Blow-up dolls and pandas become dinner guests as restaurants try to fill empty seats
Restaurants are beginning to reopen at limited capacity as stringent social distancing rules replace the stay-at-home orders that closed their dining rooms when the coronavirus pandemic began.
New standards of dining, however, have made for a lot of empty seats.
In the meantime, restaurant owners are finding creative solutions to fill vacant tables, privatize customers’ dining experiences and maximize space in what would otherwise be a crowded dining room.
Blow-up dolls in wigs
The Open Hearth, a historic restaurant in Taylors, South Carolina, just outside of Greenville, is occupying empty booths with blow-up dolls — the “G-rated kind,” WYFF reported.
Since restaurants were allowed to reopen Monday, Paula Starr Melehes and her husband told the TV station they’ve paid close attention to the state’s social distancing guidelines.
But the couple didn’t want to block off tables with “scary, yellow tape.”
Instead, they spent about $140 on 10 dolls from Amazon and clad them in hand-me-downs and donated wigs, WYFF reported.
“We’re doing everything we can to make sure we do this right,” Melehes told the station. “We just didn’t want the virus to be what shuts us down.”
Mannequins
A few hours north in Virginia, three-star Michelin restaurant The Inn at Little Washington is occupying its empty tables with mannequins.
Virginia restaurants with outdoor seating are permitted to reopen at 50% capacity on May 15. The Inn, which doesn’t have outdoor seating, plans to reopen May 29 at half-capacity, McClatchy News reported.
To fill all his seats, chef and proprietor Patrick O’Connell brought in mannequins dressed in 40s-style outfits, according to the Washingtonian. Servers will engage with them the same as any other guest — including offering them wine and asking how they’re enjoying their stay.
“I’ve always had a thing for mannequins — they never complain about anything, and you can have lots of fun dressing them up,” O’Connell told the magazine Departures.
Panda bears
A Thai restaurant in Bangkok went with a more cuddly seat-filler: stuffed panda bears.
Thailand allowed some businesses to reopen earlier in May if they adhere to strict social distancing guidelines, The Evening Standard reported. But the owner of Maison Saigon, Natthwut Rodchanapanthkul, told the newspaper his restaurant “looked peculiar in post-lockdown light.”
Normally it has only one single-chair table for customers dining alone, according to the Standard.
“But for me, it felt strange, so I thought I’d give them some company,” Rodchanapanthkul said.
Shower curtains
A restaurant in Ohio known for its breakfast menu has installed clear, plastic shower curtains to separate diners, McClatchy News reported.
“Six feet between tables would have limited us to maybe eight to 10 tables, which financially would not have made it worthwhile to open back up for us,” Twisted Citrus co-owner Kim Shapiro told CNN.
As an alternative, the state allows barriers.
The staff at Twisted Citrus rearranged tables to put customers back to back instead of side-by-side and hung curtains between them, allowing guests to still see each other, CNN reported.
The curtains are reportedly easily disinfected and can be run through a commercial dishwasher at the end of the day.
Parking lots
From parking lots to street corners, cities across the country are permitting restaurants to make use of the space outside their establishments as they reopen.
Outside of Atlanta, the mayor of Brookhaven cleared restaurants using tents and parking lots as seating areas after the governor allowed dining rooms to reopen on Wednesday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“For the next 90 days, Brookhaven will embrace alfresco dining,” Mayor John Ernst said in a news release. “With this executive order, restaurants have a unique strategy they can utilize to reopen, yet do so responsibly.”
On the opposite coast, Sacramento, California, is doing something similar.
The city started a program called “Farm-to-Fork Al Fresco” that allows restaurants to use “public space and off-street parking areas” to seat customers, The Sacramento Business Journal reported.
“Outdoor dining is a hallmark of the Sacramento food experience,” Councilman Steven Hansen said in a news release. “Expanding the space available for people to enjoy our food scene helps us meet distancing rules while bringing life back to our neighborhood restaurants and commercial corridors.”
‘Quarantine greenhouses’
A restaurant in the Netherlands is doing a trial run on “quarantine greenhouses,” CNN reported.
Family and friends of staff who work at Mediamatic ETEN in Amsterdam can eat a four-course vegetarian meal in personal greenhouses.
Wait staff are clad in gloves and face shields while they work, and some “also use long boards to bring dishes into the greenhouses to diners,” CNN reported.
According to the restaurant’s website, reservations are already booked through June.
The world’s smallest restaurant
Finally, in the remote Swedish countryside, a restaurant for one.
Linda Karlsson and her partner, Rasmus Person, opened a restaurant on May 10 that consists of a single table and chair in the middle of a field, Yahoo reported.
It might be the “smallest restaurant in the world,” according to the Associated Press.
The food is delivered via a basket, which is “lowered down to the guest along a cable stretching from the kitchen window,” AP reported.
“A lot of people are losing loved ones, and many people are even losing their minds, so just to have a couple of hours for yourself, reflecting, nice food, a beverage, nature, I think most of us are in need of that right now,” Person told the AP.
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 1:20 PM with the headline "Blow-up dolls and pandas become dinner guests as restaurants try to fill empty seats."
