Yes, I will continue to order delivery from restaurants as long as possible. I hate to cook (and I also could never cook well all the different ethnic food I prefer), and I only received about half the groceries of my previous order from Ralphs.
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My haul from Underwood Family Farms this afternoon in Moorpark. Instacart isn’t working out for me (a long delay now) so I decided to take a longish drive to support our local farm. Strawberries are sweeeeet!
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So peaceful and quiet shopping at Cavaretta’s, my local Italian Market. They are usually packed around noon for lunch. Support your “mom and pop” neighborhood markets! They need your support as well.
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M. Georgina
Order by Thursday at 10am, pickup on Friday.
I love, love their bread.
Chaumont - Beverly Hills - An unexpected visit
I needed to make a quick stop on Beverly Dr for work. And I mean, who could resist an open & quiet Chaumont with available parking? Not me! We have lots of provisions and are doing a good job complying with the pleads to “shelter at home“ - this includes resisting the urge to satisfy whims. But! There are limits to the sacrifice, so…
Wanting to get in & out and not ask questions I quickly selected Croissants and two tasty looking Little Cakes - a Citrus & an Almond, with Almond being the favorite - firm, nice textured cake, soft almond paste and a thin, buttery, caramelized, chewy bottom. The Croissant was that french buttery, flaky, fluffy goodness you know and love. 
Chaumont Provisions
Again, wanting to get in & out I took some snaps of the tables as a PSA for seekers but didn’t need or buy anything. Now, looking at said snaps I see a few things I definitely could’ve used. 
P.S. When driving away I happened to spy Maude and looks like they also have a nice, micro-market out front.
Bright spots in troubling times!
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Good article today in NYT. The headline by Tejal Rao
Is My Takeout Risking Lives or Saving Restaurants?
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Good one. It made me think of and wonder what Jonathan Gold would be doing and writing about this time.
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Joy from Tacos 1986 spoke about why he opened the Beverly location just a few days ago.
He was set to open at the end of March but put that on hold indefinitely. He forgot to remove a Help Wanted sign in the window and was shocked by how many applications came in. He felt like he owed it to the people he could hire to offer them a job, even though he said the third location adds to the stress and fear he already feels operating two other locations during this crisis.
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I went opening day last week for Beverly, had to support.
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For those of you who like Joy from 1986, don’t watch his episode of Chef’s Night Out. Dude is so cringe.
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smooches 
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Read over the article a couple times.
Was interested in the section where the author points to the problem of a worker getting sick, thus putting co-workers at risk. What really interested me was how it leads to paranoia and causes the whole staff to go into panic. Haven’t heard much about that side of the story. Wish the article examined it more.
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It’s a good article. I don’t think there’s any 100% morally good options here. If we don’t patronize restaurants, the only other option is cooking ourselves, because we still need to eat. In order to cook, we need to buy groceries, which means that underpaid workers with little protection are going to be putting themselves at risk stocking warehouses and shelves, ringing up our orders or delivering them.
Unless you have multiple months’ worth of provisions at home or own a totally self-sustaining farm and are the only person who tends it, I can’t think of any way to eat right now that doesn’t endanger another person.
Getting food from restaurants doesn’t seem worse than getting groceries in terms of endangering others, because in both cases other people are working in risky conditions. Personally, I’d rather buy from restaurants where at least there’s a smaller number of people working there, and there’s a positive aspect in sustaining a small business at risk of going under.
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Stay-home and social distancing orders are not about any one individual avoiding infection, per se, at all. They’re about reducing the transmission rate to avoid overloading hospitals. Workers performing essential services are at a higher risk.
For restaurants, prepay with no-contact pickup is probably the safest for everyone. This is the must comprehensive approach I’ve seen so far:
All meals will be prepared in the Benu kitchen and available for contactless pickup at the gated entrance. Benu is a 5,000-square-foot property and there will be no more than eight staff present at a time, allowing for ample physical distancing. Beyond strict hygiene practices, our team is adhering to protocols for their commute and living situation, mask use, and daily temperature checks.
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“The reason we’re still continuing to do takeaway, it’s not because we’re making money,” Pim Techamuanvivit (San Francisco’s Kin Khao and Nari) says, “it’s so we can continue to support our suppliers, the farmers we’ve been working with. Because if we stop using all of the products, where are they going to go?”
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This is apropos to nothing, just an observation. We’re doing a little takeout but have stocked up on a lot of groceries over the last couple of weeks and I’m enjoying getting back to cooking at home. Everyone has to do what makes them happy or feels is right for them. But my observation is when we do takeout/delivery I have marveled at how incredibly fresh the food is. I can only surmise it’s because it’s the restaurants’ only business right now and there is such a demand that the meat & produce are getting prepared and sent out the door as fast as it comes in. 
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Interesting observation.
I have been (mostly) very impressed with the take out we’ve gotten. And I usually despise take out.
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I did read somewhere (Yahoo, maybe?) that one dairy producer was literally throwing away 10,000-15,000 gallons of milk/day since the pandemic. Apparently labelling and bottling requirements are different if you’re supplying to a store vs. restaurant. So it does make sense that a restaurant operating very much helps their suppliers.
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