In Paris, restaurants, bistros and bars plead for work, aid

While French chef Michel Solignac labored over his hot stoves, his baby son Nicolas would watch him from his playpen in corner of kitchen. w 30-year-old Nicolas grew up with cooking in his genes and, quite naturally, took over restaurant when his far hung up his apron a few years ago.

coronavirus has w shattered ir world.

“A sledgehammer blow,” Michel Solignac says.

cash reserves that he squirreled away over decades for a rainy day when restaurant was thriving have carried business through this disastrous year. But little that's left will be gone within six months if Nicolas can't reopen restaurant and bring back paying customers soon, Solignac says.

“We have to cling on," he says. “His mor and I didn’t build all this just to watch it collapse.”

Wearing his tall white chef’s hat, 63-year-old retired restauranteur joined a protest Monday in Paris by bosses and workers from France's catering, hotel, event manment and or service industries battered by pandemic year, when world-famous pleasures y offer have largely been put on hold in name of curbing infections.

Ranging from mournful wedding organizers and out-of-work cocktail waiters to distraught chefs and anxious hotel directors, crowd of around 1,000 people pleaded for respite, for more financial aid from government and, for those forced by government to close, to be allowed to earn a living again.

Waitress Sandra Barbette said she desperately misses “ sharing, conviviality” of serving regulars in her Paris restaurant shuttered like or French eateries and watering holes — except for takeout service — since October. That and or lockdown measures have helped bring down infections, but also have come at great cost to French way of life.

“Clients have sent me text messs to say, ‘We miss you,’” Barbette says. “I love my job. I miss it so much.”

Restaurant and bar owners who are getting government aid said payments are merely keeping m on life support, but thing more. government has indicated that restaurants and bars might be allowed to reopen from Jan. 20 if infections don't surge again. But ecomy minister said Monday that he couldn't guarantee that date will hold.

While Solignac came to Paris to demonstrate, his son was back at ir restaurant in Correze region of south-central France, preparing takeout dishes.

That lockdown business brings in only a fraction of money y used to make, but it does help keep ir minds off ir many worries, Solignac says.

“Psychologically, I don't kw how I would react if I was obliged to shut down," he says. “It really would hurt.”