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THE ARC OF ACRE
When a Restaurant Opening and a Global Pandemic Collide
In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time.
Interact with this site for a window into what it was like to open a restaurant in NYC during the onset of the global pandemic.
Home: Welcome
THE ARC
The designer of the space and founder of the restaurant is a colleague of ours in the Food Studies department, Minjeong Song. We met in classes and learning of my bartending background she asked for my help with the bar portion of the restaurant. I joined her and our chef in February as the bar consultant.
The cultivation of community through food, beverage, and design was central to the conception of Acre.
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We were well on our way to opening day on March 18, when news about the community spread of the coronavirus began to seriously escalate. Our restaurant-opening-tunnel-vision began to be permeated by news of the mounting health crisis, it was no longer overseas or on the other side of the country, it was here. Our staff meetings transformed from service training into how we would create a socially distanced dining room, to pivoting to a to-go model, to questioning opening at all.
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This is a story about the trajectory of a restaurant as it has navigated its collision with the global pandemic and a window into our world during this particular moment of undoing. I do want to stress that while the pandemic radically changed the path of the project, the metamorphosis into something different is maybe even more poetic, albeit someone else's story to tell. Today, under a new team, Acre serves Japanese food with the same purpose of creating community through food, fermentation, and design.
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Home: Intro
Home: About Me
"But then, because of the pandemic, I had to, you know, give up. And then that's personally, it's very [painful]...I got a lot of laughs and I learned a lot through that experience. Like personally, these experiences are so valuable."
Minjeong Song
Home: Quote
CLOSURE
The recipes I was developing for Acre were stopped in their tracks when Governor Cuomo announced that all indoor dining would be prohibited, on March 16th. In response, our restaurant would pivot to a to-go model. I immediately began work on designing a to-go drink menu. It had to be basic and straightforward so that a server of any experience level could make it since I was quarantined and wouldn't be there to oversee. You can see that menu more details about it under the Recipes page under the post, This is what you call a pivot, and the rest of the recipes that were in motion up until that day.
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