after what has become known as The Great Shutdown, I’d already learned three lessons. As a mantra for years, I’ve reminded our staff that Frontera Grill and its siblings are as much about welcoming hospitality as they are about good food. Though I’ve consistently made that claim, I’d never had the opportunity to put those words to a test. Until we had no guests. Until we had only unrecognizable, masked forms approaching Xoco’s door to wordlessly claim stapled-up take out packages from a shelving unit.

Over three decades ago, when I was designing Frontera, the one thing I had to have was an open kitchen so that I could see our guests, wave to them, watch them enjoying the dishes we’d created for them. Without guests as part of the equation, I was suddenly rudderless. It felt like half of my motivation had vanished.

As most of us, I’m a creature of habit. I find a settling comfort in tackling the same sorts of activities in a predictable order and at an established time each day. But a national disaster was unfolding and pulling my well-worn patterns out from under me. All my meetings were cancelled, all my projects were put on hold. I didn’t know what to do or if there was something to do or when might be the best time to start. In the late afternoon, I found myself sitting perfectly still in our restaurant’s little library, staring straight ahead as the minutes ticked by. To most anyone, it would have looked like I was meditating. For me, it felt more like paralysis.

Besides cementing my conviction that hospitality is as important as good food for me and that following a schedule is essential to my productivity, I learned first-hand how soul-sapping the static noise of fear can be. It played in all our heads at a deafening volume. Where was the virus? Did you have it? Did she? Was it on my Amazon package or grocery bag or the apples I’d gotten at the corner store? Everyone was sure it was in the taxis and Ubers, on the bus seats. The masked-and-gloved crew we’d scheduled to handle the little business we garnered walked circuitously through our space, avoiding each other. They kept their heads bowed, as though looking up would invite the virus toward them. The roiling fear we all felt surfaced as jerky moves. For some it poured out as tears. Though they wanted to support the restaurant or were desperate for a paycheck, some of the staff came once but couldn’t return for months.

For decades, I had eaten ten meals a week in our restaurant, cooked a weekend brunch and dinner at home and enjoyed other restaurants for the last couple of meals. As this first week began to unfold, counting on a Xoco lunch five days a week was a relief. For all the rest of our meals, I’d have to figure out something else. I love to cook, but seven nights a week was something I hadn’t done since Deann and I got married.

As I’d heard echoed through all sorts of media, I was immediately drawn to dishes from my and my wife’s childhoods. Chicken and biscuits like my grandmother made. An aromatic pot of chili that I knew would be better than the one my mother seasoned with Gebhardts chili powder. Stir-fry that Deann had learned when she lived in Taiwan, with additions made by our friend who was raised in Thailand. By midweek, Deann had started using our new-found evenings at home to explore recipes for classic cocktails and I found myself thinking about something to go with them, rummaging in the refrigerator for something to fashion into a nibble, an amuse as we call these little bites in the restaurant.

But by the end of the first week, the desire rose again to make a cake, this time as the show-stopper finale for a big meal. Deann and I are very lucky: We live next door to our daughter and son-in-law, a tall cedar fence forming the perimeter around both houses, the yard, deck and garden. We all have jobs at the restaurants, creating a work-home bubble of sorts, even before the pandemic. I’d shared the first cake with them. Now they were invited for drinks and nibbles, a couple of savory courses and, of course, cake for dessert. This time it would be white and dark chocolate cakes sandwiched with ganache, frosted with white chocolate buttercream and decorated with chocolate curls.

I’d learned to dash in and out of the small Whole Foods near our restaurant in record time, pulling things from the half-empty shelves, mostly getting what I needed for our weekday comfort and weekend celebration. I never stopped to ask what we were celebrating or why, but shopped with the same fervor I did for Thanksgiving or the big dinner we cooked before Lanie’s wedding. And like those special events, I spent one whole weekend day in the kitchen. That’s where I found my groove, where time stood still for me as I worked through making the kind of complex dishes and pastries I once taught to students keen on mastering the craft.

