PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al peo­ple starved of take out op­tions were giv­en an out­let on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, yes­ter­day when El Pecos Grill opened its doors, as a gro­cery.

The pop­u­lar restau­rant post­ed on their so­cial me­dia pages that they were in­deed open from 9 am to 4 pm and to­day from 9 am to 5 pm.

Pa­trons who en­tered saw shelves full of gro­cery items in­clud­ing flour, oil, bread, canned peas and toi­letries at the new­ly mint­ed El Pecos on the Go Mar­ket.

How­ev­er, al­so no­tice­ably present were the meals that the brand had been bet­ter known for, prepack­aged and ready for sale to cus­tomers.

The meals were con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing re­plen­ished as work­ers could be seen ex­it­ing and re-emerg­ing from the com­pound’s kitchen with fresh pack­ages.

The turn of events prompt­ed ques­tions to be asked about a po­ten­tial loop­hole in the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

Un­der the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions on­ly es­sen­tial busi­ness­es such as gro­ceries, phar­ma­cies, gas sta­tions and hard­wares are al­lowed to open.

Restau­rants have been barred from op­er­at­ing in any form since the end of April while street food vend­ing had been stopped in ear­ly May.

When asked at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing about their re-open­ing, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young gave warn­ing that they could quick­ly run afoul of the law by at­tempt­ing to hood­wink the sys­tem.

He said, “All I could ask peo­ple to do is just re­spect the law, all right?

“A spade is a spade, a duck is a duck or a rab­bit is a rab­bit. If you are a rab­bit and you feel by putting a duck feath­er on your back, you be­come a duck—You’re gonna get your­self in trou­ble,” said Young, who lat­er urged oth­er busi­ness as he ex­pect­ed that the law would have the fi­nal say.

“So re­spect the law. If you know, your restau­rant and you’ve been sell­ing food as a restau­rant for all the time and in par­tic­u­lar as a take out restau­rant. Don’t just go and put some, I don’t know I couldn’t spot what it is and call your­self a mar­ket. All right, I can’t. It just doesn’t work that as form over sub­stance and you will get your­self in trou­ble with the law,” Young added.

As it turned out, the law did turn up at the doors of Wood­brook restau­rant-gro­cery hy­brid but could not shut down their op­er­a­tions as they had of­fi­cial­ly been reg­is­tered as gro­cery on June 24.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that Se­nior Supt Kelvern Thomp­son, head of West­ern Di­vi­sion, sent a team of of­fi­cers down to El Pecos af­ter re­ceiv­ing pho­tographs of their op­er­a­tions.

The of­fi­cers ar­rived and met the own­er who showed doc­u­men­ta­tion that he reg­is­tered El Pecos as a Gro­cery, ef­fec­tive June 24.

The po­lice con­firmed, “As a re­sult of the doc­u­men­ta­tion seen and copies made, the po­lice left the premis­es and no ac­tion was tak­en.”