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French Restaurants Cook Up Pro Bono Response to COVID-19

Lisa Bryant

   RUEIL-MALMAISON, FRANCE - It's mid-rush hour, culinarily speaking, at
   Sapristi restaurant outside Paris. Cooks are dicing onions, stirring
   sausage, slicing tuna in slender chunks, their work spare and clean.

   Head chef Gilbert Benhouda ticks off the menu du jour: pasta with tuna
   and capers; sautéed chicken with mushrooms and parsley; roast sausage
   and potatoes.

   "Today, we're producing 1,300 meals," he says. "That's enough for three
   days."

   The chefs are not cooking for their usual clientele, but rather the
   frazzled ranks of coronavirus responders. Their mandatory face masks
   and bottles of hand sanitizer--not to mention the empty tables just
   outside the kitchen door--underscore the grim new world facing France's
   restaurant industry.

   As the country begins emerging from a two-month lockdown next week,
   Sapristi and other restaurants will stay closed.

   "We're not dead, we're not alive, we're in the middle--in artificial
   coma," says Hakim Gaouaoui, owner of Les Bistrots Pas Parisiens
   restaurant chain that includes Sapristi.
   Across Europe, the coronavirus has shuttered thousands of eating
   establishments, dealing them a multi-billion-dollar blow. And while a
   handful of countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, have
   announced plans for reopening eateries, the pandemic is shaping a
   radically different dining experience, at least in the near future.

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