One day at NYC's famed Veselka during the COVID-19 pandemic (Via EaterNY)
On a Saturday in mid-May, Veselka’s Jason Birchard carries out the same pre-shift routine that so many other restaurateurs have adopted during the COVID-19 era. He points an infrared thermometer at his staffers to check for fevers. Every result falls within normal ranges — not something that would’ve been true two months prior. Today, everyone gets to stay. And so at 10 a.m., the third-generation owner opens the front door and awaits his customers. They come, eventually.
At noon, the 53-year-old Birchard changes into a vyshyvanka — a collarless folk shirt with decorative embroidery — for a laptop interview with Ukrainian television. Birchard spends much of the shift working the register and chatting with fellow staffers in both English and Ukrainian. He says he’s doing 250 to 300 daily orders, compared with 1,000 before the pandemic. On a typical Saturday in the past, Veselka would hit 2,000 orders. And yet halfway through today’s shift, there have been just 92 patrons.
“It was disconcerting, of course,” he says of the anosmia, adding that he regained his senses a few days later while cooking hard-shell tacos for his daughter. “I could taste the guacamole and the spices in the taco meat.”Veselka stayed closed through the rest of March and all of April. Birchard was particularly concerned about a group of employees living in Elmhurst, Queens, which was the epicenter of the pandemic at the time.
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