The Year We Lost
I am not a person who is terribly reflective when we reach the end of a year. I always look to what is in front of me, and the past seven years have made it easy to do so. Over that time, I have opened a bar, gave birth to two children, opened a restaurant, wrote and published a cookbook, left a bad partnership, started creating good ones, more cookbooks, another restaurant—it was impossible to not be looking firmly forward. March 15th, 2020, changed all of that dramatically. Our life came to a screeching halt. We hibernated our little bar and said goodbye-for-now to our staff. We thought it would be for two weeks, for some of them it has been nine months. We still don’t know the day we will again see faces inside of our bar, but we do know it is still months away.
I have been spending recent days doing the thing I rarely do: reflecting on this past year. Food is the language through which I process love and loss. I remember events by what I cooked, ate, or drank. Food and drink was still a big part of 2020, but I find myself reflecting on all the meals I have missed.
In 2013, I was three months pregnant with our daughter Oona, my partner and I opened our bar, the Portland Hunt + Alpine Club. A week later, Piccolo, a tiny restaurant at the edge of the Old Port, opened its doors. My best friend was in town to see our bar, and together we had dinner at Piccolo on their opening night. Over the years I ate many milestone dinners there: my first Mother’s Day brunch; May the Fourth (where I spent hours making a Princess Leia wig out of yarn for my then two-month old); Hunt + Alpine holiday celebrations; large and luxurious meals with extended family who were visiting; and, when we could sneak away, the rare date night. In July, when Piccolo announced that their doors had closed for good, all those moments came rushing back. Being in the industry, restaurant closings always sting; I know intimately the precarious ledge these small, often family-owned, operations walk along. You never want to see a restaurant close, especially the ones within your community. Amidst a year of too many restaurant closings, Piccolo is the one I think about most. They were the restaurant that opened the same month as ours; it feels close to home because it is.
Newness doesn’t appeal to me. I like routine; I enjoy going to the same place over and over again, and it takes time for a new restaurant to find its way into my routine, with little exception. Flood’s, a small restaurant located along upper Congress Street, was that exception. Not since finding my home-away-from-home a decade ago at Clyde Common–a restaurant and bar in Portland, Oregon, where I met my husband–have I ever felt so right sitting in a space. It was a space our town needed; it felt full of life, like it had been a neighborhood spot for years that I was only just discovering. Sitting at the bar, you would almost definitely run into friends who you don’t see often enough.
Flood’s was the restaurant at which Andrew and I spent last New Year’s Eve, sharing a great bottle of bubbles, a very large ribeye and finishing the meal with chocolate pudding. It was particularly special because not only was it our anniversary, but it was the first one we fully spent together in seven years. New Year’s Eve in the restaurant industry meant that Andrew worked late and returned home tired. That evening at Flood’s felt perfect. A few short months later, our last meal out before everything shut down was at Flood’s. I would have never expected that would be our final meal there.
The loss I feel isn’t just for the restaurants that have shuttered for good. We have also lost so much of the energy and community from the restaurants that are still open. We have lost the feeling of sitting at the bar of your neighborhood restaurant and overhearing people on dates, tins shaking drinks in the background, chatting with your bartender. Throughout this year we have found ourselves often at Woodford F&B, another one of those places that quickly found its way into my routine. The space’s mid-century lines are still complimented with comfortable green booths, but now these booths are empty. Walking through to use the bathroom at Woodford’s, I can’t help but think about the moments we have lost here this year. All of the meals and conversations that never happened.
At the beginning of 2019, our young son had such a horrible asthmatic episode that he spent four nights at the hospital while doctors tried to diagnose him. Watching my almost-two-year old suffering and scared, not being able to comfort him was the most horrifying experience of my life. I would spend all day in this hospital room, and Andrew would spend all night there, so I could sleep at home with our daughter. On one particularly bad day of multiple bad days in a row, Rocky was medicated so the doctors could scan his small body. He fought the medication, wiggling in the machine, as I held him down and sang “Single Ladies” in an attempt to calm him. If this didn’t work our next option was full anesthesia. The entire experience was deflating and tiring, and as Rocky lay sleeping that evening, Andrew told me to go home and relax. I drove down the street to relieve our sitter, but before doing so I found myself driving to Woodford F&B. I needed to breathe. I needed that moment of solace that sitting at a bar after a long day can bring. As I sat there, sipping my beer and attempting to shed the weight of my day, the owner came to chat. Recognizing not only that I hadn’t eaten all day, but the emotion I was carrying, he sent out food. And then he wordlessly disappeared, only to return 20 minutes later to tell me that he’d ducked out to deliver a meal to my husband at the hospital. I sat there and felt the rush of what makes restaurants and bars so great. They provide spaces for us to celebrate, but also provide places for us to find comfort. How many times has that been lost this year? How many people have needed that? Needed to sit at a friendly bar, lose themselves for just a brief moment, and feel kindness from the other side of the bar?
Restaurants exist to create these spaces for our communities. Spaces for celebration, for solace, and for grief. We open our doors wanting people to come in and share their day and their night, their joy and their sadness. This year we have lost this. Our doors are closed, our spaces are empty, our energy is drained from the nights of worry and fear in which we currently live. Even though we are all in this together, we aren’t together.
As I wrote this, and shared it with Andrew, we each thought of recipes that we would reach for to close out this year. My order is a classic Martini. Simple and comforting, it is the drink I look to both in celebration and sadness. Andrew chose a Champagne Cocktail. Ridiculously easy to make, it still feels special and different, which honestly is a sort-of perfect way to describe 2020.
Our Favorite Martini
4oz good London Dry Gin (I like Tanqueray 10)
1oz freshly-opened dry vermouth (Dolin is in our fridge)
1 dash orange bitters
Garnish: lemon peel
Stir with ice 50 times. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Express the lemon twist over the top and toss it away. Enjoy!
Champagne Cocktail
1 small sugar cube
Angostura bitters
Good, but not great, sparkling wine
Garnish: lemon peel
In a small dish place a sugar cube and carefully soak with 2-3 dashes of Angostura bitters. Gently place sugar cube into a Champagne glass. With the glass at an angle, pour sparkling wine down the sides so as not to agitate the bubbles too much. Continue to pour until the glass is full. Express the lemon twist over the top and discard. Drink up!
Reading this while sitting at a fire pit on our mostly empty patio on this lovely December evening. A beautiful meditation on 2020 that brought tears to my eyes. Thank you!