Indoor dining is back – with reservations
RESTAURANT CAPACITY SET AT 25% AMID COVID SPIKES ACROSS CITY
Come and get it!
Indoor dining resumed Wednesday in the city with restaurants now allowed to serve customers inside at 25% seating capacity.
The move — which struggling restaurant owners demanded for weeks and which some say won’t be enough to keep them afloat — comes as COVID-19 cases have surged in several Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods.
Those up ticks have led many to wonder how sustainable indoor dining will be in the short term and how long schools can remain open if coronavirus numbers continue to climb.
Wednesday’s resumption of indoor dining in the Big Apple marks the first time New Yorkers have been allowed to eat inside a restaurant since March.
For Gianna Cerbone, the owner of Manducatis Rustica in Long Island City, Queens, it’s a mixed blessing, but one she’s thankful for.
“I’m afraid of getting sick,” she told the Daily News. “I’m waitressing tonight and [working] in the kitchen, because one of the people that normally comes in is afraid of getting sick.”
Despite her fears, she’s now opened for indoor diners to make sure her workers, like Manuel, her cook, get paid, and to support her sons. She’s taking precautions — her place is stocked with masks, sanitizer, gloves and thermometers, but all of it seems overwhelming.
“Literally, I just want to pay my workers so they can go home and take care of their families,” she said. “I stayed open because I care about Manuel’s family. I’m staying here for them. For Luiz, who has been working for me since I opened. They are my family, and I want to make sure they can support their family. What are they going to do, go get a job? There is nowhere to work .”
Mayor de Blasio voiced a note of caution about supping out Wednesday, though, both broadly and from a personal perspective.
Inspectors will scrutinize restaurants throughout the city, but will focus much of their attention on zip codes now experiencing COVID surges, he said.
Those neighborhoods include Borough Park, Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Midwood, Gerritsen Beach, Sheepshead Bay and Flatlands in Brooklyn, and Kew Gardens Hills and Far
Rockaway in Queens.
Owners who don’t follow the 25% limit or allow dining at bars or don’t require employees to wear masks will not be treated with a light touch, de Blasio warned.
“Those are the kinds of things that will lead to immediate summonses,” he said at his Wednesday press briefing. “We certainly don’t want to see any restaurants shut down, but we need to be very rigorous everywhere in the city, particularly in the zip codes in Brooklyn and Queens where we’re having the problem.”
Despite the strict inspection protocols, de Blasio would not commit to immediately take advantage of the new loosening of indoor dining strictures.
“What I’m going to do for sure in the coming days is continue, as I have, to enjoy outdoor dining first while the weather’s still good,” he said. “I’m going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future, and then of course shift to indoor when the outdoor isn’t as prevalent because of the weather.”
Last week, de Blasio announced that the city’s outdoor dining program, which allows restaurants to use sidewalk and street space to serve customers, would be extended permanently with provisions for heating lamps and outdoor enclosures in the works.
On Wednesday, he was asked if his apparent lack of enthusiasm for dining indoors himself sent the wrong message to New Yorkers on the fence about eating inside at restaurants that are now desperate for cash.
“I’m not concerned about the message,” he said. “I’m saying I personally just prefer outdoor dining, and so long as it’s available I would always choose it. I think there’s lots of people who are going to love the opportunity to dine indoors, and they’ll have that opportunity.”