Matt Moser - Stirnella, Butterfish, Red Lion Lounge

MARCH 21, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.

I think we started sensing something dramatic was gonna happen probably, you know, Wednesday or Tuesday of last week. I didn’t think it was gonna get to a pandemic status as it did. I knew it was gonna affect us greatly but I didn’t think we were actually gonna have to shut down, be forced to do to-go only, and possibly be shut down completely as the whispers around town are going and the nation. Monday when we opened for lunch this week and we literally did not have one ticket until 1 I the afternoon and usually Mondays are what we refer to as “business account” kind of lunch. A lot of professionals come in for lunch on Monday and when they weren’t in here it as definitely a warning sign for us.

Josh - How many people are working right now?

Right now we have 4. So right now we’re operating as bare-bones as possible. We needed to test the water and feel it out and see the reaction from the community and who was gonna come out and support us and deciding that we’re gonna be open for seven days a week, if this thing goes forward, I’ve been able to write a schedule and forecast some hours I can give to other staff members besides myself and my chef-de-cuisine. And so we’ve reached out to everyone and said “Just be honest with us. How comfortable are you right now?” and “How long can you last without sacrificing your family?” and, you know, “Tell me the number of hours you think you would need to be comfortable for a couple of months.” And, you know, based off of that a lot of people said: “Don’t worry about me, give it to someone else”. And it’s been a great experience out of a bad experience to see people’s generosity in the way that they’ve acted.

I have a saying in the kitchen - “Solo Una Familia” - which is “one family”. In times of stress and times of when were bickering at each other, if it’s someone else, we just say it to kind of check ourselves and make light of the situation. The minute this happened I had a text message of all my back-of-the-house employees and Google Translate has been awesome because I speak excellent Spanglish but terrible Spanish. And, uh, just keeping them in touch with what’s going on and making sure everyone is alright, we’ve come together. I think the biggest challenge has been, you know, Matt and I’s relationship because, you know, we’re the partners and we’re the ones seeing the money and handling the money and we also have families and our well-being so it’s definitely put us to the test. I think we just have to check ourselves every couple of hours and not watch as much news and just focus on what we can control and, you know, work together. So overall I think it’s definitely brought us closer together. There have been some moments where it seems like it’s growing apart but then it’ll come back together.

I have a two-and-a-half year old now and we’re 16 weeks pregnant and he’s obviously home full time right now and so is my wife. She works in a travel agency so she’s definitely feeling as much as we are but I think our dogs are the happiest they’ve ever been cause they’re definitely getting a lot more attention than they usually do. What’s definitely been the saving grace right now is when I leave here and I literally strip down to my boxers in my garage - my mother-in-law is staying with us and she’s in her 60’s and has a huge respiratory problem and we just want to take all of the precautions - but the minute I walk in the door my dogs are there wagging their tails and my son says “Daddy”… it definitely lets me escape for a good 15 minutes from what’s going on.

Josh - What’s it like being a father during this time?

Again…fear. You know it’s…it’s tough. Last night I was just telling Dane, my chef-de-cuisine, if I was just worrying about myself and my wife it would be a lot different. You know, it’s hard to believe I’m bringing another child into the world as it is…and it’s rough.

Josh - You being in this place right now…if you were talking to your kids about it in the future, what’s one thing you’d want them to know?

Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with hot, soapy water haha. Um…when there’s fear and uncertainty in the world and there’s, you know, a lot of bad things going on…if you come together as a family, come together as a community, support each other, only good things can happen. Just to know that I was there for them whether it was working to support them or at home changing diapers, that I was there for them.

Keep on keepin’ on. You know I think that chefs are…naturally resilient and are used to working under pressure and just to keep focused on the tasks at hand and take it day by day. Know that you can only control what’s in front of you, in your life. Just stay focused and be positive.

Josh - What are you hopeful for in the future?

Sense of relief haha. Um…more time with my family. This has definitely opened my eyes to how much I’m not home and sometimes, without even knowing it, I take for granted not being there and what I’m missing. I just hope for peace and tranquility and just for, you know, things like this not to happen again and that we learn from our mistakes and we do better by ourselves and our children next time.

I hope, through this whole process, that stand-alone restaurants that literally make our community what it is can survive this. Blackstone and our landlord GreenSlate have been absolutely amazing through this process. They set up a, essentially, a Blackstone unemployment fund, and they’ve had investors that have invested in their properties donate money and they’ve raised over $150,000 in one week. Every single employee in Blackstone that applied got $750 this week and they’re gonna try and do it for two months straight. It’s just things like that show light at the end of the tunnel, that we can get through this if we work together and stay positive.

Honestly, when you said that about V. Mertz and what we’ve been doing here, just kind of makes you think about the origin of cooking and why people started pickling things and why people began to confit and preserve things because there was no certainty of how long that was gonna last. There was no data on it. So I think it’s really, you know, re-setting the clocks if you will, and kind of challenging us to make sure we don’t waste as much product as possible.