Tag: covid-19

Lockdown Diary: Why I’m grateful for being on lockdown in Paris

“I’m grateful to be living in France, where there is universal healthcare and where the president has chosen to save human lives over the economy.”

Today, March 25, is the eighth full day of living in true confinement. As of Tuesday, March 17, at noon, the whole country of France has been on lockdown.

It was nearly two weeks ago that President Emmanuel Macron earnestly asked us to stay home, and the Prime Minister Édouard Philippe ordered all non-essential businesses to close at midnight. By March 15, there were whispers on the street that the government would be locking down, with the military and all, because the people here weren’t taking it seriously, and the infection and death rates were rising.

I’d been preparing for weeks.

Food Stored in Apt: Eileen Cho during Paris lockdown
The author’s stored food and books. 
Eileen W. Cho

Because most of my family is located in South Korea and Seattle, Washington, two places that were hit hard by the pandemic, and

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The Impact of Coronavirus on Paris Restaurants

Coronavirus is changing the lives of people and businesses all around the globe. The hospitality industry, with its razor-thin margins, will be particularly impacted. Nowhere is that more true than in Paris, which has already suffered through a year of “yellow vest” and pension reform strikes and has been relying on the hope of a robust spring and summer in order to survive. After an already challenging year, few have any remaining buffer or savings to help them survive the period of mandatory (and necessary) closure.

The motto of Paris – Fluctuat nec mergitur “tossed by the waves but not sunk” – will be mightily tested in the coming months. We will be sharing the ways in which restaurants and their clients are innovating and trying to stay afloat, showing generosity in the face of uncertainty, and otherwise keeping hope alive. We may also be documenting and mourning some restaurant closures.

Visit this page for daily updates or sign up for our newsletter, which will synthesize the news every two weeks. We’ll also be reposting from the restaurants we follow on our Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Source: The Impact of Coronavirus on Paris Restaurants – Paris by Mouth

7 Foods To Mail Order For A Gastronomic Staycation

While gastronomic traveling is curtailed at the moment, you can still order specialties from different U.S. regions and European countries to enjoy at home.

Culinary travel has been on the rise in recent years as not just pleasure for the food obsessed but as a window into a destination’s culture.  With the worldwide coronavirus pandemic postponing nonessential travel, gastronomic excursions are on hold as well. But through the wonder of long distance delivery, iconic foods can come to the hunkered down at home as well. Some are offering free shipping now as well.

One of the great pleasures of a visit to the various U.S. states in the south is barbecue which varies in specialty/the primary meat used/sauce preparation by state. In Texas, it’s largely about beef and one of the most revered places to get it is The Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas, a second generation operation known for its seared then smoked over coals brisket. But they also offer pork and beef ribs along with their vinegar based, cayenne and chili power spiced sauce. Available in the lower 48 U.S. states and the barbecue with arrive cryovaced and frozen with instructions for reheating. [ . . . ]

Continue at FORBES: 7 Foods To Mail Order For A Gastronomic Staycation

France ‘at war’: how Parisians are coping with life under lockdown

Residents of the French capital are adjusting to the country’s toughest restrictions on public life outside wartime

And suddenly, it was August. Grudgingly but obediently, the rue des Martyrs in Paris’s ninth arrondissement entered lockdown at midday on Tuesday, the few people on its pavements making their way home, baguettes and shopping bags in hand.

By 12.30pm, half an hour after France’s new reality – in essence, no going out unless to buy food or essentials, visit the doctor or get to a job certified as not doable from home – came into force, the normally bustling shopping street had emptied. Continue reading “France ‘at war’: how Parisians are coping with life under lockdown” →

A Letter From Wartime France

Streets that are normally busy, all of a sudden aren’t.

At noon today, as France slipped into confinement, I looked down from my balcony at the street below. A few people were riding bikes or walking. At the tobacconist next to the closed café, a woman was wiping down the door frame. The street is normally busy, and all of a sudden it wasn’t. For the next two weeks, and likely longer, we cannot go out except for urgent reasons: food, medicine, or essential work. A nationwide lockdown, enforced by police. “We are at war,” French President Emmanuel Macron said six times in a speech yesterday evening. “The enemy is there—invisible, elusive—and it is advancing.”

Macron is right. COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed thousands and will likely kill thousands more, a tsunami that doctors have been warning will overwhelm the health-care system, as it’s already doing in neighboring Italy, the country hardest hit by this virus after China. This weekend, the government ordered all restaurants, cafés, and retail stores closed in France.

And finally, last night, Macron followed Italy and Spain—but not Britain or the United States—and mandated confinement to slow the exponential spread of the virus. Overnight, Macron, who was elected on a fluke and has faced popular revolts and flagging popularity, has become a war president.

We are at war. How strange to hear those words in Europe in 2020. It’s impossible, here in Paris, not to think of the Second World War. Not since Continue reading “A Letter From Wartime France” →

COVID-19: France, Spain Shut Down; California Asks Wineries to Stop Tastings 

As COVID-19 cases exponentially increase in the U.S. and Western Europe, leaders impose rules on restaurants and bars in effort to decrease infection rates

Across the United States and Western Europe this past weekend, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to grow, spurring leaders to impose new restrictions to attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Less than a week after Italy’s government shut down almost all schools and businesses, asking citizens to self-quarantine, France and Spain followed suit.

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