Thanks to a donation by Tito’s Handmade Vodka, a local charity headed by restaurateur and bar owner Todd Ulmer is offering free meals to displaced hospitality workers, 100 meals on Sunday, April 26, and another 100 next Friday.

And Ulmer is looking to feed more.

Members of the Central Florida culinary and hospitality community has a long history of helping each other out. That used to mean loaning some ingredients to a neighboring restaurant that’s short on something for the evening’s service or cooking side by side at a gala dinner, helping to make each other’s dish look and taste great.

Now they’re trying to offer a meal to restaurant and bar workers who suddenly found themselves out of work and unable to get benefits through Florida’s intentionally insufficient system.

Since Ulmer has been involved in a number of downtown Orlando bars, including Stardust Lounge and Aku Aku Tiki Bar, a representative from Tito’s reached out to him and said the company would like to donate $1500 to Ulmer’s charity, the Richard Ulmer Fund, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit named for his father.

Ulmer got with Jason Lambert, a former partner who now owns the Hammered Lamb restaurant and bar in the Ivanhoe District, and asked him how many meals he could serve for $750 and not lose money. “The goal is not only to feed but [also] to support the closed down restaurants,” Ulmer said. He noted that even the restaurants that are still open for takeout and delivery are working with a skeleton crew – most of their own staff members on furlough – and barely breaking even. “We don’t expect restaurants to be donating food at this time.”

Two of my favorite International Drive restaurants, Taverna Opa and Tapa Toro have reopened after being closed a month and are offering curbside pickup from the menus of both restaurants out of the Tapa Toro space.

That’s good news to anyone who can’t decide between Greek and Spanish – now you can have both.

I placed a phone order as soon as I heard the restaurants were back open. I requested an appetizer of Spanish Tortilla from the Tapa menu and entrees of Kleftiko and Pastitsio from Taverna’s menu.

Tapa Toro is located at Icon Park, under the Ferris wheel. A table and tent has been set up near the driveway in the center of the complex, within view of the restaurant but far enough away as to discourage anyone from going inside. So customers just need to pull up to the tent, call inside and let them know you’re there for your order. When it’s ready, someone will bring it out to you. And if you do as I did and authorize payment with gratuity on your credit card in advance, the server can just place the order in the trunk and you’re good to go, contact free.

What would you do on NFL Draft Day in a normal year? I’m guessing you’d head to a sports bar to watch the proceedings with other football fans while eating some wings or pizza and chugging a few beers.

Well, you can’t. Not this year. But the draft is going on anyway, on Thursday, April 23, with the fully optimistic belief that there will indeed be a season this fall.

So let’s pretend right along. And instead of going to a sports bar, let’s do the next best thing and order some wings, pizzas and beers from American Social, the usually bustling sports themed bar and kitchen on Restaurant Row.

Amso has put together some special packages for NFL Draft Day to help you create a sports bar in your very own isolation chamber. The packages, shown below, include wings, pizza, pretzel sticks with beer cheese and, most importantly, beer. You can get the 1st Overall Pick or the Sleeper Pick, which are the same thing with different amounts. You can also just go to the Draft Board and order a la carte. I like the option of buying an extra six beers for 10 bucks

It’s best to preorder your package by calling Amso at 407-454-9992. Then on Thursday, during the show, take a picture of your draft party – no outside invitees, please – and tag American Social on Instagram – you could win a $50 Amso gift card. That’ll get you a bunch of beers.

Or you could hang on to the card and treat some friends at American Social this fall for the season opener kickoff.

Here are the menu options:

Some of the more enterprising restaurants aren’t just sitting by the phone waiting for takeout orders to come in. Instead, facing the prospect of going out of business, they are going out for business, targeting neighborhoods and turning takeout to bring-in cuisine.

4 Rivers Smokehouse is doing that. On the Saturday before Easter, the popular barbecuerie set up a van and tent in downtown Orlando’s Bel Air neighborhood where residents could pick up preordered dinner packages. It turned out to be a big hit with the neighbors.

And because the people who organized the pickup with 4 Rivers also invited the next-door neighborhood of Lancaster Park to participate, Lancaster Park returned the favor the following week when it arranged preordered pickups with the Tamale Co. Never mind that the rendezvous site in Lancaster was almost as close as Tamale Co.’s restaurant in the Hourglass District; it was a nice gesture nonetheless.

And I was happy to participate.