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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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With France on Lockdown Again, Can Its Culinary Legacy Survive?

A chef cooks in the kitchen of a closed restaurant offering take away food and drinks as the French economy braces itself for the effects of a second national lockdown | Kiran Ridley / Getty Images

French chefs and restaurateurs fear for more than their businesses as the country shuts down once more in response to COVID-19

If you put aside the masks, the bottles of hand sanitizer on each table, and the contact tracing forms distributed along with menus, last Wednesday looked like a normal pre-COVID -19 lunch hour at Paris’s Ibrik Kitchen, a popular Balkan canteen. Regulars filled the intimate dining room without hesitation and relished bites of chiftele and baked feta, questioning whether it might be their last restaurant meal for a while.

“See you in a month, maybe?” was the refrain from Ecaterina (Cathy) Paraschiv, owner of the 4-year-old restaurant and its sister coffee shop, as diners zipped up their coats and returned to the streets of a city once again at the mercy of the pandemic.

Later that evening, President Emmanuel Macron would address the nation and announce the next round of measures to slow the spread of the virus, which is surging across the country. Rumors and predictions had been ping-ponging between restaurant owners in industry WhatsApp groups for weeks; all the back-and-forth was stoking anxiety among Paraschiv’s peers. That anxiety was quickly replaced with resignation when their fate was revealed: a nationwide shutdown that would last at least through December 1 with only essential businesses (bakeries, pharmacies, supermarkets, and wine and tobacco shops) remaining open. And just like in March, restaurants would have less than 24 hours to prepare for the closure and to adjust for take-away business, should they even want to.

Kiran Ridley / Getty Images

A deli in Paris’ 2nd Arrondissement, one of the few shops to be classified to be allowed to remain open during the latest shutdown

“For the last three weeks, we’ve all been on edge. Part of that is due to a lack of clear communication from our politicians,” said Paraschiv from one of the banquettes in her restaurant the day after the announcement, as her staff prepared for their final day to sell off as many dishes, and even ingredients, as possible. For weeks, she had been dealing with out-of-stock products from her suppliers who were scaling back due to the rumors, disrupted deliveries, and uncertainty about how much to buy and prepare. “It’s been a war of nerves,” Paraschiv said. “On top of that, there’s the impact on our staff who understandably expect us to provide answers and protect them while us owners are questioning whether the government is really in control of the situation. Frankly, I take the news as a liberation.”

In some respects, Ibrik has been fortunate: Staff have been put back on temporary “partial unemployment,” (a government measure to prevent mass unemployment), and unlike many average-sized restaurants in France, Ibrik met the tricky conditions — based on the number of salaried workers and loss of revenue from 2019, among others — to have payroll taxes waived. There’s still the issue of rent and the ongoing construction work on Paraschiv’s forthcoming Balkan deli, a new venture slated to open in February 2021, but, she says she won’t pursue take-away or delivery. “You can’t adapt your business overnight and I don’t want to fill the pockets of the usual food delivery services,” she says, referencing Deliveroo and UberEats, both of which have been the subject of several investigations for exploiting couriers, many of whom are migrants, across Europe.

“It’s been a war of nerves... Frankly, I take the news as a liberation.”

Food apps have been the source of more than just a moral dilemma in France. To many, they’re a cultural challenge to the critical role that dining and gathering around the table plays in everyday French life. With many food businesses unable or unwilling to bend to the mounting pressure of a more Anglo-style delivery culture, the shutdown only seems to amplify the tensions in France between preserving local food traditions and adapting to a modern gig economy.

Still, if the Ibrik owner appears untroubled by the unknowns of the coming months — the question of cash flow, and what the industry will look like on the other side of this round of confinement — she attributes it to a sort of mantra she repeats to herself. “Life is neither fair or unfair; we’re at the mercy of nature and there are things bigger than us,” she said. “Remembering that helps me move forward.”

Laura Vidal, sommelière and co-owner of La Mercerie, 483 miles south of Paris in Marseille, has found optimism harder to come by, a struggle exacerbated by the feeling of being jerked around in the weeks leading up to this latest lockdown. In response to rising cases in the region at the end of September, the French government forced only restaurants and bars in Marseille and nearby Aix-en-Provence to close for what was then the second time this year. The backlash, including from local municipal authorities, was immediate: Some restaurants disregarded the order and continued to operate while other owners demonstrated against the forced closure in the street.

