Alison Bowen
Chicago Tribune
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) As Allison Bowen reports, Kim and Doug White have been pulling into restaurant parking lots and eating their “date night” meals on a makeshift dining table they created in the back of their vehicle.
Chicago
They talk about how they loved the tuna tartare at Cab’s Wine Bar Bistro in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
They talk about how Mexican and Vietnamese flavors fused at Mykha’s before the namesake chef retired.
While these restaurants’ closings were not a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kim and Doug White fear their favorite restaurants will get added to the closed list. “We still lament them as though they were family members,” said Kim White.
For many, dining out is at the heart of good times and memories. The suspension of indoor dining at restaurants and bars because of the coronavirus has stolen that joy from the Whites. It took away date nights, a way the Lombard couple communicates. “It’s Doug’s love language,” said Kim White. “From the very beginning, we love to go out to eat. It’s been the thing that we do.”
Like many others, they sought ways to find happiness and some normalcy during an isolating time. Their solution: turn their Ford Transit van into a mobile dining room. Since October, the two have been pulling into restaurant parking lots and eating their takeout at the table covered in a red-and-white checkered table cloth in the back of their van. To help support the restaurants, they’ve been posting their date nights on Facebook and Instagram, logging their favorite dishes.
“Eating out for us is that little teeny tiny bit of normalcy,” said Kim White, who talked about being dealt another blow this year.
On a Friday night in June, Doug White thought he had a kidney stone and went to the hospital. With COVID-19 affecting hospital visitors’ policies, he was left to hear these words alone: “You have cancer.”
“It just sucks the breath out of you,” said Kim White.
After the diagnosis, the next step was chemotherapy. This, too, stole small delights. Doug White could no longer eat sushi with raw fish from one of his new favorite restaurants, Kizuna, which they discovered this summer on Roosevelt Road in Glen Ellyn.
“Doug and I have always said there’s a couple different types of meals,” Kim White said. “There’s a meal that will feed your body, and there’s a meal that will feed your soul. And if a meal can feed your body and your soul at the same time, that’s the best.”
The couple, who’ve been married 26 years and have two adult children and five grandkids, met decades ago when he was her piano tuner. Five years later, when both were single parents of young children, they went to a concert and then to Reza’s restaurant in Andersonville.
“Doug has a way of describing food that is so romantic,” Kim White said. But when indoor dining closed again in the fall, “It was just like some of that joy was just being taken away from us again,” Kim White said. “It was so sad.”
Doug White used to work as a bartender at Palmer Place in LaGrange, so he knows how hard it is to stay above water, let alone during a national shutdown. He worried about his eating places.
“Doug and I are cheerleaders at heart,” said Kim White, who runs a nature education business. “Whenever a new restaurant comes into town we try to get there like the first day, if not that first week, to try and go there and support them and welcome them into the community.”
Being able to eat outside in the summer, with real plates and the carrying of voices, was a tonic.
That’s why, when restaurants closed again, they sought another way back.
One day, while out for a drive, Doug told Kim he wished they had a RV so they could just drive up to restaurants and eat in the parking lot.
She assessed her van and thought it could probably be remodeled. She went to Menards and bought a 4-foot table. Her husband had his heart set on a checkered tablecloth. After some sleuthing, she found one at Restaurant Depot. They hung lights, which they plug into the van converter.
Mission BBQ in Downers Grove was their first mobile dining experience. The couple said they love how the restaurant supports veterans. They got takeout boxes and transferred the food to plates they brought from home and used their own silverware.
Since then, van dining adventures have included Rosemary and Jeans Public House in Lombard, where they had bruschetta and butternut squash ravioli, and Vito & Nick’s Pizzeria on South Pulaski Road, where Doug White grew up going to church nearby and loves the “ultra thin cracker crust pie.”
The restaurant workers have joined in on their fun. Waiters are eager to bring plates out to them, Kim White said, not having served diners sometimes for months. Chefs enjoy revisiting food styling skills while plating.
“They’re having just as much fun doing it as we are,” she said.
Pam Geralds, chef and owner at Pinecone Cottage Tea House and Catering in Downers Grove, said the couple’s November visit was a great chance to use teapots that have been sitting dormant.
The couple had afternoon tea in the van — these days most people pick up their boxes of tea. They were able to enjoy two pots of hot tea. “One of my girls went out there and actually poured the tea for them in their van,” Geralds said, “almost as if they were here in the restaurant. It was really sweet.”
She said of the visit, “Those are the little things that happen during this pandemic that make life a little bit more worthwhile. We have to look for those little shining star moments, right?”
Recently, Kim White stopped by Kizuna, telling the host they miss visiting, now that Doug can’t have raw fish. The host got a menu, circling everything he could still eat. She brought the menu home to her husband. He said, “I can’t eat any of it.” She showed him the circles.
They hope to remind people of the smells and the ambiance of dining out. They know takeout on a lap in front of the television isn’t the same experience. But, Kim White said, “It’s bringing these restaurants back into people’s minds, and they say, ‘Let’s go get that.’”
Seeing how people have responded to the Facebook page she started to document their “Vanbassador” adventures has been heartening. Some people have sent money for their meals. Kim marvels that somehow out of multiple jobs they had — photographer, nature educator, travel coordinator — COVID-19 claimed them all.
“You can get cynical, you can think that there’s so much bad in this world,” she said. “We have seen such an outpouring of good.”
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