Gabrielle Hamilton on the Closing of Prune

Gabrielle Hamilton (Photo by Phillip Montgomery)

Even though I’ve never met Gabrielle Hamilton, nor dined at her restaurant Prune, I feel I know her. I know her through her marvelous “The Lamb Roast” – one of my favorite New Yorker “Personal History” pieces. Hamilton is an excellent writer. When her “My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?” appeared in The New York Times Magazine yesterday, I immediately sat down and read it. It’s a moving, frustrated, worried, reflective response to the coronavirus-mandated closing of Prune. The romance of owning and operating a small Manhattan bistro is still there:

Even after seven nights a week for two decades, I am still stopped in my tracks every time my bartenders snap those metal lids onto the cocktail shakers and start rattling the ice like maracas. I still close my eyes for a second, taking a deep inhale, every time the salted pistachios are set afire with raki, sending their anise scent through the dining room. I still thrill when the four-top at Table 9 are talking to one another so contentedly that they don’t notice they are the last diners, lingering in the cocoon of the wine and the few shards of dark chocolate we’ve put down with their check.

But the reality behind that romance is stark:

There used to be enough extra money every year that I could close for 10 days in July to repaint and retile and rewire, but it has become increasingly impossible to leave even a few days of revenue on the table or to justify the expense of hiring a professional cleaning service for this deep clean that I am perfectly capable of doing myself, so I stayed late and did it after service. The sludge of egg yolk seeped through the coverall, through my clothes to my skin, matted my hair and speckled my goggles as my shock registered: It has always been hard, but when did it get this hard?

Will Prune survive? The situation is fragile, the answer unclear. Hamilton says,

For restaurants, coronavirus-mandated closures are like the oral surgery or appendectomy you suddenly face while you are uninsured. These closures will take out the weakest and the most vulnerable. But exactly who among us are the weakest and most vulnerable is not obvious.

Of the many writers’ responses to the pandemic that I’ve read over the past six weeks or so, Hamilton’s piece on the closing of Prune is one of the most memorable.