I’ve gotten many questions regarding ordering takeout during quarantine in NYC, and I wanted to let you know how we do it. Like I said in my previous post, many of the more established delis, pizza places and diners have stuck around to feed us during quarantine. We are very grateful.

For the 1st week, nobody in my family was on any kind of schedule. We were just cooking every meal, processing what was happening to the world, adjusting to our new realities, and hitting our electronic devices hard. The second week, as we became saturated with Youtube videos, Facebook posts, Tik Toks, and Instagram, we started to raise our heads and look around. We walked the dog the four blocks to Central Park, we stopped to admire the blooms on the trees lining the streets, suddenly fascinated by nature. We all fought to go on the weekly food run to the below-ground grocery store a block away. In general, anything to do with the outside world (that was Governor-approved) became overwhelmingly appealing to all of us just as Cuomo was deciding to shut the city down. The subways were closed to non essential personnel, Madison Avenue was a ghost town…and the parks? Not closed…not just yet. I hold my breath in fear of Central Park closing. I heard that Cuomo closed all of the playgrounds yesterday. It makes sense. It’s necessary, I know. No hard feelings. But Central Park feels like a lifeline to me right about now, and I just can’t think about it closing.

So here we are in the 4th week of quarantine, and the take-out ordering has really been ramping up lately. Neil’s Coffee Shop is our favorite. They are at 70th Street and a favorite of Amy Schumer’s, we’ve heard. We call them directly, instead of using the super popular food ordering app, Seamless, and they get the food here, hot, within 20 minutes.

The doorman calls us on the house phone when the delivery person arrives and someone goes down to the lobby to get the food. (Before Corona, the delivery person was sent up the elevator to our apartment.) I put the bags down on one area of the counter, which I will later disinfect, and I transfer the food from the plastic containers to our own bowls and plates. I throw out the bags and containers and wash my hands and clean all the surfaces. I even lysol wipe the ketchup packets. I don’t microwave the food at all. I don’t believe we can get sick from the food. And so far so good.

Sticking to a daily schedule of showering at the same time each day and eating meals (or calling for take-out) at the same time each day, has helped us all feel more normal. I’ve read that certain prisoners have relied on routines to keep their sanity and ward off a sense of impending doom when the near future looks uncertain. Sounds familiar, right? So we’re doing it. Sticking to our schedules, doing our work, washing our hands. Doing the best that we can and…so far so good.