“It’s the first time I’ve participated in a rally, but I had to,” said Vidal, who has run the Mediterranean neo-bistro with chef Harry Cummins and Julia Mitton since February 2018. “The measure felt unfair, like the government needed to pin the surge on someone so they went straight for the restaurant industry as if to say, ‘See! We’re doing something about it!,’ But at no point since deconfinement in May were there inspections conducted to ensure we were respecting all sanitary protocols. None of our peers were checked on, either.”

Marseilles’s targeted restaurant shutdown was reversed two weeks later, but the damage to local confidence had been done, leading many in the industry to perceive the measures as politically driven. And just as Vidal suspected, the industry’s October reopening was short-lived. “Right after the announcement was made, Cummins started looking at what ingredients could be transformed, pickled, or frozen, and what we could give to staff,” Vidal said. “Since we sensed this was coming, we weren’t overwhelmed with product like last time.” The restaurant is, however, beset with fixed costs and what Vidal cites as the biggest hurdle of all for her and her partners: supporting themselves.

Getty Images / Stringer

Restaurants in Marseilles were also forced to shut down for two weeks back in September, 2020, do to a surge of COVID-cases

“As owners, we’re not entitled to any financial support. We didn’t pay ourselves during the months we were closed but that’s not sustainable for long,” she added. In the background, Cummins and the team can be heard cleaning the kitchen and moving bottles around to prepare for their new temporary business. To keep some cash coming in, Vidal and Cummins have begun selling wine packs and plan to partner with their various suppliers to get fruits and vegetables directly into the hands of consumers.

They’re also banking on a particularity of French culture to help them rebound. “I’ve always believed that the French treat going out to restaurants and feeding themselves as a form of self-care,” Vidal said. “I hope we can rely on them returning en masse, as they did during the summer.” While she is aware that there is no place completely free of risk from contracting the virus, including restaurants, she feels the messaging from leaders on the “problem” of dining establishments risks persuading consumers that dining out is inherently dangerous. “If the government continues to brainwash people into believing it’s at restaurants that they’ll get the coronavirus, then it’s going to be very challenging.”

For Stéphane Jégo, the fast-talking chef-owner of the 18-year-old institution L’Ami Jean, in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, the damage of this open-and-close dance may be irreversible. And it’s not just financial, but psychological, too. “This time is even more complicated than before,” says Jégo. “The government outlines health and hygiene protocols — taking out seats, distance between tables, disinfectant, masks, staff training, tracing — we bend over backwards to ensure we meet them to continue operating, and here we are, taken for fools yet again, having to recalibrate our businesses overnight.”

The restaurateur is on a short break from preparing the first batch of Jégo-to-Go orders, and I can hear the rumbling and clicking of delivery motorbikes resounding in the background. With 12 employees, down from 18 at the start of the pandemic, and an annual average revenue that puts his business just above the threshold for aid, the chef doesn’t qualify for any payroll tax relief. On top of that, he’s still waiting to receive the funds for loss of business that he lobbied for (and won) from his insurance company during the springtime shutdown.

“The government has promised entrepreneurs 10,000 euros for loss of business this time around — that covers one day for me. It’s nothing! I need to bring in 9,000 euros per day to cover costs, pay my staff, and ensure cash flow,” explains Jégo, on the verge of tears. “It was a good day in the last two months if we brought in 2,700 euros a day. To really get help, you need to be on the verge of bankruptcy. But we don’t want aid or promises, we want to work.”

“This isn’t just about restaurants, it’s about the whole ecosystem, about the survival of singular French know-how and gastronomic heritage.”

According to Jégo, France’s lack of enforcement of basic health and safety measures during the summer and early fall makes the latest shutdown especially hard to swallow. Echoing Vidal, he expresses frustration with the lack of inspections and punitive action against restaurants flouting the rules. “Instead of shutting down places that disregarded protocols all along, the government struck all of us equally. But which is better: Allowing us to continue working if we adhere to strict measures and assist with tracing, or the clusters that invariably form within homes? Because I can tell you that I’ve delivered orders for groups of 10 in individual households during the curfew and that’s not any safer.”

