Times Like These: An Inflection Point for Food & Our Cities
An opportunity to reconsider our connections with the earth, the economy, with each other, & with that that brings us together — food.
Written by Pam Uzzell
This pandemic has brought home our relationship to food; not only does it affect our ability to easily find food in our markets, but also the role of restaurants as places where we nourish our bodies and share the ritual of eating with friends, family, and neighbors. The loss of the communal space of restaurants has been felt keenly by all. This film and panel program provided the opportunity to hear from those fighting to keep independent restaurants alive and a glimpse into the frontline work of food supply workers risking their lives to keep grocery stores stocked. It also showed us the opportunity of this moment to turn away from a system that is precarious and exploitative and move out of the crisis of the pandemic towards a system that centers workers and uses space creatively to serve communities even better than they did before.
As moderator Robin Abad Ocubillo so aptly stated at the beginning of the panel discussion, “Restaurants sit at the center of a larger economy.” Workers, patrons, owners, landlords, and food suppliers are all a part of this chain. The panel discussed ways in which to make these systems more resilient.
In Jun Stinson’s film Running a Restaurant During the Coronavirus Lockdown, we meet Reem Assil and see firsthand the ripple effect the March 2020 shelter in place order has had, on her staff as they have their hours cut, and on Assil herself, who struggles to keep her business alive, while the landlord at her residence revokes their offer to give her a break on her rent. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that people who are embedded in community are going to be the ones who prevail,” she says, as her restaurant pivots to curbside pickup, delivery, and food aid to first responders and food insecure populations.
Panelist Geetika Agrawal is Program Director of La Cocina, a nonprofit that offers support, space, and guidance to independent small food businesses. Like Assil, Agrawal has struggled with how quickly landlords and restaurateurs lost common ground as the pandemic continued. “Restaurateurs are part of what makes a city a destination. They make property values higher. And then being treated like they’re not staying up all night trying to figure out how to make it work.” Agrawal sees this moment as a time to restructure the food system and wonders, “Is this a health crisis, and then the economy is going to continue to go where it was pre-pandemic? Or is this an economic reset?”
Chhavi Sahni, Director of Policy of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, agreed that the pandemic made all of the cracks in this system apparent. Restaurant owners, all of their employees, and food suppliers saw their source of income disappear with the pandemic shutdown. Sam Russell’s film How the Coronavirus is Affecting New York City’s Food and Supply Chain shows that food workers have always been frontline workers in keeping cities fed. Now they risk their lives trying to keep grocery stores stocked in New York. On one end, people who relied on restaurants for much of their food were flocking to grocery stores after eating establishments closed down. On the other hand, trucking companies across the country were often unwilling to send trucks into New York with food for grocery stores if it meant driving an empty truck back.
Both Agrawal and Sahni agreed that as consumers, we can’t just buy our way out of this. However, our continued support of those small, independent restaurants that we love, those places we can’t imagine disappearing from our communities, is crucial. In the film Aaron Lim, by Anson Ho, we see the ripple effect of one community member’s passion. Walking through the empty streets and shuttered restaurants of San Francisco’s Chinatown early in the pandemic, Aaron Lim had the idea of bringing takeout to family and friends each time he ordered from some of his favorite places in Chinatown. Many of these businesses aren’t connected with a client base through third-party delivery apps. Lim’s efforts soon grew, resulting in the purchase and delivery of more than 11,000 meals from struggling Chinatown restaurants.
Sahni talked about how the loss of a restaurant goes beyond the loss of food. Restaurants are parts of our neighborhoods. “As we lose these parts of our community — the entire neighborhood feels it.” Indeed, Geetika Agrawal reminded us of how personal restaurants are: places where we celebrate, meet with family and friends,and make new friends. They are part of what connects us to a place, and are often at the heart of neighborhoods and districts. This interdependence, one of the program’s prevailing themes, means all of us have a role helping these communal places not only survive, but thrive.
Assil pointed out that this is the chance to make restaurants worker-centered and revealed her plan to make Reem’s California worker-owned. Sahni and Agrawal appealed to all of us to pay attention: What are our lawmakers doing, and how are they supporting the direction that your community and city are going as we come out of this crisis? “Financial support from government officials is so critical right now,” said Chhavi Sahni. Reem Assil concurred, pointing out that “We’re expected to be doing these things that, quite frankly, our government should be doing.” To that end, all of us, as part of this interdependent web, need to be vigilant and involved.
Watch the panel discussion:
This event took place on February 16, 2021 and was curated by SF Urban Film Fest Producers Robin Abad Ocubillo and Omeed Manocheri. For more information about the SF Urban Film Fest, visit our website.
