Chef Rick Bayless Calls on Mayor, Gov. To Reopen Indoor Dining

CHICAGO — Celebrity chef Rick Bayless joined a group of city restaurateurs calling for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to push back against the statewide ban on indoor dining.

Inspired by the mayor's decision to "forge forward" to revive in-person learning at public schools, Bayless said in a statement that "to not reopen restaurants at 20% or 25% capacity is irresponsible and wrong."

"Restaurants are ready to place safety at the front and center of everything they do. Indeed, it’s time to forge forward, restore indoor dining at low capacity and help restaurants survive," Bayless wrote.

On Tuesday, the Chicago Restaurants Coalition called on Lightfoot and the City Council to push Gov. J.B. Pritzker to allow city restaurants starting on Jan. 29 to reopen at "a low 20% occupancy rate" that a study conducted by researchers at Northwestern and Stanford universities showed was effective to greatly lower virus spread.

The group's pitch, which has support from downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), asks Lightfoot and the City Council to coordinate a statewide campaign to pressure Pritzker if the governor refuses to loosen his ban on indoor dining.

In an open letter supporting the coalition's demands, Bayless, owner of Frontera Grill, argued that there's racial equity component to allowing restaurants, bakeries, bars and coffee shops to reopen with reduced capacity as winter takes its grip on the city during the coronavirus crisis.

Bayless wrote that restaurants employ "more non-white managers and young people than any other industry. Immigrants, a million single mothers, and the formerly incarcerated rely on restaurants for their livelihoods. We can’t leave these communities jobless."
"It’s easy to simply say, “Close all restaurants!” and feel like we’ve eliminated the problem. But we haven’t. We’ve instead created a massive unemployment problem and rampant bankruptcies. Most of all, we’ve forced restaurant operators to fight for their lives, mostly by scoffing at government regulations, then going underground to host clandestine indoor dining and gatherings," Bayless wrote.

"In effect, the sledgehammer call to “Close all restaurants!” can be looked at as fueling the surge of coronavirus cases, not curbing it. Plus, there is no definitive evidence that indoor dining of small parties at 20% or 25% capacity is unsafe."

Chicago Restaurant Coalition members argue that city public health department contract-tracing data shows restaurants aren't the "super-spreaders" government leaders make them out to be.

"Between June and September 2020, only 297 restaurant employees out of 75,000 tested positive for the virus, and only 585 customers reported possible, unproven links to the virus," the group said in a statement.

"Taking these facts together with Mayor Lightfoot's resumption of the Chicago Public Schools operations, where students will take off their masks to eat food similar to what happens with indoor dining, the Coalition wants the mayor and aldermen to agree that a new approach is needed to restore indoor dining, in order to save thousands of businesses and jobs."

The restaurant group also called on Lightfoot to push Pritzker to allow the city to tap tax increment finance funding to provide struggling restaurants with an emergency grant to save thousands of small businesses and jobs.

This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch