The Trump Administration Is Writing a Death Sentence for America’s Most Important Restaurants

Jeff Gordinier, Esquire magazine's food and drinks editor, offers a mournful essay on how the CARES act bails out homogeneous big chains but ignores the local, often ethnic, restaurants that are cherished for their "regional funk."

"These are the restaurants that are most at risk of vanishing altogether as casualties of the coronavirus shutdown, and it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Trump administration so far doesn’t seem to care," Gordinier writes.

It's no surprise that Trump's restaurant task force is stocked with execs from McDonald’s, Subway, Chick-fil-A, Papa John’s, Jimmy John’s, and Wendy’s, plusThomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, Wolfgang Puck, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

"You’ve got your fancy foie gras restaurants for the 1%, and then you’ve got an endless highway gridlocked with cheap garbage for the diabetic masses. Trumpville. Nothing in between," Gordinier writes.

So it's no surprise that Ruth’s Chris Steak House manages to secure $20 million in government aid, while mom-and-pop eateries starve.

Read the full essay here.