Ultimately, Jégo is worried not only about his own circumstances but what these measures mean for the industry at large. “This isn’t just about restaurants, it’s about the whole ecosystem, about the survival of singular French know-how and a gastronomic heritage France claims they want to see protected by UNESCO,” he says. “It’s about the growers and producers that work with chefs; it impacts the dishwashers and cleaners who rely on this work and even students who work to pay their way through school.” If nothing is done, Jégo fears a total erosion of the country’s culinary legacy. “What will be left is uniformity, led by investor-backed groups and chains, delivery apps, and dark kitchens. Is that what they want for this country?”

After the last egg was fried and the final pistachio-rose cake slice served at Ibrik kitchen on Thursday, Cathy Paraschiv lowered the shutters and headed home to her husband and two young children. The next day, she and her staff would return to clean up and prepare for at least a month at home. During this lockdown, schools will remain open. Without needing to play teacher and boss this time, she hopes the next several weeks will bring her a little rest and some time to strategize. “I’m actively choosing to focus on my next project,” she says with a smile. “This isn’t the end.”

Getty Images

Lindsey Tramuta is a Paris-based writer and the author of The New Paris and The New Parisienne: The Women & Ideas Shaping Paris.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3kViGPM https://ift.tt/3mN0Kaz

A chef cooks in the kitchen of a closed restaurant offering take away food and drinks as the French economy braces itself for the effects of a second national lockdown | Kiran Ridley / Getty Images

French chefs and restaurateurs fear for more than their businesses as the country shuts down once more in response to COVID-19

Kiran Ridley / Getty Images

A deli in Paris’ 2nd Arrondissement, one of the few shops to be classified to be allowed to remain open during the latest shutdown

“It’s been a war of nerves... Frankly, I take the news as a liberation.”

Getty Images / Stringer

Restaurants in Marseilles were also forced to shut down for two weeks back in September, 2020, do to a surge of COVID-cases

“This isn’t just about restaurants, it’s about the whole ecosystem, about the survival of singular French know-how and gastronomic heritage.”

Getty Images

Lindsey Tramuta is a Paris-based writer and the author of The New Paris and The New Parisienne: The Women & Ideas Shaping Paris.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3kViGPM via Blogger https://ift.tt/2I5txIb

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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lessonsinkindness-blog · 7 years

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valley of the empaths.

I know, or at least hope, I will not be alone in confessing that my propensity for empathy has at times, come at significant cost to my own happiness, and left me with a misplaced guilt complex.

I wouldn't change being an empath for anything, and have historically viewed its consequences as worthwhile "occupational hazards", but sometimes I have to ask myself how different my life might have been by now if I had dared to take a few more risks, and listened to my instincts sooner.

I look at all the years that have been wasted on trying to make square pegs fit round holes, and punishing myself for what were actually quite sound decisions, and can't help wondering how much further down the road I'd be. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and after it all, I can say that I really tried with many people and many situations before finally giving up, but sometimes I wince at the time it's taken me to move from A to B.

I've always hated conflict and confrontation. In fact, I'll do almost anything to avoid it most of the time. I'll keep giving out second chances, I'll make excuses and justifications for behaviour for way too long, and I'll always try to see the situation from the other person's point of view. Because my natural default is to excuse poor behaviour by finding some mitigating circumstance to reason it away, it takes me a really long time to throw in the towel. Most people's experience of me won't be one of someone who is argumentative or unforgiving, and that's set a precedent, like it does for all of us, as to what people expect from me day to day.

So it comes as no surprise that on the rare occasions I have chosen to cut someone out of my life, or confront them about unacceptable behaviour, that it has been met with shock and indignation. I think if people were honest, this is because they perceive me as quite a passive or weak-minded person, and assume that I don't have it in me. Quite often I find myself in situations where people are obviously not expecting me to call them out, and quite often, they would be correct in this assumption. So when I do take a stand, the backlash I receive for it tends to be greater. If I am angry enough, and have had enough time to prove beyond any reasonable doubt to myself, and any second chances I may have bestowed, that this person needs to be challenged, I will do so, when the time is right. I always hope in these situations that people would reflect on the fact that a) I am not normally a confrontational person, b) I am a recognised empath by almost everyone in my life and c) I generally have no issues being able to get on with people, and therefore conclude that perhaps in this situation, there may be some merit to my point of view. But denial is a powerful thing, and as my brother will often say, people have an underlying instinct to be the "hero of their own stories". And some truths are bitter pills to swallow.

