Eating out

There are 50,000 eating and drinking establishments in New York City, and every one of them has been gutted these last two months: neighborhood ethnic restaurants, diners, upstart hipster joints, pizza places, bagel shops, Michelin-starred eateries, sports bars and grills.

Even if social distancing restrictions lifted tomorrow, the road to recovery would be brutal, with tourism way down and many diners uneasy about packing into small interior spaces.

Capping fees on delivery apps, as the City Council just did, is nice, but nothing can bring Gotham back to a pre-coronavirus reality.

There’s one good idea, though, that can alleviate the hurt for hundreds of restaurants, who say they can’t survive if required to keep dining rooms at 50% capacity or less, the expected restriction to be put in place when the economy starts cracking open: hand over more street space to open-air dining. Allowing customers to stretch out under the sky rather than be cooped up in tight spaces will add tables, and improve customer confidence. The contagion spreads more easily indoors than out, and sun is a disinfectant.

This isn’t a solution for every neighborhood. Streets have to be chosen strategically, to prevent clogging major arteries and allowing essential traffic to go on unimpeded. Don’t rob Peter the pedestrian to pay Paul the eater.

But it’s not as though New York need reinvent the wheel to open up more space for al-fresco dining. Major cities like Rome and Paris and Barcelona have plazas and open-air cafes galore.

Eat up, and eat out.