The New Experience of Dining Out After Quarantine

After almost three months of staying at home, (in an endless quarantine) to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from becoming even worse, little by little, in Mexico and around the world, we are beginning to resume life on the streets.However, we cannot return to the normal life we had before, as there is still no vaccine to ensure we will be safe from the virus. Concerts, parties like weddings, amusement parks, and something we considered very common, the experience of dining out at a restaurant, will all be completely new practices.Although in Mexico the suspension of activities in gyms, massage centers, cinemas, theaters, museums, auditoriums, shopping malls, churches, mosques, synagogues, concerts, bars, cantinas, and regular dining in restaurants continues, as the traffic light established to measure the decrease in infection cases advances, we will be able to enter the so-called new normal.There, in that long-awaited new normal, the way we eat, where we eat, and what we eat will surely change as a result of the coronavirus.As restrictions have been lifted in countries around the world, restaurant owners, chefs, and restaurant staff are looking for ways to carry out the dining experience safely, adapting to government recommendations.Temperature checks may be required or glass barriers may be added between diners; meanwhile, here are some examples that restaurants around the world have creatively implemented to comply with social distancing measures.Robots for Temperature ChecksIn the Netherlands, restaurants and bars resumed in-person service in June, but instead of exposing waitstaff, the restaurant Dadawan uses robots to take the temperature of each customer to ensure they have no symptoms, and then seats them at a table. Once at a table, diners can place their orders, and another robot serves their food.Glass Houses for Social DistancingOutside Mediamatic Eten in Amsterdam, five small greenhouses or glass houses were placed, which function as cubicles that allow for social distancing in a beautiful setting.In addition to the greenhouses, waiters wear face shields and serve food on a wooden board to avoid any direct contact between diners and staff.Plastic Screens as Personal ShieldsIn France, Christophe Gernigon designed Plex'Eat to protect people from getting infected while eating, which consists of plastic screens and is being used at H.A.N.D., a restaurant in Paris, France.In addition to these innovative ways to maintain distance, many other places have experimented with plastic barriers on tables, large hats to distance people, or even old mannequins to mark places that diners should keep away from each other.Perhaps soon we will implement some of these new ways of dining at restaurants, thus forming our new normal after the COVID-19 coronavirus.