The knock-on effect of this is that it plays into a sense of guilt in me which is already in overdrive. By the point I have actively entered into conflict, I will already have had to override huge waves of anxiety to stick my neck out, and it doesn't take much of a leap for me to start convincing myself I've made a terrible mistake.

I'm no longer ashamed or embarrassed to admit that I have had a lot of counselling throughout my life, from the age of about 15. This has been for various reasons that I will go into separately in other blogs, but what I will say is that it's taken me a long time, and lots of therapy, for me to even begin to recognise that not all negative implications of conflicts in my life are my fault. Nor am I the driver of any of them. I have gradually, over time, gained clarity enough to trust myself that some of the most difficult decisions I've made in life have been some of the best, and were frankly, entirely justified.

Making these kinds of decisions is even harder when society tells you they don't make sense, that "blood is thicker than water". That mentality can get under your skin so much, that it's the easiest thing in the world to wake up one day, and think, "what have I done?", "was I too harsh?", "am I going to regret this when I/they are grey and old and on my/their deathbed?".

But what is regret?

Regret is "a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over an occurrence or something that one has done or failed to do".

Whose failing is it? Who has done to?

I may have cut the threads, but the failings were not mine, and I am not guilty of "doing to".

I had a defining moment some time ago, and at the risk of this blog being longer than intended, I'd like to explain the resonance it's had on me since. If it seems a little disjointed, this is because this is an edited segment from a chapter I've been writing for my book. I didn't want to share it all, but I thought the below would offer an insight into what I'm getting at here.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I used to believe, perhaps naively, that whatever stories people manage to spin to others in their life to justify their unkind, cruel, or abusive behaviour, and whatever distraction tactics they employ to keep the white noise of life preventing them from seeing evidence of the truth: that when they are in a room, by themselves, with nothing but their own thoughts for company, people recognise on some level that they have been bad, unkind, cruel to another human being – even if they never admit that outside of those four walls.

Through time, I’ve realised that those same people are also very good at buying into, and convincing themselves, of their external lies. And that more often than not, that conversation with themselves never happens. For me, this is the cruellest lesson in life – that someone can treat someone else so badly, and never really pay any significant price for it.

When we’re wronged in some way, we like to imagine all sorts of scenarios in our head. That the other person will feel guilty later, that they will suffer in some way as karma dishes out “punishment”, that they will have regrets later in life.

What about if that never happens? What about if that person just doesn’t care enough about you to spend much of their time thinking about it? What about if your life is an imprint of the devastation they’ve left behind…and they’re sitting in some other corner of the world, your town, the same street…perfectly happy? What then?

I’ll always remember a poignant moment in my life that cemented this realisation for me.

I haven’t seen my Dad since 2014. Throughout my childhood, my Dad was a tyrant. Those that know me well know a little of what he was like, but until now I've never really said much about him. I may choose to write about him in other blogs in a little more detail if it feels right, but for now, suffice to say that if it wasn’t for my Mum, I think things could have turned out very differently for my brother and I. My Dad is a deeply insecure, angry, and bitter man, who has made it his life’s work to abuse anybody in a close relationship with him. I hold him accountable for the sheer misery he has inflicted on so many lives around him. And I have never once known him to apologise to any of us for a single incidence of the bile he has spewed in our direction for years. After a period of reconciliation where I tried desperately to give him a chance to prove himself capable of being a decent, honest person, yet again I found myself back at square one – my Dad is not capable of loving anybody, and I truly believe he is devoid of the capacity for genuine emotion.

In the Summer of 2016, I met a friend for dinner. We were chatting and laughing away, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw that my Dad was having dinner by himself at the next restaurant, on the other side of the glass pane, outside. Luckily, my Dad was facing away from us, and didn’t appear to have seen me. Nevertheless, I felt a wave of anxiety wash over me, and I immediately felt too sick to eat the rest of my dinner. My friend is a good one who knows quite a bit about my family history, and I was able to tell her what was happening. We decided to order the bill and as soon as we’d paid up, we’d leave.

