Tuesday, November 17Īlexis Dubon, waitress, New York City: I’ve been waiting tables at restaurants for 15 years. Eventually, I would like to continue some version of my pop-up when this pandemic is behind us-and hopefully with all the correct licensing. So I’m out of work and looking for odd jobs. But the numbers are worse than ever-Washoe County has more than 5,000 cases, and I don’t like the idea of bringing people together at a time like this.

I love handing the food directly to people, and I love cooking outside. It’s a relief, really, not to be out with the crowds. Most important, I never had any complaints and I never saw anyone throw away their food.

Some nights I knew every face that came by, and some I didn’t know any. Some nights I dragged home 10 pounds of beef (it’s still sitting in my freezer). Why am I even doing this? An hour later, I was rolling out a few more orders, and that guy came back to tell me he loved it and to ask when would I be there serving food again.Īfter that, service was smoother. He took a bite once per minute, and I thought this guy is just choking the meal down: He hates it. He took a few bites of the burger and set it down to mind his iPhone. The caramelization of the beef was the only thing holding the patty together. It stuck to the grill press and nearly fell apart. I placed the first beef ball on the griddle and smashed it with the grill press. I felt out of place, like everyone knew I was some fraud, and thought, This guy can’t be serious. I rolled the flattop into the corner, hyperaware that everyone could see me dragging in several coolers and drawing up a sign on some cardboard right there on the spot. I must’ve run eight or nine pop-ups over two months. He was willing to do anything to make sure his employees kept their income.

This made my situation sort of funny: David was allowing me to serve food without proper licensing so he could keep the bar open. So bar owners got smart, and they started requesting food trucks to post up in their parking lots so they could continue business. Bars were closed-unless they served food. At that point, in September, there were partial shutdowns around the city.

Haha angry red button meme