CUISINE IN THE AGE OF COVID
by Matthew Elliott
Chef & Owner, Ethel & Mary’s, Saint John
Photographs by Julia Wright, Josh Hooper, Erin Gillespie

All of cuisine has evolved in the name of nostalgia. Cooking is a shamelessly sentimental trade. I guess, in that way, I am perfectly suited to it. I crave those pangs of pain with every change of season; whatever smells, sounds and sights that put me somewhere I can never be again. That sense of longing is the driving force behind everything I've ever done. It's the well from which each song, poem, short story and menu item springs. There are chefs who specialize in evolving our cuisine, trying new things, experimenting with new techniques, but even those chefs are consistently toying with nostalgia to create new memorable experiences. I do believe in innovation, and indeed we do have to move tradition to keep it, but I think I am more suited to something a little simpler. Maybe I'm supposed to help make sure we don't get completely off track in our foodways. Maybe it's already too late for that. 

Either way, I've opened a restaurant. It's the most difficult thing I've ever done, but I can't shake this sense that I'm supposed to be doing it. Or at least that it's good that I'm doing it. I miss my grandmothers. I miss them every day. Ethel & Mary's is largely a focused expression of that feeling. But it's also the result of years and years of becoming more and more enamoured with the restaurant industry. A wide array of farmers, cooks, dishwashers, servers, purveyors, truck drivers and generally speaking, people who are easy to respect and admire. We're shooting for somewhat refined nostalgia. A custodial effort of celebrating our food memories and telling our stories through food. Basically we're making folk art.

When the restaurant finally opened following months of false starts, bad news, calculated risks, humbling community support, endless learning and unbelievable hard work, there was a heavy feeling of accomplishment hidden beneath each long day. It was hard to see it after the 110th hour at the end of the week, but it was there. Mercifully, our long road of pop up events and farmers markets saw us open to what felt like a neighborhood celebration. Just as we were about to increase our staff and attempt to find our footing, we were hit with the news that COVID-19 would likely close our doors. It was a test of leadership, and I'm not sure how well I fared. In a video we posted online to address the situation, I described us as being 'pretty vulnerable to it,' which was an understatement. 

Our restaurant has done pretty much everything the hard way. This is not a shop built on savings, investment, credit or inheritance. We were able to open because of the supportive community we are in, a few good city programs, and YouTube tutorials. I wasn't about to pay someone else to hang drywall on our budget. We opened pretty close to the wire, and we badly needed to have a very good summer to survive. When we all learned how serious the situation really was, it felt like all of our hard work had been for nothing. When we sat down to discuss strategy, I wasn't sure where to start. 

Thankfully, I am surrounded by incredible people, without whom there is no chance the restaurant would still exist. The people I have been blessed with as staff confronted this situation with grace, and it was with their support, hard work and ideas that we marched forward. The idea of a temporary closure was unfortunately impossible for us, so we chopped down our staff and hours, and removed our tables. We began to rethink our business model. Our community reached out to us and supported us as best they could. My family came together to raise money for us amongst themselves. We all sacrificed greatly, the entire E&M family, to keep the business on life support long enough to evolve within the circumstance. This effort is, of course, ongoing. 

Over the course of this past summer, we came together as a team and moved forward with new ideas. We continued to work with a focus on our small business community. That community is in every way essential to life in Saint John. We do not view them as competition. Ethel & Mary's was always designed to complement the area of Uptown Saint John. There are so many people from so many backgrounds working to grow and maintain the amazing culture here, and we are extremely proud to be a part of it. Small businesses have supported each other beautifully in this situation through collaboration, public support and patronage. 

Our customers have repeatedly brought us to tears with their support. It would have been reasonable to expect people to stop going out to eat, but they made sure to come support us when they could. Saint John is a weird little place. When Stompin' Tom wrote 'Saint John Blues' he described it using a conversation between a man and a pigeon about loneliness, and for us this rings true of the experience. This city is the odd conversation you have with a stranger in the burial ground. It created Ethel & Mary's and it inspires us every day. We know we are lucky to be a part of this city. We are not a business built on the quest for profit. Everyone is involved because they care about what we are doing and how we are doing it, and I believe that passion exists in the hearts and minds of our patrons as well. That passion has saved our business.

We have also been very lucky in several ways. The strategy of growing the business step by step has also saved us. We started with pop ups, and worked our way into a few farmers markets. We also lucked into a feature as food columnist for Information Morning with Julia Wright on CBC, which was a delight and an honor. As the reputation appeared to grow and the concept seemed to come together, it appeared that perhaps the best way to continue was to find a very small space, and give it a go as a lunch spot with limited seats. If I'd gone for my end goal and tried to open a place two or three times our size, we would not have made it this far. Our overhead is just low enough for us to scrape by if we work very, very hard. If we hadn't been able to barely qualify for the wage subsidy, even our size and the sacrifices of our team would not have been enough.
 
I believe that restrictive circumstances are a great conduit to creativity. Endless possibility can cripple the process. Once you've settled on some parameters, as long as you have the technique, your creativity is free. These last three years I've been obsessively filling in the gaps in my own culinary education in an attempt to master the technique enough to grapple with the circumstance. The more I learn, the more I feel that I don't know anything, but that's good.
          
If we can't have tables, we need to embrace take out. What works best in a take out container? Can we accommodate restrictive diets in a space this size when everything has to travel before it's eaten? What can we sell from inside a freezer that is worth buying? If we're going to make our own ricotta, what use can we find for the leftover whey to prevent it from being wasted? How can we get new people excited about dining with us without being able to pay for marketing? Thankfully this is a staff of creative, intelligent and thoughtful people and answering these questions has actually been pretty enjoyable.

Lately we've been booking private dinners in the restaurant, which is something we've always wanted to do. Circumstance has altered our original plan, and resulted in something we call the 'Bubble Bistro,' wherein folks within a bubble can come in to dine on a personalized menu. It allows us to be a bit more creative and to interact with our customers in a more relaxed atmosphere than the takeout counter. It's a breath of fresh air.
 
The restaurant business, as you've no doubt heard, is a tough one at the best of times. Restaurant food is artificially inexpensive to accommodate a broken agricultural system and this has further exacerbated the industry's issues with low pay, long hours and impossible expectations. To survive while purchasing responsibly as a food business feels impossible, and it's difficult not to feel crushed under the weight of it. I believe in this industry, and I believe it has an inherently redemptive quality. Who knows where I would be if Al hadn't gotten me that dishwashing job at O'Carroll's in 2009. Ultimately, you have to work your ass off, but you can do it. Or as we like to say in the shop, don't lose your nerve.

Ethel & Mary's
107 Princess St, Saint John, NB E2L 1K5
ethelandmarys.com