While I was waiting for the bill, and my friend visited the bathroom, my eyes flitted over to where he sat. And there it was. The absolute reality check I needed. The final blow that snuffed out the tiny flame of “but I still miss him sometimes” once and for all. There he was, in the sunshine, drinking a glass of wine, having a nice steak dinner, and laughing – I mean that kind of laughing when you’re in public, and you’re trying to control yourself but you can’t help it – at his mobile phone. It hit me: he’s happy.

The moment I realised this, my focus and perspective on him changed. My Dad was not living a lonely, miserable existence. He was not sitting there fretting about what he had lost. He wasn’t distracted by anxiety or depression over what his life had become.

He was happy. He wasn’t losing time thinking about any of us.

Is my interpretation of this event subjective? Of course. Can I actually get inside my Dad’s head and have unequivocal knowledge of his thoughts? No. Was I making an assumption based on that snapshot of time? Perhaps. Who knows. I will never know. But – it mattered enough that he was still able to have one of those moments to me. He didn’t deserve it. Somehow he’d landed on his feet again and I could almost guarantee he was still parading around in his smug, narcissistic bubble. He undoubtedly would have found some new, vulnerable woman (perhaps a timid divorcee with young children or a younger secretary at his latest law firm). He was probably working, and earning a decent wage, despite the fact he had a criminal record. He’d probably wormed his way into her house and her family.

And he probably didn’t think about me all that much. Just another blip on the radar.

The Empath's arch nemesis: The Narcissist.

So what justice is there? How do those people sleep at night? Why is it that people like us end up living an examined life, while they coast along, unflinchingly sailing through?

I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

So when I'm talking about regret, about misplaced guilt, about the internal conflict it provokes in us to cut someone out of our lives, I feel an awareness that there is a prism certain relationships in our lives are viewed through. A friend who treats you like shit? Move on.

On the other hand, society tells me that if this person is my parent, I am supposed to forgive them all sins and pop my rose-tinted glasses on. Nurse them into old age. Be there for them and be the better person, despite their flaws and transgressions. Because "at the end of the day, they're flesh and blood".

These are the messages we receive in our day to day lives. It's no wonder us empaths are left choked by hesitation and regret. We lose years and years of our lives to absorbing dysfunctional transmissions about the people we have a duty to be, when everyone else is enabled to fall short.

To make empaths feel better, there are often narratives of “killing people with kindness”, "being the bigger person", or “the best revenge is success”. Guilt is a powerful glue in disempowering us from taking back control of our lives and dictating who is allowed in on our own terms, according to our belief systems.

Sometimes that pressure comes from ourselves. We can buy into our moral sanctity by sticking to the plot line of "empath forgives and sets an example". I wrote about the guru complex. The guru complex befits our friend the Narcissist. The Empath's equivalent is martyrdom.

It makes us feel smug to think that we are sticking the knife in by living a fabulous life full of sunshine and rainbows while these people are caked in secret misery. Or that we have proven ourselves worthy by being unconditional in our love. That feeds into a need we have to cast ourselves as the hero.

The hard truth is, this is as much a fairy story as the tales Narcissists tell themselves about what went on all those years ago. They don’t have a magic telescope. They don’t know (and in honesty, probably don’t care) about how happy we are, what we are doing with our lives, or what success we’ve found. Narcissists all have one thing in common – their self-interest.

But what we can do is live our life, be happy, be successful, in the objective knowledge that the news may never reach them, that they will never provide the apology we so desperately crave, and they may not even live to regret it. But we can live on in spite of that. Because of it. Our audience can be ourselves. Our applause can be our own sense of pride and achievement.

I've squandered too much time raking myself over the coals for decisions I had every right to take. And I want to stop that now. If we're talking about forgiveness, sometimes we have to forgive ourselves. Forgive ourselves for not being stronger, earlier. Forgive ourselves for moving on. Forgive ourselves for bidding guilt goodbye.

#blog #kindness #guilt #regret #empaths #empathy #narcissism #narcissist

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