Closing a restaurant for good is tedious, yeoman work. You will undoubtedly find yourself wracked with some irreconcilable sentiments best kept company with a beverage or two and good people. Here are my recommendations on what to drink to help you through that mix of emotions in the order you will likely experience them.
Reminiscing with regulars
During the final weeks of your restaurant’s operation, many of your friends and long-time customers will come to say goodbye. They will commiserate and reminisce. This is a good thing. Enjoy it. Let yourself linger, just this once. The past success of your restaurant has given you some clout in the local industry. And you’ve enjoyed it immensely, never taking it for granted. You are proud of what you accomplished. And you were honored to meet all the amazing industry folks you otherwise would not have met. The closure makes you feel you can no longer be a part of that beautiful community. Sure, you kept odd hours but you also got to rub shoulders with chefs, bartenders, restaurateurs, writers, musicians, artists, and activists you admired, and once, even a Supreme Court judge. You were a cool cat about town. A bon vivant. A boulevardier.
- Fill a cocktail mixing glass with ice, then pour:
- 1 oz. bourbon
- 1 oz. Campari
- 1 oz. sweet vermouth, like Dolin Rouge
- Stir at a steady pace for 15 – 20 seconds, no more, no less, to remind you everything has its time.
- Strain. Served up or over one large ice cube, a twist of orange peel.
- Drink slowly. See how there’s a feeling and a complex set of flavors that linger on your lips as you sip. Like the sensation you get when you’ve been laughing and smiling too much, too hard. Remember that feeling.
The last shift is a celebration
You announced your planned closure weeks ago. Since then, a deluge of online orders. You’re actually busier than you ever were. If you had the time and mental capacity, you would allow yourself to steep in quiet rage, asking yourself, “Where the hell were all these new customers when we were drowning in our existential desperation?” But you don’t have the time nor the headspace. There are orders to fulfill. So you’re grateful instead for the boosted revenue, and most of all, you’re grateful for the hardworking staff who have treated the last few weeks like any other service. Putting out consistently good food with a smile on their faces. They were there when shit hit the fan, and they’re still here on the very last shift. You imagine how much harder it would’ve been if it weren’t for them. You’re convinced, in impossible to know ways, they saved your fucking life. Let’s celebrate. What’s left in the fridge we haven’t sold? Let’s drink that.
- One 12 oz. bottle of Leo Beer. Drink ice cold. Let the sweat on your brows dry while the bottle sweats beads of condensation. It’s a celebration.
- A bottle of Lemoss Ca’ di Rajo sparkling wine. Give everyone a glass. It’s a celebration!
- What else, what else? Some leftover batched cocktails in to-go pouches. Unscrew the cap in mock ceremony as if presenting a fine vintage. It’s a celebration!!
- A shot of Fernet Branca, of course. It’s a celebration!!!
- Say goodbye. Give encouraging words. Receive encouraging words. You try hard to not get emotional, because it’s a celebration!
- Turn out the lights. Set the alarm. Walk out. Lock the doors. The street is empty. It’s a celebration.
A logistical flood
It seems like you’ve been working even more hours as of late. Everything has a deadline now. There are about a hundred unique logistical tasks that still need to be completed. “Overwhelmed” is insufficient to describe what you’re feeling. Panicked? Aggravated? Despondent? How can there be so much to do for something that technically no longer exists? And why am I so thirsty?
- Pour a glass of water. It’s an emergency, so out of the tap is fine.
- Drink. Drink. Drink. Pour another glass and repeat until you’re satiated.
- Do this at least once every two hours for the rest of your waking life.
Bitter
At some point, you will find yourself alone in your restaurant with nothing but the voice in your head. It will seem eerily quiet and still, until you realize all the refrigerators that worked so hard to keep your food at DOH-approved 33 to 40 degrees Farenheit have all now been emptied and unplugged. That omni-present mechanical hum of a restaurant after hours silenced. Reminding you there hasn’t been and will not be another service tomorrow. It’s OK to be sad or even angry, but you still have work to do. So you rouse your brain from the urge to wallow in the comfort of self-pity by reminding yourself all bitterness in life, like bitter tastes, shall pass.
- Pour 1 oz. of your favorite amaro. I like Fernet Branca or Malört.
- Add a splash of water.
- Drink, letting the bitterness take over but also most definitely pay attention to the sweetness that always follows it.
Bureaucratic nightmare
You’ve been so focused on the logistical tasks you forgot there’s a whole bureaucratic side of it that you, as an owner, and you alone have to handle. The tax man needs to be notified. Debts have to be repaid or negotiated. Lease to transfer. There’s a lawyer calling you. Is it your lawyer or someone else’s? There’s a banker, too. You thought the bureaucracies of opening a restaurant was bad, but now that you’re closing one, you know this is even worse. There’s more to do with less money, and the reward isn’t a shiny new scrappy small business that gets accolades in newspapers and food magazines. No, the reward is quite literally nothing. When you succeed in all these tasks, you will own nothing once again. This is the time you should re-learn to appreciate the simple pleasures of a really nice cup of tea. The warmth. The gentle nudge of energy. The calming ritual.
- One tsp. of dried Alishan Cha leaves (Taiwanese high mountain tea).
- Three separate times, you’ll need 8 – 9 oz. of hot water, just shy of boiling.
- A proper teapot.
- First brew: Steep for 50 seconds.
- Second brew: Steep for 90 seconds.
- Third brew: Steep for three minutes.
- Notice how the flavor changes each time you steep the same tea leaves. The tannin. The terroir. Notes of barley and burnt rice. Although you’re doing the same thing over and over, you get different results. And eventually, it will be nothing. Just some murky hot water.
Life of leisure or ennui?
It’s a matter of perspective. It’s true, you do feel a little numb. You now own nothing. You’re no longer a job-provider. But it also means you can finally focus on yourself for once. Though, first, you just have to do nothing for a while, you know? The past two years were some of the most uncertain and anxious times of your life. And that’s saying a lot when you’re an immigrant. Getting into something new now would feel more like running away from trauma rather than actually moving on. So, you decide to just hang for a while. You’re thankful you had the mind to save all your money because you knew some time ago this day was inevitable. You read the news. You read new books. You read old books. You visit friends. You listen to music. Like intentionally listening, instead of having it as background noise. You take care of your body. You take care of your mind. You take care of your partner at home who has been unfailingly supportive for the last two years, and who, you know for certain, has saved your life because of that. And if you owe it to anybody, you owe it to her to be happy and to enjoy life right now. And just like that, just in time, the weather has begun to warm. You put on a novelty tank top, and you sit outside on the stoop, in the courtyard, and you have something cold to drink. You read aloud favorite passages from a book and watch people walk their dogs. Life is good. Time to give that numbness a jolt of fizz.
- In a Collins glass, pour 2 oz. of fino sherry.
- Squeeze half a lime into the glass. Drop that squeezed half-lime in the same glass.
- Fill with ice.
- Top off with soda water.
- Taste it. It simultaneously reminds you of a vacation at the beach and a staycation in the comfort of your own home.
- Hold the drink up to your ear, and listen to it. It effervesces with new life.
About the Author:
Eric Shupao Wang is a writer and former restaurant owner who recently relocated from Washington, DC to West Philadelphia to learn to love sandwiches for dinner. He now lives in an old abandoned haunted high school. His now closed Burmese restaurant, Thamee, was named one of the best new restaurants by the James Beard Foundation, the Washington Post, Thrillist, and EaterDC in 2019 and early 2020. Thamee served its last customer on January 21st, 2022. You can read more about the restaurant’s journey through the pandemic on Slate (here and here), the Washington Post, and the Washingtonian.
