Helping Rio’s restaurant staff during the COVID-19 situation
Hello again readers. I hope you’re all well. I had been hoping to avoid a long delay after my last post, but I moved house at the beginning of July and so instead of blogging I’ve been sanding, sweeping, painting, scouting for second-hand furniture and so on.
Finally I’ve found a moment to shake the dust out of my hair and do a little writing. I have quite a backlog of topics I want to cover, but before anything else, I want to give you an update on the results of the fundraising campaign that I started back in May.
For those of you who missed the announcements at the time, the fundraising idea formed when all the bars and restaurants in Rio were forced to close at the beginning of the Covid outbreak. I thought about all the restaurant and bar staff who had become friends over the years and it occurred to me that they’re not exactly well-paid at the best of times. I wondered how they were coping during the lock-down. Similarly, most restaurants are on a financial knife-edge even when times are good – how many would survive a shutdown that would last months?
You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone
As time passed, it became clear that the answer to that last question was pretty dire. It’s been announced that around 1,000 establishments in Rio have closed permanently since the lock-down began – some of these are places I had grown to love over the years. Many restaurants with a rich history, such as Esquimó (almost 60 years old), sadly won’t be coming back. Other closures that pulled at my heartstrings were Puro in Jardim Botânico, Comuna in Botafogo, Hipódromo in Gávea – it’s a long, sad list, each place with a group of hardworking staff who are now looking for a job (14,500 have lost their jobs so far).
Esquimó no more. A classic of the Centro lunch scene gone forever.
