Hi again, Feastlings.
I’m not sure what it’s like out there for you, but there’s an eerie but not entirely unpleasant calm here. We’re adjusting a little bit to the new normal, so we’re catching up on prep work and starting to develop an educated guess as to how much of everything we need to keep handy. There’s still a bunch of white lasagne here for you, at least as of midday, but we’ll be updating the specials as dishes come and go. We’re also still trying to support our friends, so I’ll encourage you again to check out your potential Friday evening activity, #digitalwineresearch, with our winemaker buddies Kent Callaghan and Todd Bostock, and the information about that tasting is here.
We just got another case of each of the two wines they’ll be discussing in, so you have today and tomorrow to pick some up if you’re fretting about being able to taste along. And we’re making a special duck pasta dish that’s specifically meant to pair with the wines.
The big development today is this: Our long-distance deliveries. I had thought if we could get five or six people to order from Oro Valley, it would suddenly make sense to deliver up there- up to this point, sending someone to Saddlebrooke has meant a twenty-dollar delivery charge and has tied up one of our staff on only one delivery for nearly two hours. As it turns out, our Oro Valley friends have written back, saying they’ve contacted their friends and neighbors in larger groups. So thank you, Frank, Chandler, Susan, Jane, Laurie and anyone else who’s told their Northwest friends about us. Because we’re trying to get an accurate idea what we’ll need to prepare and whether we’ll need a couple of people to drive food up, we’re changing the ordering piece of OV Day so that you can place your order all day on Saturday and again on Sunday from 11 to 3 in order to get your Sunday evening delivery. Here’s the updated note on that.
We’ll do our best to execute this effectively but don’t have an idea yet how many people will be ordering, nor how much, so thanks for bearing with us as we figure it out. Moreover, thanks for understanding that I know Grubhub and Doordash might possibly be more convenient, but our first priority is to provide some semblance of employment for the people who’ve taken care of you here in the restaurant for years.
Assuming this goes well, you can look for us to be doing similar delivery days to the Northeast and to any neighborhood where we can get enough economy of scale to make it make sense to deliver to you without it costing either you or us more than we can afford to spend.
I’ll also mention that we’re aware that both Passover and Easter are coming soon, and while we won’t be able to do entire menus for these special days, we’ll most decidedly be making specials for both. I’ll warn those of you who keep kosher for Passover that matzo meal is becoming as scarce as toilet paper and hand sanitizer, but we have some ordered that’s supposed to arrive by March 31. In the event that it falls through- we know things are falling through right now- we’ll be using flour to make matzo that we will not allow to rest, which will therefore be unleavened, which will therefore be as kosher for Passover as we can get it. We have plenty of Manischewitz on order, so fingers crossed, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
We’re also going to have a go at a livestream wine tasting with Kevin this Saturday. We luddites are still learning what to many of you is really simple. It took me more than a few minutes the other day to understand how to repost something on Instagram, so zoom will take some time to figure out as well. Here’s the link with the information on that (and keep an eye out- we’ll be updating that page to let you know how to join the meeting.)
Thanks for your patience with us, thanks for supporting us, thanks for supporting the other small businesses important to you, and thanks for being the remarkably kind and caring human beings you’ve all shown yourselves to be. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt unluckier, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt luckier.
Your pal,
Doug