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An oral history of what Covid-19 has done to the Houston hospitality industry.
By
Timothy Malcolm
3/17/2021 at 9:48am
Published in the Spring 2021 issue of
Houstonia
Covid-19 dominated everything in 2020, from the way we lived (mostly at home) to how we ate (again, mostly at home). In Houston it significantly altered the restaurant industry, with more than 100,000 workers temporarily finding themselves out of work during the year, according to the Greater Houston Restaurant Association. Restaurants closed for weeks, and in some cases permanently, chefs and workers found themselves out of jobs, and a city known for how much its residents go out to eat retreated.
What s cooking at Houston s smokin food charity, plus the hottest restaurant news
What s cooking at Houston s smokin food charity, plus restaurant news Kathryn Lott is this week s guest.
Photo by Julie Soefer On this week s episode of What s Eric Eating,
Kathryn Lott joins CultureMap food editor Eric Sandler to discuss her role as the executive director of the
Southern Smoke Foundation. A longtime friend of Southern Smoke co-founders Chris Shepherd and Lindsey Brown, Lott brings over 20 years of nonprofit experience to her position. Southern Smoke evolved into a crisis relief organization after Hurricane Harvey, but the coronavirus pandemic thrust it into the spotlight. Lott explains how the organization has responded to the crisis both by staffing up to deal with a nationwide influx of applications and by staying true to its core mission of primarily assisting people with emergency medical and housing situations.
The foundation created the $4 million fund to help support workers, but $3.6 million remains unclaimed at this time.
Many workers, including Peter Mohawk, only hear of the fund through friends or fellow workers, and he was surprised when he heard about it.
“I thought it was a southern thing,” he recalled.
When Mohawk applied online for help in paying his $900 health insurance bill, he was approved a short time later.
“I think it was only a day or two,” he said. “I was like ‘this is phenomenal.’”
Kathryn Lott, the executive director of the Southern Smoke Foundation, says that the fund is available to all those workers who need a helping hand during the pandemic.
How Covid-19 changed everything.
The table-side Turnerâs wedge salad.
I first read a story about Covid-19 in January and made a casual observation to my wife, something along the lines of Hmmm, this thing seems serious. Â
In February a friend and I were embarking on a four-restaurant food crawl and talking about the fate of Asian-American-operated restaurants across Houston. Sales were down dramatically as people avoided these restaurants, primarily because of unfounded and false rumors that the coronavirus was spreading through those establishments.
In early March it seemed inevitable that everything was about to change. By mid-month, all restaurants and bars across Harris County were ordered to close for dine-in service. In the following weeks, operators scrambled to figure out how to work a new reality. I heard the word pivot more times than I could count. I stopped writing restaurant reviews and, instead, focused on pantry items and kitchen equipment. Next came