It’s difficult to compare a restaurant about to reopen after 14 months with a high-volume bakery in the throes of day-to-day production, but the energy at my new job is completely unlike my old one. My first few days of work were spent on training, paperwork and prepping ingredients for opening night. It felt like a cross between freshman orientation and the last days of dress rehearsal for a theater production. Some of the cooks and servers were seeing each other for the first time since the abrupt closure last year. Others of us were new to everything and eager to learn as much as we could. Among everyone was a sense of optimism and excitement just to be there.