5 Things in Restaurants You'll Never See Again

On Monday, Georgia will officially become the first state to allow restaurants to open their doors to dine-in customers since quarantine restrictions went into effect in March. The move represents perhaps the first domino to fall in what will eventually be a slow easing of those restrictions across the country in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

As you can imagine, the world of dining will look very different, and, as The New York Times reports, restaurateurs in the U.S. have been looking to Asia recently for examples of how restaurants in those countries have handled re-openings. How will seating be rearranged? What will menus look and feel like? How would they advise customers to handle wearing masks while at the same time trying to eat? Luckily, the National Restaurant Association (NRA), with feedback from the FDA, CDC, and Prevention and Environmental Protection Agency, has released a 10-page guide for restaurants to follow to ensure that all staff and customers are safe.

Of course, you can expect that many of the fixtures you've known to exist in restaurants forever will likely vanish in the name of safety and proper sanitization. If you're curious to know what some of them are, read on—because we've listed them here.

 

1

Preset Table Settings

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You're probably used to strolling up to your table and seeing a perfectly set table waiting for you. That may not be the case anymore. "Consider using rolled silverware and eliminating table presets," says one recommendation.

2

Unwrapped Straws

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In an effort to reduce the things that many customers may wish to touch, the NRA has advised that restaurants remove unwrapped straws from "self-service drinks stations"—whether that's at the corner of a restaurant bar or at the milk-and-sugar area of your favorite coffee shop.

3

Menus That Aren't Paper or Easily Cleanable

In an effort to reduce the further contact, the NRA has advised that restaurants either sanitize their menus after every use or to adopt paper menus that will be promptly thrown away after each use. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp had this advice to restaurants: "The use of disposable paper menus is strongly encouraged."

4

Salad Bars

From the guidelines circulated by Georgia's Gov. Kemp: "Discontinue use of all salad bars and buffets."

5

Lemons and Limes at Drink Stations

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Just as the guidelines encourage restaurants to do away with unwrapped straws, they advise against those little tubs of cut fruit that are in reach of paying customers, as well.