Redefining restaurant dining during a pandemic

As restaurants around the world battle with ensuring their businesses are both economically viable and comply with social distancing, one in Amsterdam has come up with a novel idea to make it work.

Mediamatic ETEN is offering four course vegetarian dining in little greenhouses or “Serres Séparées” (separate greenhouses).

The greenhouses are set up along the Oosterdok Marina. Photo credit: Anne Lakeman/Willem Velthoven

They’ve been trialling the concept with family and friends of staff, but all going well, hope to be open to the general public in the next few weeks.  Waiters wear gloves and face shields, and dishes are served on long boards which can be slid onto tables from outside the greenhouses.

Restaurant staff have gone through special training to get used to the set up. Photo credit: Anne Lakeman/Willem Velthoven

“We are now learning how to do the cleaning, how to do the service, how to get the empty plates out again in an elegant way, so you still feel taken care of nicely,” said Willem Velthoven of Mediamatic.

Mediamatic told Landscape Architecture Aotearoa that tickets for the concept are already sold out through to the end of June. 

Testing the safe seating concept. Photo credit: Anne Lakeman/Willem Velthoven

“We got the idea by brainstorming and looking at all our possibilities as a restaurant,” the restaurant says. “How can we create a safe environment and get people back to a ‘normal’ and social life?

“By using glass greenhouses, people experience the intimacy of being with a partner but it also allows people to reconnect with other people.”

The restaurant says diners tended to linger in the greenhouses. Photo credit: Anne Lakeman/Willem Velthoven

A maximum of three people per greenhouse is allowed, and they must be from the same household or spend a lot of time together. The restaurant will also use the space inside its main building if that’s allowed by Government regulations.

COVID-19 restrictions are starting to be relaxed in The Netherlands but people still have to stay one and a half metres apart.