Dish Updates
Please visit us on Facebook for real-time updates.
March 21, 2020
Hi, all. We’ve decided to close tonight, with hopes of opening again next weekend, read on...
On my day off last Monday I talked to our health inspector, my liaison to the mayor’s office, my personal physician, and patrons and friends who work within COVID response for hospital systems locally and in other states. Every one told me that I’m doing all the right things and I have their support to remain open for curbside service. Every single morning I talk to my crew to see how we’re all feeling, emotionally and physically. This week we all felt that we’re taking extraordinary measures to keep ourselves and our patrons safe so we’ve stayed open. You’ve all been so supportive and you’ve been showing up. We love you for that.
As much as I’m confident that we’re doing all the right things to protect everybody we’re feeding, it seems that this is far too emotionally taxing for all of us here at Dish, at least at this very moment. We have a small crew and we tend to every dish we send out the door with great reverence, we feel a massive responsibility to do things safely and it’s truly stretching us to our limit. Each one of us has a person in our lives who is high-risk. We’re deeply concerned for every single human on the planet but in our daily lives we have someone we love who is sheltering and is either a cardiac patient or a cancer survivor or who has diabetes, COPD, asthma or lupus. My own parents are in their 90s and I’m unable to see them, which is its very own emotional ball of wax (my Mom’s in a nursing home so they haven’t seen one other for the longest stretch since 1952.) Because of the added gravity for each of us at home, we feel that we need to take the measure to close, at least for this week, for our personal comfort and stability and for the safety of those high-risk people whom we love.
I cannot stress enough that everyone working here is healthy, we’re just feeling the weight of the task at hand. The majority of the work required to keep going falls on the shoulders of just one little Peg and one little Katrina...it’s a lot! With our decision to temporarily close, I don’t want to diminish the decision other restaurants have made to stay open for curbside and delivery service. Takeout and delivery are still considered an essential business here, across the country and across the world (takeout places are still open in California and Italy, for instance.) Please support them if you’re comfortable doing so. We hope for your support when we’re back up and running, and rest assured, we will be back! We’re listening to what the CDC and state and local government offices have to say. We are committed to keeping ourselves and our loved ones healthy so that when we do come back we can get back to the business of nourishing you. We might reopen next weekend, we might reopen later on. Please stay tuned.
Two years ago I was right in this spot, closed for four months after my husband Paul died. Even though it’s been two years, I am still very much a grieving widow and I’m missing him and his calm presence extra lately. It’s incredibly difficult for me to go through this without him. Dish and I survived back then because I was surrounded by wonderful people and I had the support of this beautiful community. Today I feel the same warm embrace. I’m worried for the entire restaurant industry. Stretch your arms a lot and exercise your metaphorical hugging muscles while you’re holed up, people, because a lot of restaurants are going to need you when they get back to it.
While we’re closed I’ll work with some local groups to help provide meals to my fellow citizens who might not otherwise eat. I can’t imagine myself not helping if I’m able to help, it is exactly what Paul would do. I will maintain my practice of the last two weeks of sheltering in place strictly between my home and my Dish and I’ll maintain all of the new world practices we’ve implemented whenever we are here cooking. I’ll also make sure that my crew doesn’t go hungry in the interim. Watch for far less lengthy posts in the coming weeks (Katrina will run point here). We’ll let you know as soon as we’re back. Be well.
- Peg
March 19, 2020
The food service industry and workers here in the metro Detroit area, and everywhere, are taking a tremendous hit. Restaurants, bars, food trucks, pop-ups, bakeries, pizzerias, caterers, event planners and clubs are navigating unchartered territory. You can lend support in the following ways:
If you’re comfortable doing so, patronize those places still offering delivery and curbside service. The restaurant closures are about public gatherings, community spread and social distancing. The closures are not about the food supply or standards and practices within the local restaurant industry. If asking questions lends you comfort, ask away. Those that are still cooking are doing the right things, taking exceptional measures and they want you to stay healthy. I reckon they’d like to stay healthy themselves.
