Laying low. And then maybe laying down.

Dear Feastlings,
I know the grammar- and punctuation-sensitive among you will immediately call me out on the misuse of the word “laying” in the subject line, but it sounded better to me, for the subject line, anyway. For the record, I know the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb, and so my grandmother won’t need to contact me in a dream from the great beyond tonight, as she surely would if I had used “laying” for “lying” out of ignorance rather than a tendency to be willful and obstreperous.
I know I’ve been overstuffing your email boxes, but we’ve decided to back off a little, partly from overworking ourselves these past nine weeks, and partly from the ennui that accompanies (I’m assuming) every pandemic. Yes, we’re still doing donation delivery runs, as we’re both eager to support the community and frankly, it’s what’s keeping our doors open at this point, but after a game of phone tag and some of the snafus that accompany (I’m assuming again) every pandemic, it looks like we won’t be bringing food to St. Joe’s until a week from today. And yes, we’re still doing our Saturday wine tastings (this Saturday: “Critical acclaim”) and we’ll be doing another of our delivery runs to the north and northwest again this week. Northwesterners, we’ve given you a breather in the hopes that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but you can start ordering for Sunday the 24th whenever you’d like. In another day or two we’ll have specials figured out for Sunday and we’ll post them, along with the rest of the menu, here.

Meanwhile, we’ve got wines on hand if you’re tasting along with Kent and Todd this week at their #digitalwineresearch:

And if you’ve read this far, I’m giving you the news now, in hopes that i can mention it again a bit later to those whose attention span prevented them from making it this far down the page: we still don’t know when we’ll open the dining room- likely it will be after we’ve had a chance to review the data and see if the opening of Pima County businesses last week produces a spike in new COVID infections in the next week or two- but we want to make an educated and cautious decision that’s good for us, for you, for midtown and for Tucson at large. Regardless whether we’re able to open the dining room or not, COVID is going to throw a wrench into our normal summertime activity. That is to say, when we take your requests each summer, it’s a mad scramble and a guessing game each week to figure out how many servings of the dishes you request we should prepare each week.
For those of you uninitiated, this is the time of year that I normally put out a call for requests- people tell us their favorite Feast dishes and we offer them up for a week at a time all summer, when conditions are normal. This year, with people dining out or picking up as little as they are, we’re in no condition to offer your requested requested dishes at the customary rate of five or six at a time for a solid week. That said, we still plan to take your requests and make them; we’ll just need to put them on the menu as a special, and when we run out, we run out. I’m no happier about it than you are, and I’m also not happy that dishes like the cotton-candy-wrapped shrimp or the cinnamon-garlic Manchego cheese fries won’t be takeout-friendly in the least, but we’re still here for you, and we’ll still make the dishes you want, but the caveat is that you’ll need to be on your toes this summer, and you’ll need to check the menu for your faves on a way more regular basis than you needed to in years past. I’m sorry for that news, but it’s better news than “we don’t have enough ventilators.”

So send along your requests, knowing that we’ll get to them when we can between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and that we may not be able to offer them for an entire week at a time, and thank you for your patience.

Your friend,
Doug

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