Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, John “The Restaurant Guy” Dickson is using his considerable connections within Santa Barbara’s dining world to build and continually update a new pickup/delivery guide . This allows customers to continue supporting their favorite restaurants, even when they can’t eat there due to social distancing orders. I asked him a few questions about the project this week, which now includes almost 200 restaurants.
What made you decide to start this guide? I have been watching this heartbreaking drama unfold on the news like everyone else. And I read, with great sadness, about restaurants and other businesses closing all across the country. Having run a restaurant news column online and in print for 15 years, I have a lot of contacts with restaurants and communicate daily with foodies, which is an additional source of information that most people don’t have access to.
On March 15, I started receiving pleas for help from owners of small restaurants, titans of the local food industry, and many in between. The common theme: “We’re open, doing takeout and delivery, but everyone thinks we’re closed!” So I started writing about it in my blog and in this column, which was my only outlet at the time.