Today was National Carryout Night. Honestly, these days that’s about all you have as an option as dining rooms across the nation remain shuttered. And with Coronavirus still running rampant here, it was easy to choose the Preston’s pop up inside Ambrose and Eve to support for this Made Up National Day That We All Deserve.

I love their burgers. Columbus loves them too, as Preston’s Double was Columbus Monthly’s very best out of four regions. Plus Yelp thinks so too, and 614 Magazine gives it top marks, and on and on. Good stuff.

Matt and Catie, the owners of Ambrose and Eve as well as Preston’s, also make a killer Chicken Sandwich (from back in Catie’s days of running her Challah! Truck), so that was on the order pile, as well. But because all this was coming out of their lovely brick and mortar finer dining room, we made sure to pull a good bottle of red from their concise but nicely curated wine list to go with everything.

We called in our order in the late afternoon and arrived a couple minutes early to pay and pick our wine. Walking in, Matt was finishing up some work on the laptop in the spotless dining room and it was awful hard not to hug him. This shut down has been unspeakably difficult for restaurant and bar owners. But he still had a smile, as did GM Vince. They are hospitality pros to the core.

Matt chatted briefly about a relief kitchen they’re involved with that is just getting its feet under it. A large commercial central kitchen with staff from various restaurants manning it to produce meals that would be transferred to a volunteer network of small restaurants to serve as pick up locations for hospitality staff who have been laid off or fu

rloughed and in need of food. That generosity is so like him. I’ll make sure to post more information when I have it.

If you can afford to, I encourage you to visit restaurants that are independent and small. If there is a single group that would benefit most from your support during this time – and all of the times – it is them. The margins in all restaurants are slim to begin with, and they are perhaps even more so with our favorite independents.

Show ’em some love.

Playlist included Into Happiness, by Phantogram.