Social distancing for dummies.
A Virginia restaurateur has devised an ingenious way to both fill seats and enforce social distancing for when the coronavirus lockdown lifts — by populating his eatery with li🌟fe-size mannequins.
Patrick O’Connell, chef at the Inn at Little Washington, had originally aimed to reopen his upscale Rappahannock location May 15, . However, he was thwarted when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced on May 9 that businesses could reopen to patrons for outdoor seating only, and at 50% capacity.
As the lavish Michelin three-star restaurant doesn’t have an al fresco dining area, it wouldn’t have been able open until late May, per the government mandate.
As a result, the 2019 plans to outfit half the joint with culinary crash test dummies until human patrons can take their place post-pandemic. Apparently, O’Connell’s banking on the 50% rule eventually applying to indoor seating as well. Not only that, but the chef — who majored in drama in college — plans to deck out his dining dolls in 1940s garb, and even instruct waiters to serve them wine and interact with the plastic pinch-eaters.
O’Connell, 74, claims his restaurant’s location has no COVID-19 cases that he knows of — a friend even told him, “Patrick, after all these years, your location finally paid off.” To help ensure it remains COVID-free, he has the Inn at Little Washington’s staffers scour the place clean with infrared light and even created coronavirus masks modeled after Marilyn Monroe and George Washington.
“I think it would do people a world of good to reduce their anxiety level when they come out to a place which is still unaffected,” O’Connell tells his local news outlet, “because if you watch your television, you think that there isn’t such a place under a bubble.”
Faux humans aren’t the first bizarre interim dining measure to go viral amid the coronavirus lockdown. A vegan restaurant in Amsterdam aims to circumvent social-distancing concerns by having patrons sit in individual greenhouses.
And residents in New York’s Harlem neighborhood made waves recently with a wild .