Fuckkkkk.

Austin has hot summers.

Austin has thunderstorms.

Austin has the occasional cold front.

What Austin isn’t supposed to have is a week where the entire city seems to stop working because of ice and snow.

Then February 2021 happened.

Winter Storm Uri turned Austin into a city that many residents barely recognized.

Roads became dangerous.

Power disappeared.

Water systems failed.

Businesses closed.

Restaurants that had already spent almost a year fighting COVID suddenly faced another disaster.

For Austin’s food scene, it was a brutal combination.

Restaurants were already operating under difficult circumstances.

Then the freeze arrived.

Food supplies became difficult to obtain.

Employees couldn’t necessarily get to work.

Customers couldn’t necessarily leave home.

Power outages affected refrigeration and cooking.

And many restaurants that had managed to survive the pandemic suddenly had another enormous problem.

The storm also changed the way Austinites thought about basic necessities.

Food wasn’t simply something to enjoy.

It became something communities had to organize around.

Restaurants, food trucks, volunteers and neighborhood groups helped provide meals where possible.

The same city that had spent months finding creative ways to survive COVID was suddenly trying to feed people during a historic winter disaster.

The February freeze was also a reminder of how dependent Austin had become on infrastructure that residents normally took for granted.

A restaurant can have a great chef and a great menu.

But if the electricity is out, the water isn’t working and employees can’t reach the building, none of that matters.

For Austin’s hospitality industry, the freeze created losses on top of losses.

Food spoiled.

Events were canceled.

Business stopped.

Repairs were required.

And employees who were already dealing with pandemic uncertainty were suddenly dealing with frozen pipes, damaged homes and power outages.

The storm didn’t last forever.

But its effects did.

Austin’s restaurant industry entered the rest of 2021 carrying the financial damage of both COVID and the winter disaster.

Yet February also showed something important about Austin.

People helped each other.

Restaurants helped where they could.

Neighbors shared food.

Community organizations stepped in.

And once the roads cleared and the lights came back on, Austin began rebuilding again.

For anyone who lived through that week, February 2021 remains one of those months that doesn’t really need an explanation.

You remember it.

You remember the cold.

You remember the outages.

You remember trying to find food.

And you remember how strange it was to see Austin covered in ice.

For the restaurant industry, it was another chapter in a year that seemed determined to throw everything at them.

But somehow, Austin’s food scene kept going.