In a July 24, 2020 San Jose Mercury News report that was picked up by wire services, plans were announced by the Steinbeck House in Salinas, California, to cease restaurant and catering operations indefinitely due to COVID-19. John Steinbeck was born in the handsome Queen Anne Victorian on Central Avenue near downtown Salinas in 1902; 70 years later a group of Salinas citizens created a nonprofit organization to purchase and preserve the home as an educational enterprise, supported by earned revenue from the restaurant and catering service run by volunteers on the first floor. Open five days a week to diners, many of them visitors from other states and countries, the restaurant quickly became a point of local pride, providing fine food at popular prices and feeding traffic to other local venues, including the National Steinbeck Center on Main Street. Says Dale Bartoletti—the retired Salinas educator and long-time Steinbeck House docent who has hands-on experience with the 122-year-old building—the decision to shutter the restaurant indefinitely was difficult but inevitable. “We donated several hundred dollars worth of food to a local church that provides daily meals to the homeless. Since then, we’ve served take-out dinner three nights a week and bought enough to see us through August 7, which will be our last Friday Night Dinner,” a popular feature of life in John Steinbeck’s home town before COVID-19 made dining out dangerous.