Coronavirus Tales: People keep buying meals to send this NYC neighborhood fixture

Dave Goodside, owner of Beach Cafe on the Upper East side, started selling meal delivery packages — three appetizers, entrees and desserts, plus a tin of mixed greens, a pound of tuna salad, three bottles of water, two rolls of toilet paper and three pairs of plastic protective gloves, all for $89 — for older folks so they don’t have to leave their apartments. Several customers have purchased a package specifically for one of the restaurant’s regulars, Lillian Faffer, 84, who is so special she gets to request her choice of entree. (“The reason most of them [bought packages for me] was because they wanted to … support the Beach Cafe,” Faffer demurred. “I hope they’ll stay in business.”)

Lillian’s a neighbor and a regular. She’s got, like, four different people who’ve lined up one after the other to make sure she has a senior package waiting for her. She’s gone through one and a half of them, so she’ll have her meals taken care of for quite a while. Some of them don’t even know her name, they just said “that lady.”

She’s become one of the fixtures [here]. It’s not uncommon to have Lillian to sit at a table. She’ll sit quietly at a table of 30-somethings talking about what’s going on politically in another part of the world. If it’s an odd idea, she’ll be the first one to tell you.

It does feel nice [to help her] but it’s also just one of these things that a neighborhood is all about.

— As told to Marisa Dellatto

Read more stories about neighbors helping each other.