The longer this lasts, more and more fund raisers will be set up to help restaurant workers, large and small scale. Contribute when you see them. Workers and their restaurant families have to live through this.
At some point, when the bigger fish are fried, call government officials to see what they’re doing to help restaurants, or better still, insist that they help. Or now, you could start writing letters right now, and sign those petitions.
From those places that have e-commerce, buy a gift certificate or merchandise. If you can’t do it that way, resolve to buy a gift card or a T-shirt the minute they reopen.
This is a great time to write a nice review or give a big star rating of the businesses you’re pulling for, here on Facebook or Yelp, etc. You could write a supportive post and tag a shout out to your favorite places. You could simply “like” their FB pages or respond and repost when a restaurant posts to social media. Periodically search them on Google and visit their websites. All of these will help algorithms to get them seen and thought of. These things seem meaningless right now but they will help the places that make it back and it’s a fine way to spend an hour while you’re holed up.
You could send them a word of encouragement by any means.
Once they've reopened, get back to those places you love just as quickly as you can. They’re going to be busy so plan to belly up to the bar and pop a few back while you wait for a table. Help them make up for lost time. Book a small catering gig, an off-premise dinner party or a larger event for sometime later this spring or summer. When they’re back, go and go often, and don’t forget to tip your server like a big shot.
* * * * * * * * * *
I know from which I speak. Two years ago, when Paul died (my husband/classically-trained-chef/partner-in-all-things), unfathomable circumstances forced me to close Dish for four months. Four months was an inconceivable length of time, it nearly flattened me, but I gathered my strength and my last five dollars and I got back up. I had a lot of community support back then (I still do). It meant the world to me. There are masses of extra scared restaurant people out there right now. Many of them have already exhausted their last five dollars. Your support will mean the world to them. My heart aches for the whole planet, restaurant people are my people.
- Peg
March 17, 2020
Hi gang. We apologize for the late post but we’ve been working very meticulously to figure out logistics for everyone’s safety (later on, in a separate post I’ll detail what we’ve implemented for this new world). We will be open this week, Tuesday thru Saturday for curbside and carhop service only. Our wonderful neighbors at Flagstar Bank have graciously approved our plan for our patrons to use their parking lot after they close at 5pm (6pm on Friday). Entrance to our building will be closed to everyone but our crew.We encourage you to call ahead with orders, we prefer to take payment via credit card over the phone but we will have square readers available to bring to your auto in sterile, disposable bags if you’d prefer or cash as well, just let us know how you’d like to handle payment when you call. We will ask for the make and color of your auto so we can watch out for you. If you have a cell phone available and we’re not out to you in a timely fashion, please give us a quick call so we know that you’re here.We’re treating today like a soft-opening, we didn’t want to post too early because we want to ease into this new wave so we can work out the kinks. Tomorrow and Thursday we will have a better picture of what this is going to be like. We may scale back the menu a little bit but we’ll also offer family sized pans of pasta dishes and salads. Stay tuned, folks. We’re up and running today from 5 until 9, hope to see you!
- Peg
March 13, 2020
Hi everybody, Peg here. Well, this is really something, isn’t it? So far this week has been very strange, yet many of you stalwart Dish boosters continue to show up, just enough for it to make sense that we carry on throughout this crisis. I want to let you know that we plan to keep our doors open until and unless the CDC tells us otherwise. We are here, we are doing all of the things that we should be doing, the things we’ve always done, we’re just doing them a little extra and a little more vigorously than usual.
We are small and it is our smallness that we hope will work in our favor. I want to list some of the things we do regularly to keep our place as safe as can possibly be, as well as some adjustments we’re making for the foreseeable future. We ask for your patience, support and understanding as we figure this out with you and the rest of this beautiful planet. As ever, we are grateful for all of you. You have seen us through a lot of troubled waters in recent years, for me personally this seems on par.
• Our staff is already a tiny crew but there will be no more than three of us in the building at any one time (one cook, one counter person, one dishwasher). We might have a new face or two out front on occasion while crew members with kids navigate childcare due to school closings. We are monitoring one another and we have a strict agreement that the smallest symptom amongst us means that person stays home!
