May 6, 2021
During Covid-19 lockdowns, small businesses around the world had to pivot their operations to survive. Building an online presence, resorting to delivery apps, selling in bulk and ready-to-cook meal kits were some ways restaurants stayed afloat. For diners, ordering a meal kit from a favorite restaurant was a way to stay connected to it and support local businesses. The extra time at home allowed some people to learn to cook, or expand their culinary repertoire to different foods.
We talked to a number of these restaurants who say their new delivery, meal kits, and catering operations have changed the way they will do business even after customers return to indoor dining.
As the bleak winter of 1862 dragged on into 1863, the isolated, ramshackle town of Los Angeles was visited by a terrifying scourge smallpox.
With its telltale fever and disfiguring skin rash, the highly infectious disease jumped from adobe to adobe, killing more than 100 people and sickening hundreds of others. If those numbers don t sound like much, remember L.A. had only 4,000 or so souls at the time and the outbreak wiped out half of its indigenous residents. The city s smallpox wagon, dubbed the black Maria, was a frequent and disheartening sight as it rolled through the streets carrying victims to the city hospital, or pesthouse, writes John W. Robinson in