Short menus, no small talk: Dine-ins to be quick

Short menus, no small talk: Dine-ins to be quick

Yogesh.Kabirdoss @timesgroup.com

Chennai:1.6.2020

Eating out can be quite different when restaurants reopen on June 8. You may not get all the delicacies you have been pining for over the past two months, there won’t be ACs and forget dining as a party! Eateries will not seat more than two individuals at a table and acrylic sheets will divide tables across. And you may have to order all the dishes before you are even seated. A majority of the eateries are likely to be self-serviced and there won’t be any table ordering as it might hold up the queue. But ordering shouldn’t take much time either, menus will be short and mostly south Indian fare.

The state government on Sunday permitted restaurants with dine-in facilities to open from June 8 but operate at 50% seating capacity to maintain social distancing. This isn’t applicable for facilities in containment zones in the city and air conditioning must not be used. Only takeaways are permitted in eateries now.

Though reopening for business is music to the ears of restaurateurs, getting their kitchens running is a mighty task. “The biggest challenge we face is acute shortage of labour. We will be able to reopen only 25% of eateries for dinein services, and most of them will be self-service facilities,” said M Ravi, president of The Chennai Hotels Association. According to him, about 70% of the 10 lakh employees of eateries in the city and suburbs were guest workers from other states, and another 20% from other parts of Tamil Nadu.

“Around 90% of our workforce has left Chennai. We need to sustain with the 10% left and there is a huge paucity of chefs and cooks preparing north Indian and Chinese cuisines,” he said. Since the two cuisines are predominantly served in many eateries, hardly 20% of the dishes on the menus will be available for customers, largely south Indian delicacies, he said. “You may see eateries returning to the menu cards of the late 90s, people will not have a lot to choose from.”

The city and its fringes, has around 8,000 eateries in a 30km radius. The places have seating capacity ranging from 50 to 300. As per the estimates of state’s food safety department, more than 1,500 licensed standalone restaurants operate within the limits of Chennai district.