This series highlights hospitality professionals who are responding to the industry crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic in particularly creative, conscientious ways.
In 1915, Caffe Dante opened in New York’s Greenwich Village. In 2015, the storied neighborhood fixture came under the stewardship of Australian transplants Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson. In 2019, Dante, as it’s now called, was named the best bar on the planet not once but twice, nabbing the top spot both on the World’s 50 Best Bars list and at Tales of the Cocktail’s Spirited Awards.
And in March 2020, it was forced—like virtually every other restaurant and bar in the nation—to close its doors.
But given that Dante isn’t like any other bar in the nation, I thought it appropriate after interviewing Pride to let him tell the story of how he and his wife-partner are handling the ordeal in his own words rather than doing it for him.
Ruth Tobias: Could you tell us a bit about the special place your establishment holds in New Yorkers’ hearts?
Linden Pride: Dante, when we took it over, it was 100 years old. It’s a very unusual responsibility to be the business owner of such an institution in the heart of Greenwich Village. People have such a sense of ownership. We hadn’t done too much [renovation], given it a lick of paint, but people would walk in the door and say, “We’ve been coming here for 30 years; what have you done to Dante?!”
Because we couldn’t afford to hire staff yet, we were working every day, literally handing our daughter off to each other in the street between shifts. But being there so much meant we were meeting everybody [in the neighborhood], and so we were able to establish a connection and prove to them that Dante hadn’t been abandoned but given a new injection of life. Especially in Greenwich Village, where people live in these tiny apartments, it’s an extension of their living room. That was what they were worried would be taken away from them, and instead we were able to build on it.
This community is the bedrock of our business. Though we’ve been recognized internationally and people come here from over all the world, it’s been that community that we turn back to and that turns to us in this crisis. And it’s incredible—now people walk in and say, “I’ve been coming here for 30 years, and it’s just as I remember it!” [Laughs.]
RT: Following the mandate to suspend dining-room operations, how did you arrive at the decision to stay open for takeout and delivery?
LP: [Dante] was always a family-run business, and it still is. In five years, we were able to employ 50 staff in this 900-foot space—and then we had to lay off 35 of them. But there was so much support for us and a sense of responsibility for our staff: If we closed up shop and terminated everybody, which was the advice, we would no longer be able to pay health insurance. I have one staff member who’s pregnant, another with a preexisting condition. They would have been left out in the cold. We have visa holders, and they’d have been given a number of days to leave the country. Some of our staff can’t get unemployment, and one of them has an autistic son. So we made the commitment to pay health insurance for our staff and provide work for people who want to work.
RT: Walk us through the past few weeks of operation.
LP: It was basically restarting a whole new business, getting everything online. I’ve spent this morning going back and forth with the delivery service—bags are going missing. [At one point] the Internet went down. Now my wife and I have two kids, and we’re working round the clock to raise them and also make sure our staff feels safe and cared for in a sanitized space with gloves and face masks. There are all these factors we never had to deal with before, all these new concerns—it feels like we’re back at day one again. We’re just trying to survive.
In terms of what we’re selling, we’ve always strived to find new ways to serve cocktails: For our Martini menu, for example, we had custom labels made for [375- and 750-milliliter] bottles that are frozen and served at the table like chilled wine. We do that with our Negronis as well. They can sit in the fridge for weeks. In addition, my wife got these 8-ounce bottles, and we took our top ten most popular drinks and started prebottling [some of] them; some of them are on tap for single-serve. I had these little stickers made for an event in New Orleans that say “One for the road,” and we’ve started sticking them on our to-go cups.
What we have also been able to do, which is incredible, is make hospital meals—about 250 a week to NYU, to Columbia, Mount Sinai. Delivering to doctors and nurses just above cost, I can continue to bring in food, pay people to make that food, and nourish people on the front lines. I’m personally delivering those meals. That’s the core of what we’re about. And the program is expanding; we’ve [already] rehired 15 of our staff, which is great. We’re also doing a 5 o’clock family meal, a hot meal for anyone in hospitality who’s out of work. It’s a chance to reconnect with our community on whole new levels.