• We wash our hands regularly and we always wear gloves for food prep. A few weeks ago Katrina and I watched a hand-washing video from the World Health Organization and it changed our game from the birthday song timer to the extra finger-lacing, palm rubbing and thumb-twisting. We commented yesterday that that video has changed us forever. We scrub like surgeons, all of us. In addition we’re policing face touching, we’re all drinking plenty of water and we have a policy that staff will eat and drink only in designated areas.
• We sanitize our iPad for payments many times per day, now we’re careful to do it after every transaction. We’re also sanitizing all door handles, phones and surfaces frequently throughout the day.
• While, thankfully, this virus doesn’t affect the food supply we’re fastidiously washing all produce in a white vinegar and baking soda solution and following all the usual protocols for proper temperatures and sanitation.
• We always make things in small batches here to ensure freshness. In the coming weeks we’ll be making micro batches. Instead of prepping twelve orders of salmon for dinner service I’ll prep only six, five pounds of linguine instead of ten, four gallons of soup instead of eight. We also plan to order smaller quantities of proteins and produce from our purveyors at any one time. As business picks up we’ll adjust this policy. Please understand and bear with us if we sell out of a dish you like before you’ve ordered, just for the next few weeks. This is a necessary move for the sake of food safety, our attempt to mitigate wasting food and our working capital.
• We’re making the most of down time by deep cleaning and organizing our little building. We’ve been giving the fridges the spa treatment and scrubbing parts of things that are easy to forget until it’s warm enough for the power washer, like wheels on storage carts and the ceiling of the walk-in. I even scrubbed the back side of the water heater this week.
• Being strictly carry out and catering has us at a slight advantage. No plates, no glassware and no utensils means that nothing that filters through our dish station has touched anyone’s mouth. Pots and pans only touch the stove, storage containers remain in the fridge. All takeout containers and disposable utensils are safely stored and they are completely sterile.
• It is our plan to maintain our schedule of Tuesday through Saturday, 2:00 until 9:30. If the occasion arises that one of our staff is unable to come in due to child care issues we will either close for a day or I will run a one woman show and answer the phones while I cook (in which case your patience will be vital!). We will keep you posted about any schedule changes here on Facebook.
• If you let us know when you call, we can arrange for carhop service and we’ll deliver your order to your auto. I know our food is available for delivery through Door Dash and we will spend the weekend researching what other delivery services are all about. If you are in the area and you are a cancer patient, a cardiac patient or otherwise immune compromised and you would like to order our food but cannot leave your home, please get in touch with us. Because we have such a small crew it will be difficult but if we can swing it we’ll arrange to have your order brought to your home. This would require some notice, and we’d have to bring it between noon and 2:00 or after 9:30, but we can make it happen. We trust in making this offer that people who are not high risk will be understanding about this unique and necessary favoritism. We’ll suss out all of the details and we’ll post about it next week.
I think that covers everything, if I’ve missed any of your questions or concerns feel free to reach us by phone or Facebook message and we’ll address your query as quickly as we can. For those of you who plan to come in and see us throughout this thing: we thank you so much! For those of you who plan to stay put for awhile: we completely understand and we hope that you show up in droves when things feel calmer.
* * * * * *
One final note: Our brethren in the restaurant business here in the metro Detroit area, and everywhere, are going to take a hit. Please support them as much as you can. If you’re uneasy about sitting down for a meal in a restaurant right now, that’s understandable, but get back to those places you love just as quickly as you can. For now, you can lend support in other ways: every single restaurant would be more than happy to make you a take out meal, every single one with a delivery service is waiting to fire your GrubHub or Uber Eats order, every single restaurant would be happy to sell you a gift certificate to be used at a later date, every single restaurant that has a bar would be thrilled to see you belly up and pop a few back, every single one would be delighted if you called to book a small catering gig or an off-premise dinner party for next week and they’d be thrilled if you called to book a larger event for sometime later this spring or summer. When you do go out: don’t forget to tip your server like a big shot.
- Peg