Cooking Over Quarantine

How the COVID-19 has Affected Businesses and Cooks around Austin

By Wyatt Saydah

It is March of 2020, you pull out a pan and crack an egg. As the egg sizzles in the pan you turn on a radio. The first thing you hear is that the first case of the Coronavirus has been reported in America. The next thing you know, businesses are shut down and nobody goes outside in fear of being infected. Meanwhile, businesses don’t know what to do as people are losing their jobs because of the lack of customers. To get through the madness of this pandemic, you decide to start cooking.

Cooking brings joy like almost nothing else. Having the ability to express yourself through the making of delicious food and then being able to eat and share your creation, and really enjoy what you have just done is unlike anything else. Since the start of COVID-19, sharing your creations with other people to taste has been nearly impossible.

Judge Baskin is a sophomore at LASA Highschool. He was working, cooking at restaurants before the pandemic started. He also cooks extravagant meals on his own. Baskin said that what he likes about cooking is that he can have a vision and then within two hours, he can put that vision on a plate and find out what he can change next time to make the dish even better. Baskin has a business called Biome Restaurant. They make a variety of ever changing meals for people to enjoy. Unfortunately, the pandemic has stopped them from being able to continue for the moment.

Baskin said that the way he got interested in cooking is that his friend introduced him to Gordon Ramsay’s show, Hell’s Kitchen. After that Baskin said that he got interested in cooking and discovered many different recipes and tutorials on YouTube. Finally, he started testing recipes on his own and discovered his passion for cooking, an escape. Because I mean, everything’s pretty messed up, you can tell. But when you get a chance to cook, everything is in that moment. Everything is in the kitchen. You can forget about the world for a solid hour and a half.” Baskin said.

According to Baskin, there were different phases of cooking during quarantine. “Remember, in the first month, wherever people were saying, guys, I’m starting a sourdough starter, I’m gonna make bread, and I did the same thing. I had had a starter for a while, but I never really started making bread.” Baskin said. “People just kind of were saying, alright, I have all this time, and then they just kind of stopped. And I think that’s what I found, too, school has run through a lot of my time, you know? So I’ve cooked very little over the past few months. But over the summer, I tried really hard and made a bunch of new dishes.”

“I think that because people had more time at the beginning.” Baskin said. “They didn’t know how to spend their time being

“But when you get a chance to cook, everything is in that moment. Everything is in the kitchen. You can forget about the world for an hour and a half.” - Judge Baskin

bored. For two months, no one knew what to do, but then people started getting good at being bored.”

Baskin mentioned that since the start of the Coronavirus, he has a running list of all the many recipes and ideas he has had so that once the world goes back to some sort of normal, he can make all of his recipes for people to enjoy. Chris Cunningham is the owner of a bagel shop called Nervous Charlie’s. He is a native of New York and wanted to bring the experience of New York bagels to Austin. Nervous Charlie’s has been in business for two and a half years and sells everything from bagels to sandwiches. According to Cunningham, the most popular items are the classic sandwich which is your choice of meat with egg and cheese. In terms of bagels, Cunningham says that the everything bagels are the most popular on the menu.

On the subject of how business has changed since the start of the pandemic, Cunningham said, “We switched our model. Almost coming up on a year now we’ve closed down the dining room. People haven’t even been able to come in and order Nervous Charlie’s, everything’s done online. So I think we’re a little bit more aggressive from that standpoint. And like most places usually come in, order, we’re strictly just online right now. And we’ve been doing it for about a year.

It’s a good model for things like bagels where it’s a quick grab and go you can take it.

Carrot Sorbet made by Judge Baskin Photo By Judge Baskin

Masa dredged chicken wings made by Judge Baskin Photo by Judge Baskin

Cinammon roll made by Judge Baskin Photo by Judge Baskin

Store front of Nervous Charlie s

That operationally, that was probably the biggest change, just to go only model. Cunningham added that making the switch to the new model when the pandemic started was like starting a whole new business. You had to train all of the employees and make sure everything was within the CDC guidelines.

This new model was much more efficient according to Cunningham. “We’re actually considering, in the future, on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, it’s just an online only model.” Cunningham said. “It’s more efficient, it’s easier for us, because we can see our orders out for, an hour, hour and a half, two hours, we can prepare for them.”

Thanks to this very efficient system, Cunningham said that they are almost back to where they had been before the pandemic. He added that after the first three months of brutal nonstop working, business slowly started coming back from then on. Most restaurants and businesses around the world have fared much worse than Nervous Charlie’s. Cunningham and many other employees have done a tremendous job keeping Nervous Charlie’s a float.

Although the pandemic has devastated the restaurant industry and has changed the way chefs and businesses function in the future, business is starting to come back. As people start getting the vaccine and things start to go back to how they were, Nervous Charlie’s and many other businesses and restaurants will get back to what they were doing before the pandemic. Cooks and chefs will go back to restaurants and do what they love and the home chefs who discovered their new hobby will continue cooking even after the pandemic is over.

Nervous Charlie s logo Courtesy of Nervous Charlie s

Nervous Charlie s bagels and sandwiches Courtesy of Nervous Charlie s