FOOD & DRINK
Illustration by Ali Bachmann
COVID DINING
IN THE COLD SEASON
HOW MILWAUKEE RESTAURANTS ARE MAKING THE TRANSITION FOR SERVING THEIR GUESTS THIS WINTER BY ALISA MALAVENDA
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estaurants are getting creative to increase their capacity during the cold winter months. Under City of Milwaukee Health Department orders, all restaurants and bars that want to continue in-person dining must obtain approval for a safety plan. The Moving Milwaukee Forward Safety Order includes a strenuous 80-point checklist ranging from workplace policies, food safety, staff information, physical distancing and more to implement hygiene, cleaning and protective measures, policies and procedures. The local order also requires businesses to
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ensure that people remain six feet from others whenever possible. The restaurant industry, already operating on small margins, is in danger during the pandemic. Some local restaurants have closed, but many more are fighting to keep their doors open and navigate through the new mandates and guidelines. As a community, we need to support our local restaurants now more than ever, continue to order take out (not through GrubHub or other third parties!), buy gift cards and merchandise, tip the servers well, buy a friend dinner and order that dessert.
ANTIGUA Antigua earned additional revenue for catering but, according to Citlali Mendieta-Ramos, who owns the West Allis restaurant with her husband Nick, most catered events have been postponed to 2021, and those that remained on the schedule were drastically scaled down. “During the past few months, we have faced a significant decline in sales for both the restaurant and the catering,” she says. “At the beginning of the pandemic, our customers were being very supportive, but as the months passed by and the stay-
