Patios in Hamilton bracing for a hectic first weekend
Return of restaurants and bars, albeit welcome, comes with a number of caveats concerning customer and staff safety
Hear ye, hear ye: It’s patio season — isn’t that lovely?
Restaurant and bar owners across Hamilton will raise a collective glass Friday to ring in the return of a summer staple and long-awaited dine-in customers.
The hospitality sector has been rocked the past three months as most eateries shifted to a contactless pickup and delivery-based business model amid COVID-19.
Its slow comeback to the Golden Horseshoe — all but 10 of Ontario’s 12 public health units got the go-ahead to reopen restaurants and bars June 12 — comes with a number of caveats concerning safety regulations.
There are sanitizing stations at nearly every turn, limits on the number of customers, modified washrooms, distanced tables and throwaway menus. There’s even no singing and no dancing.
In short: the dining experience as we know it will look substantially different. But it’s here, finally, and that’s worth something.
“Ninety-three days exactly. That’s how long we’ve been waiting,” said Jerome Skara, owner of the Gown
and Gavel on Hess Street South.
“I’m fantastically excited. When they announced Stage 2 for everything other than the Golden Horseshoe, I was in near tears here thinking, ‘So close, but so far.’ Now we’re just waiting for the doors to open.”
Gown and Gavel is one of a dozen patios The Spectator contacted who are bracing for scores of customers this weekend.
Most are recommending customers place reservations before arriving, while others — like Saltlick Smokehouse on James Street North and Stoney Creek’s Barangas on the Beach — are operating on a first-come, first-served basis. All have downsized their patio seating charts and placed floor markers to allow for proper physical distancing.
“The amount of calls and reservations has been unbelievable, we’re already full,” said Skara, whose patio has shrunk from around 350 chairs to 111.
The provincial guidance prepared for restaurants and bars runs the gamut from mandatory PPE for staff and frequently cleaning, to reduced capacity and limited access to indoor facilities.
Some are taking that a step further.
Southcote 53, a tap and grill in Ancaster, will take the name, number, and time of arrival and departure of its customers to ensure there’s a record — if need be — to draw from.
“It it’s a larger group of people, we’ll take the contact information of one person who will be (a liaison) for everyone else,” said Anna Banzon, manager of the eatery, which has dropped its patio table capacity from 40 to 20.
“We’re just doing it for the safety of customers and staff in case there’s a positive case.”
The popular Barangas on the Beach on Van Wagners Beach Road, a fixture on the Lake Ontario shoreline for 29 years, has prepped hundreds of disposable one-use menus to limit high-touch surface areas. They’ve also closed off their bigger restrooms to offer two private washrooms instead.
Other eateries are using creativity to better host customers.
Saltlick Steakhouse is one of the more than 70 restaurants have reached out to the city to inquire about expanding patios into parking lots and onto sidewalks or side streets. Owner Shane McCartney — who said he drove down to Guelph last week to see how patios were faring there — said he hopes his current cap of two tables will at least double in the next two weeks.
“The feeling of sitting on a patio, the normalcy of life … Being able to go back to that is a pretty overwhelming experience. It’s just awesome,” he said. “If everyone’s following the guidelines, I don’t see a problem.”