I woke to start week two with a deep ache from the loss of hospitality in my life. I’m sure everyone drawn to the hospitality world had the same feeling. We thrive when making people happy, enriching their lives, creating special memories for them. Whether you work in a hotel, or host people in restaurants or for catered events, whether you lead tours or make drinks for people at a bar — creating something beautiful for people is our fuel. I could have easily said that you likely share my sentiment “if you work in a service sector job,” but that sullies the work in a great many people’s mind. To work in service casts you as subservient, which couldn’t be further from the truth. For those of us with hospitality in our bones, bringing joy to people leads our job description.

Everybody was stuck at home, I thought, as anxious and untethered as I felt, but I knew there were ways to harness simple technology to welcome them into my kitchen for a few minutes. I could do a live broadcast through Facebook or Instagram, cooking something for them, satisfying two needs at once. Reaching out through the frightful dread of imposed isolation, I could offer a friendly voice that wasn’t fear-mongering about the insidious pandemic, but one that steadily narrated the transformation of basic ingredients into something that awakened those senses that had suddenly, perhaps, gone dormant. Plus, I could use the live format to encourage people to connect with making simple food from scratch, an act that resonates for most humans at an elemental, heartening level.

I started going live five days a week, doing the most vulnerable kind of cooking imaginable. I stopped by the store on my way to work, planned a dish from whatever I found there, and cooked it live completely from scratch: no advanced prep, no pre-made “swap out” finished dish to ensure I looked good. Whatever I was able to put together in about half an hour was what the camera zoomed in on at the end. We all know that things don’t always come together in the kitchen as we imagine or hope, but I quickly fell into a patter that narrated why I chose the ingredients I did (and if I wished others would have been available), what I was doing to them and why, and whether the dish came out as I’d hoped or not. Something about it clicked with folks that tuned in each day. It was exhilarating and honest. I hadn’t taken such risk in a professional situation for forty years, since my very first shows on Public Television during an era when everything was cooked live as it was recorded — no edits. Even then, I regularly had “swap” dishes for the final presentation.

From the coronavirus perspective, things were getting worse in Chicago, not better. The governor announced to us that two weeks was going to stretch to eight. I panicked — not because of all the lost revenue, but because of all the staff that was suddenly without money in their pockets, without the necessary resources to pay rent or feed their families. We’d guaranteed them a basic salary for two weeks, but we couldn’t continue on. As we reviewed all the nonnegotiable expenditures we’d fully committed to — all that it costs us to occupy our building and keep it running — we realized that we were bleeding money fast. The little that was coming in wouldn’t begin to cover rent, much less salaries and food and beverage costs. Deann and I decided that all of the management staff in the kitchen and dining rooms would stay on at a reduced salary, though with the understanding that they would mostly be working the jobs of cooks, dishwashers and service staff. The cooks, maintenance crew and service staff would have to be furloughed, even though I knew that some of them wouldn’t qualify for unemployment insurance. And for the ones that could qualify, I was worried how long it would take them to receive a check.

Right away I recognized that we needed a social services team to help our furloughed employees find assistance with food and all the rest of their financial obligations. Through a chef friend, we were put in contact with US Foods who was looking for a restaurant that could help them distribute to furloughed restaurant workers all the unordered perishable food in their coolers. As often happens after natural disasters, our staff all volunteered to come in on their days off and pack everything that had been delivered into smaller boxes. The US Foods team motivated restaurants to come pick up the boxes to distribute to their out-of-work staffs. In a series of swift events — one leading seamlessly, unexpectedly to the next — we found money from a local donor to set up this food-distribution project to take place twice a week for the next several months. We’d buy basic groceries from US Foods and hire back some of our furloughed staff to divide, box and distribute it. We started with 400 boxes twice a week, each containing 35 pounds of fresh food. Within a week, we increased quickly to 600 boxes as we saw the magnitude of the need. We maxed out at 600, but the need was growing exponentially. The worry — and relief — on the faces of those who came to pick up was heartrending, but we were doing the best we could.