Chef complies with pandemic guidelines by turning restaurant into mannequin-filled nightmare
Over the last two months, we’ve covered a number of ways the pandemic has forced people to get a bit more innovative. There have been late night host turning their bathtubs into makeshift stages and sports announcers using their skills to narrate daily life, aquariums offering virtual jellyfish meditation sessions and enterprising people ditching work calls by messing with video conferencing backgrounds. Now, in an effort to create the impression of a bustling restaurant while still complying with social distancing guidelines, a chef has come up with the idea of packing his business with frozen-eyed mannequin diners.
The story of the Inn At Little Washington’s doll diners comes from the Washingtonian. It describes how the Virginia restaurant was set to reopen as usual this week until word came that state guidelines required chef Patrick O’Connell to run at only “50 percent capacity.” To accommodate these rules, O’Connell pushed the Inn’s reopening back to May 29th and has decided that he’ll overcome the capacity issue by filling in the dining area with a bunch of “faux humans costumed in 1940s-era garb” created in partnership with a local theater company.