Back in September, in the previous millennium, the folks behind Mitchel London Foods had secured their liquor license for a new restaurant in the Baked space at 279 Church, and had started construction on a full service restaurant.

They were cooking along when a fire started in the fourth-floor apartment on Feb. 15, doing minimal damage there but dousing the restaurant space and also damaging Lyons Den yoga studio (which is still operating online till studios can open, FYI). That set the schedule back, and then ran them right into covid.

Enter the pivot. What would have been (and will be eventually) a breakfast-till-late night establishment will now be an elevated grab-and-go, something closer to what the company — a catering operation founded by Ed Koch’s former chef at Gracie Mansion — does already with their “Dinner at Home” program. They are also kind of famous for their crullers.

The new place is as of now unnamed, but should be open in about three weeks. The likely hours will be 8 to 8, and they are counting on locals to keep things going over the next months, fully aware that things are pretty quiet downtown. Once the world starts spinning again, they will revert to the original plan.

“Pivoting is still a little bit dangerous without people going in to work in the morning,” said Thomas Mikolasko, who will run the restaurant. “But I liked this location to begin with and over the past five months, I really fell in love with it. I hope there are enough folks around to make it a go — we don’t need thousands, but we will need more than 20 people coming in each day.”

More TK when they are up and running.