SHORT ORDERS
17
[SIDE DISH]
Appreciating What’s Gone Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
O
n February 27, Dale Kyd was riding high on the wave of unbelievable professional success. Gin Magazine, an international publication considered the authority on the spirit, had just named him its 2020 Bartender of the Year, an honor that seemed unachievable just a few years ago when he was an electrical engineering student at Mizzou. His leap into the service industry, it seemed, had paid off. “This was a big deal for me — the guy who got honorable mention is a god of bartending at this really cool bar in London,” Kyd explains. “The distiller of Beefeater got inducted into the gin hall of fame in the same ceremony, so it was a huge deal for me to be included with my idols and people I have such huge respect for. I really felt like I was coming into my own and got to enjoy that for about two weeks. Then this all put a halt to it.” The “this” Kyd refers to, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic which has wreaked utter havoc and devastation on the hospitality industry. One minute, Kyd was receiving international accolades for his work at the Gin Room (3200 South Grand Boulevard, 314771-3411), the next, he was facing an uncertain future as the bar and accompanying restaurant, Cafe Natasha, went to takeout-only service and eventually ceased o erations indefinitely due to the public health crisis. Though Kyd is moved by how the owners, Natasha and Hamishe Bahrami, have gone out of their way to put their employees’ needs before their own, it doesn’t change the fact that he — and his fellow restaurant and bar colleagues — don’t know when, or if, they will get to go back to earning a living doing what they love to do. “There are some businesses that are not going to reopen after this,”
Dale Kyd, Gin Magazine’s Bartender of the Year, faces an uncertain future thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. | MONICA MILEUR Kyd says. “Cafe Natasha will come back, but others won’t, and that’s terrifying. I don’t know what bartending is going to look like on the other side of this. The talent pool is going to shrink, and artistic endeavors are going to get jeopardized. I think many of us are going to become risk averse. At one point, I had these skills that were transferable, and now, they don’t seem like that so much. None of us are feelin safe in these fields anymore.” Income loss aside, Kyd is also mourning the loss of creative momentum that came from collaborating with colleagues, interacting with guests and trading knowledge with peers. Before the pandemic, he and his Gin Room co-worker Michael Fricker were experimenting with creative techniques for cocktails, like alternative acids and other unique ingredients. Not being able to work together in person has put a halt to their efforts, and his lack of access to the tools and ingredients he has behind the bar at the Gin Room has prevented him from continuing to push forward with taking his cocktails to the next level. Kyd does not sugarcoat his feelings about the current situation: He is mourning the loss, no matter how temporary, of his job, his guests, his colleagues and his sense of security. Still, he remains heartened by his caring and compassionate employers and the lev-
el of cooperation and willingness to help he sees from fellow hospitality professionals, even as they, too, experience hardship. “Having seen the industry as a whole come together over this and help each other out is such a good feeling,” Kyd says. “It makes me feel like, regardless of what is going on around us, we have the resources together to make it through. That makes this easier to bear.” Kyd took a moment to share his feelings on what he’s going through right now, the impact he feels this will have on the industry in the long-term and the one thing that is giving him hope in these difficult times. As a hospitality professional, what do people need to know about what you are going through? I want it to be known that the hospitality industry simply doesn’t run on hi h rofit mar ins. We work tirelessly to compensate for very small variances in our numbers, and while a lot of places are still open for takeout, that is absolutely not supporting that restaurant’s staff. With ery little warning, our income has dropped to zero for an untold amount of time, and that stress can be pretty overwhelming. I think the industry as a whole right now is scrambling to help each other with very few lifelines being thrown our direction from official odies. We don’t really have anywhere to turn, and
riverfronttimes.com
the $1,200 that we might get isn’t a ermanent solution. We are in the unique position that the best way to accelerate the healing process of this virus is to completely kill our own livelihoods, so we are very literally fucked if we do and fucked if we don’t. It feels bad. What do you miss most about your job? I miss interacting with people. I work at a bar where every interaction with guests is a chance to build a relationship over the course of their stay, and until that abruptly ended, I don’t think I realized what that really meant to me. The simple but great pleasure of getting someone a cocktail they’ll love into their hands has left a pretty serious void in my day to day. What do you miss least? Cleaning my tiny little apartment is so much easier than cleaning that bar. Between the rest of the team and I, we have a tendency to get pretty neurotic to the oint of inefficient a out how pristine our stations are kept. My home kitchen can go from spotless to Dale-cooking-disaster and ack a ain in minutes flat. What is one thing you make sure you do every day to maintain a sense of normalcy? I’ve been working hard to keep some sort of a structured day. Being as easily distracted as I am and being out of work, it can be super easy for me to slide into a
APRIL 8-14, 2020
Continued on pg 18
RIVERFRONT TIMES
17
