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Restaurants Work To Keep Diners Fed And Physically Apart

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

As some restaurants reopen, they have to contrive ways to keep customers a safe social distance from one another. Cafe Rothe in Schwerin, Germany, gives customers hats with colorful pool noodles on top to keep customers from being able to get too close. But if you see photos, you may note that even in Germany, pool noodles aren't shaped like spaetzle.

And when the Inn at Little Washington, a 3-star Michelin restaurant outside of Washington, D.C., reopens at the end of the month, they can only fill half their tables. So Patrick O’Connell, the noted proprietor, is working with a local theater to have mannequins dressed in 1940s fashion fill the empty suits. He says servers will ask their faux guests what wine they'd like, but, of course, a lot of guests are real dummies.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.