Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
As restaurants in New York are gradually permitted to open up reduced-capacity indoor dining while still respecting COVID-19 social-distancing protocols, creative solutions are bubbling up in order to make the dining rooms feel more inviting for the customers desperate to escape their 340th straight night of microwave burritos and leftover Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. During the past few months, we’ve learned that restaurants have used stuffed pandas, mannequins, and blow-up dolls to fill seats for the benefit of passersby and diners who longed for a sense of a vibrant social scene once again.
Some seat fillers are especially lifelike (yesterday’s carpool dummy) and some are beloved but not quite as realistic as our passenger-seat friend. Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn, NY, rose to the occasion of 35%-capacity indoor dining by teaming up with Madame Tussauds to temporarily fill the open tables with glamorous Hollywood wax figures.
via HuffPo:
Brooklyn’s famed Peter Luger Steak House has teamed with Madame Tussauds to have celebrity wax figures mingle with patrons, promoting the easing of coronavirus pandemic restrictions on indoor dining in New York City.
A wax Jon Hamm — known for his portrayal of ad executive Draper in the hit TV series — could be found at the restaurant’s bar Friday with a cocktail in hand.
Other figures on loan from Madame Tussauds include Michael Strahan, Jimmy Fallon, Al Roker and Audrey Hepburn in Holly Golightly of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” mode.
Peter Luger “thought this would be a fun, safe way to fill some of the seats that need to remain empty as we continue to fight the pandemic,” said restaurant vice president Daniel Turtel.
It’s really not a stretch here to note that the wax patrons on loan look far more lifelike than some of Hollywood’s elite, most or all of whom will be tuned in to tonight’s 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards, which will be held virtually for the first time. Tina Fey will be hosting from the Rainbow Room in New York, and Amy Poehler will host from The Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
The nominees will connect from home or from rented hotel rooms to make the night more festive, but really, the GG committee could solve the empty-venue dilemma by contracting with Madame Tussauds for the rest of their inventory to recreate old Hollywood and set us all on a much-needed escapist rewind to pre-COVID times.
Here is the dapper scene happening at Peter Luger. GGs, take note!
Pic: Madam Tussauds