Elizabeth Falkner was a jet-setting, TV-friendly chef and “food personality” at work on a documentary project of some sort when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020.
She recognized the calamity unfolding around her, and also admits to being triggered by memories of closing her restauranst and getting out of that work-yourself-to-death business during the financial collapse of 2008.
She and filmmaker Peter Ferriero (“Her Name is Chef”) switched gears and decided to document, in real time, what the pandemic and the various shutdowns were doing to one of America’s largest industries, one in which she’d already seen an “unsustainable” and toxic mix of workloads, tiny profit margins, burnout risks, ever-more-demanding “foodie” customers and a health care system not set up to take care of those who feed us.
“Sorry, We’re Closed,” is a hopeful, brisk and sprawling “cook’s tour” with “self-care” and support for COVID closed eateries and their stressed chefs and staff as its subtext. They’d not only be visiting scores of closed eateries as their chefs “pivoted” to take-out and home delivery. Falkner would be checking in with stressed chefs — many of whom were filling their time with TikTok and Instagram performative cooking, lessons, etc., and many more of whom were drinking and “crying in a fetal position” about their finances, their inability to pay their stressed hired help and their mental and physical health during a global pandemic.
Falkner and her fellow restaurateurs bristle at the mishandling of the pandemic, then-president Donald Trump “actively sabotaging” the pandemic response and the restaurant industury when he tried to give the flu’s origin racist labeling. Chinese and Asian-American chefs and their friend Falkner express outrage and fear at the division and hate-crimes this was sewing.
The Black Lives Matter protests became another challenge, mid-pandemic, trying to protect one’s restaurant from marches that sometimes led to vandalism.
And all of these tests — disruption of the food supply, laying off of labor, forced closures and general unrest, are just “a dress rehearsal for climate change,” warns the sage and chef Alice Waters, godmother of modern American foodie culture.
The broad swath of people Falkner and Ferriero track down give the film a diffuse focus. It might have been better-served by limiting the number of people interviewed and using fewer chefs, servers, “mixologists” and others to illustrate the myriad problems facing an industry that didn’t get an airline-sized bailout, despite dwarfing most other American workforces in size and reach.
The lack of European-style universal healthcare is listed as one of the biggest burdens facing the “tips” side of the workplace. Millions didn’t return to those jobs after the pandemic, and not just those working for fast food giants or unscrupulous business owners who hoarded all their PPP loan for themselves rather than keep workers on the payroll, which was the entire point.
Burnout and substance abuse, already widespread in this all-consuming/endless days-and-nights job (read Anthony Bordain’s “Kitchen Confidential”), got worse.
But Falker, allowing herself to get very emotional about all this at times, gives us an idea that she didn’t just want to document a crisis and its impact on a corner of the culture. Inspired by an essay by Prune owner and chef and New York Times columnist Gabrielle Hamilton, Falkner wanted to provide a voice to those struggling, a place for those personally impacted to vent and sound the alarm and a filmed visit to boost morale.
Judging from the finished film, she met most of those goals.
Rating: unrated, profanity
Cast: Elizabeth Falkner, Alice Waters, Esdras Ochoa, Perry Cheung, Gabrielle Hamilton, Ann Kim, Gerald Sombright, many others
Credits: Directed by Peter Ferriero, written and narrated by Elizabeth Falkner. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:18
