Santa Barbara Restaurateurs’ Creative Reactions to COVID-19

I never expected our family’s knight in shining armor to show up wearing a chef’s jacket and latex gloves, toting plastic bags full of food and drinks. But there was Igor Korpak, sous chef at Convivo, coming up our driveway with Saturday night’s dinner in his prophylactically protected hands.

We were a few weeks deep into the coronavirus shutdown, and my last meal in a restaurant was a spicy Sunday morning scramble at the Cajun Kitchen on March 15. We’d been eating just fine at home, from blue-cheese burgers and ahi tuna lettuce wraps to buttermilk fried chicken, salmon en papillote, and cast-iron tenderloin. I love cooking, but eating at restaurants is probably my favorite hobby, and our family of four is accustomed to dining out multiple times each week. We were craving something made by someone other than myself, and I was ready for a break from this newly steady stove life.

So when Convivo’s owner/chef Peter McNee texted to say he wanted my family to try out his new takeout/delivery menu, called Provisional, I immediately obliged. Frankly, while I’ve urged others to support restaurants in this odd outbreak era and have read repeatedly that COVID-19 can’t be transmitted through food, we’d been reluctant to toss a variable into our successfully sheltered situation. But I’ve come to know McNee through eating at his Cabrillo Boulevard restaurant quite a lot in the last few years, and I trusted him to be extra careful with his procedures.