Jamie Bissonnette: Coppa, Toro and Little Donkey

PROFILE NINE IN THIS SERIES: BOSTON CHEFS AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC 

Jamie Bissonnette, chef and co-owner of Boston’s Coppa, Toro and Little Donkey in Cambridge, has been quite busy during the pandemic. Ever since mid-March, when Harvard medical student Natalie Guo approached his business partner, Ken Oringer, and Tracy Chang of Pagu to spearhead an initiative to feed the medical community on the front lines in local hospitals while simultaneously putting restaurant kitchen staff back to work, Bissonnette has been cooking up a storm. This new initiative, called Off Their Plate (“powered by a coalition of private citizens, medical students, socially-minded restaurant owners, hospital leaders and the communities around them”), has now expanded to nine cities across the country, prepared nearly 400,000 meals while raising close to $2 million in relief aid for foodservice workers. (Be sure to read our Summer issue for a more detailed, in-depth look at OTP, due out at the beginning of July.)

Nina caught up with Jamie to ask how life has changed in the two months since OTP began.

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What are your thoughts right now in the peak moment of the pandemic crisis? 

Stay positive. Push through this and take care of people the best I can. 

When the guidelines were released in mid-March, what were your immediate thoughts? 

I am still hoping to get more guidance from the state government, and DOH (Department of Health).

What steps did you take to prepare for the lockdown—both professionally and personally? 

Personally, we hunkered down and started cooking. Professionally, we closed, even before we were mandated to, to be sure that our teams were not at risk.  

Are you using this time to experiment with other dishes or are you not working with food at all? 

We have been feeding 1200–4000 people a week working on the frontlines in the hospitals with Off Their Plate [OTP]. Toro and Coppa started to phase into takeout mode. Now we are just waiting to see what [Governor] Baker and [Mayor] Marty Walsh advise us to do next. 

Describe the differences you’ve experienced between being at home for the past five weeks as opposed to running your restaurant. 

I am not sure if this is luck or not, but I have been in the restaurant most days by 7:30 am and home after 6 or 7 pm getting the feeding done with OTP. The days we are home, it is a lot of cooking, backgammon and chilling with Hank, our 11-year-old Frenchie.

Everybody’s talking about Netflix, HBO and other TV streaming; do you have any recommendations you want to share? Have you found the time to read, and if so, what are you reading now? 

I am almost caught up on my New Yorker subscription! We also started watching some cool shows. Mostly, I have been reorganizing and listening to our record collection.

What are the staples in your kitchen that you can’t do without? Have you been able to keep these items in stock? 

I am never without eggs or Champagne. We had a pretty dope stockpile of both before this started and have been keeping the American cheese and soft flour tortilla pars pretty high at home. 

What is your go-to menu now that you are cooking at home? 

We make a lot of handmade pasta and bread. Song cooks half the time. She makes some really great buffalo wings! We cook together when we can.

What kind of safety precautions are you taking? 

We are having staff change into work clothes when they arrive. Mandatory temperature checks when they start work, and again every hour. Mandatory mask and gloves. Continually teaching and helping the teams work clean, and at a social distance. 

For Toro and Coppa, we are doing contact-free takeout and working with delivery services. They are a variable that I dislike. The drivers range from working like it is a hazmat situation, to no gloves or masks. We try to police them. Some delivery services have been very difficult. They have not given their drivers guidelines on how to be safe, so say their drivers, anyhow. And it shouldn't feel like finger pointing. We all need to work together. Calling each other out when we are not working properly should not be a bad thing. There need to be checks and balances amongst us. Like packing a parachute—we need spotters.

How are you coping with stress? 

Meditation is great. Snuggling a Frenchie is awesome. Song and I got married March 8th. Reminding ourselves that this is the weirdest honeymoon ever seems to take some stress away. But overall, it's really difficult to stay even.

Because of the stay-at-home rule have you been propelled to do things that you never thought you had time for? If so, what? 

I haven't found a lot of extra time yet. But I love the earlier mornings [going] in with the new schedule.   

Will this pandemic crisis change the way you do business in the future, and if so, how? 

This is a moving target. Ask me again in a month. As a first thought, it is going to change everything. 

Would the seating capacity of your restaurant change because of the social distancing even when the guidelines no longer exist? 

Absolutely. I am stoked to see what the DOH, Gov. Baker and Mayor Walsh have to say on the subject.  

Is there anything you would like to share in reflection on this crisis that we are all in together?

Rebuilding starts with restaurants. Stay positive. Do not let politics get in the way of common sense.