Dear Feastlings,
An apology right off the bat to those of you who have been sheltering in at home for two solid months and have had no relief from that torpor that forces you into a string of naps each day, but as an allegedly essential worker who’s been sometimes frantically and sometimes merely unrelentingly trying to keep a restaurant’s heart beating through this, the nap that I promised myself yesterday somehow escaped me and I find myself today trying to squeeze a few ideas out of my flagging brain so we can start the June menu next week, do something creative to support the Primavera Foundation as we have each June since we opened, and figure out what specials we’ll offer this Sunday when we do a delivery run down to parts south and southeast.
So no rest today for this weary boy, but I know that a number of you didn’t read to the bottom of an email I sent one day last week, which I’m now hopeful will remind me of a dish that I miss and want to put back on the menu. The blurb at the bottom of the email you may or may not have missed said that COVID will decidedly keep us from offering the menu of special requests that we normally offer- we simply can’t get in ingredients for that many specials and hope that we sell through them during a time when we’re selling markedly less of everything than we normally do. That said, I told you all this: we’ll still take your menu requests. Write back to tell me what dishes you miss- I know some of you already have- and we’ll offer them as a special for a day or two rather than a solid week, and when we run out, we run out. If there’s a Feast dish you love, be a recent treat or a menu item from the distant past, let us know and we’ll do our best to offer it when we can this summer. I only hope it travels well, because I have the sinking feeling that this shutdown isn’t as over as it may appear to be.
I also want to thank you all again as a community for your contributions to our hospital donation runs- today we fed nearly three hundred people who work at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and the handful I met when we dropped off the meals for eight different departments were bursting with gratitude, so I thought I’d send it along to you, along with thanks from our own staff, who remains employed in large part because of your generosity to front line healthcare workers. We also owe it to you being good to yourselves, your friends and your neighbors, so thanks for being a part of our carryout food orders (here’s the menu,) our wine tastings (here’s this Saturday’s tasting,) and picking up wine for the tastings that our friends are doing (last one of the season for Kent and Todd.)
I’m going to get back to work on the menus and specials now, but with any luck I’ll glean a little inspiration from the dishes you remember fondly. Then comes that nap.
Your friend,
Doug