Well, Steve Kuzzo is the excellent New York Post columnist, the columnist on restaurants, on real estate.

And it's great to have him with us.

Steve Kuzzo, how you doing?

Hey, Mark.

How you doing?

Good.

Well, I keep hearing from these restaurant owners that with the variant, the scare,

although they've lost a lot of business the last couple of weeks, what's the real story?

Well, you know, look, I love restaurants.

As you know, I'm friends with 100,000 chefs and owners.

And, of course, they've taken a hit from this.

But I've got to tell you something.

Restaurant owners, a lot of them are cry babies.

You hear this every January, long before we ever heard of COVID or coronavirus.

Oh, my God.

It's so bad January, you know.

Well, big surprise, right?

Now, of course, things are a little different now, but it's a mixed picture.

But I think it's remarkably robust and healthy, considering all the issues, you know, namely especially Omicron fears, which I truly believe deep in my heart and brain is going to begin receding sooner than people expected to.

And by then we'll be reading, we're hearing about, oh, my God, the restaurant boom is back,

you know.

And all the restaurants I've been to recently have been somewhere between really busy

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