Coronavirus In Minnesota: Easter Dinner Becomes Curbside Takeout

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Easter is typically one of the busiest holidays for the restaurant industry, but with all of their dining rooms closed right now, many are cranking out Easter takeout meals.

Many Twin Cities chefs began prepping take-and-bake meals for pick ups at the beginning of the week and online orders started flooding in at several spots, including Red Cow, which had over 300 Easter meals purchased, and The Lexington in St. Paul, who sold out of all their Easter dinner meals.

"The rush of orders came fast, so then we had to figure out how we were going to organize the whole pickup," said Michael Giacomini, at Red Cow. He says they had to restructure their entire bar area to make it more efficient for the rush of Easter customers.

"We printed off all the orders and you can see we have them alphabetized so then people can call when they're here or some have walked in. we have X's on the floor so we're practicing our social distancing," Giacomini said.

At all of these restaurants, customers are paying one price for the set Easter menu, which includes the main dish, sides and dessert.

"We rolled out doing a tender loin and ham dinner. So you got to choose between one of the two, and then they all came with cheesy hash browns, green bean casserole, some roasted carrots and onions, and then our carrot cake," Giacomini said.

Italian cuisine is breaking the Easter meal tradition over at DiGidio's in St. Paul.

Their parking lot had a steady stream of customer picking up their curbside meals Friday evening. Owner Jason Tschida says it's not too late to get one of their take-and-bake Easter meals, but you have to do it before Sunday.

"We'll keep going until we're out of stock. We're trying to update everything online as fast as we can if we run out of something," Tschida said.

For a full list of Twin Cities restaurants doing curbside pickup, click here.