Did the Pandemic Teach Chefs About Restaurant Accessibility?
Image: An illustration of a set dining room table overlayed over a photo of an apartment living room, by Jess Rotter for Grubstreet.
If COVID-19 shuttered New York restaurants like a tidal wave, then disability pulled me from their dining rooms like a riptide.
I first fell ill with late disseminated Lyme disease in the early 1990s when I was 12 years old. That Lyme morphed into post-treatment Lyme-disease syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis, incurable post-viral neuromuscular illnesses that affect areas including the immune and nervous systems. These often degenerate as they progress, and every patient has a unique, erratic timeline. I spent my 20s working in theaters, classrooms, and restaurants, medically supporting my body and resisting progression. But by my 30s, physically demanding jobs hurt too much. I shifted to a freelance writing career a decade ago to steadily balance field and remote work.
Still, a few years back, I found myself wrapping in-person interviews as exhausted as if I’d run a marathon. Sitting on high bar stools became a problem: I nearly passed out at Hunky Dory when postural orthostatic intolerance syndrome skyrocketed my heart rate while plunging my blood pressure. A low-key dinner in the backyard of Bricolage with friends was too stimulating to my auditory cortex and triggered a migraine. Dining rooms and subway tunnels exposed landmines, so I progressively shielded myself with tinted glasses, a cane, and noise-canceling headphones. I minimized dining out. I declined networking invitations. I stopped in-person interviews. But illness eventually rendered me one of the 25 percent of adults in the United States living with a disability; over 60 million Americans breathe, love, and eat at this very second, many from various stages of indefinitely homebound life.
For such ill and disabled people, the pandemic offered a double-edged sword. “Chronically ill people have been training for this,” Carolyn Rivkees, a wellness blogger and chronic-illness advocate told me back when the world joined us in lockdown. Subsections of the disabled population, including those who are extremely immunocompromised and multiply marginalized, immediately became high-risk for COVID complications.
But in record time, workplaces, schools, and restaurants found creative ways to go remote. “Ill and disabled people haven’t had that,” says Lyndsey Ellis, a disabled woman who navigates the complex world of common variable immune-deficiency disease. “We’ve had to make do with our resources and personal assets and figure it out for ourselves.”
As a high-risk disabled food writer, I have mourned as the disabled community suffered blows and as chefs I admire permanently closed their doors. But I’ve also eagerly scrolled the menus available to us at home during the pandemic, knowing we have to get it while we can.
