My friends' restaurant, like many, is barely enduring. The government must do more
When I heard Andrew Cuomo on the radio recently, talking about shutting down indoor dining in New York City restaurants again, I turned up the volume. I follow the hospitality industry news as if it affects me personally; in a sense, it does. My friends own a restaurant in my neighborhood, Sake Bar Satsko on East 7th Street. Since it opened in 2004, Satsko’s, as it’s also known, has become like another room of my house – the room where all the fun stuff happens. And now, with this latest round of restrictions, it might have to close forever.
Much has been written about how important restaurants are to the culture of New York City – they’re “a thread in the fabric that might unravel if you yanked us from the weave”, wrote Gabrielle Hamilton in April, on shuttering her iconic cafe, Prune – so I won’t go into all that. We know that New York won’t be New York without its abundance of lively and delicious restaurants, thousands of which are estimated to have closed permanently since Covid-19 struck. The real question is why the government has done so little to assist this vital industry, which employs more than 300,000 New Yorkers – many of them recent immigrants, musicians, writers, artists and actors, all of whom help make up the city’s special sauce.
“It feels like we’re swimming upstream. Everyone is just so beat up, it’s hard to keep fighting,” Amy Watanabe, the co-owner of Sake Bar Satsko, told me on a wintry day. This didn’t sound like Amy, who is usually one to look on the brighter side of things. “It’s like 2020 is taking you by the shoulders and throttling you until you give it all your lunch money,” she added, laughing.
It was warm and cozy inside the bright orange outdoor dining enclosure Amy had built with the help of an architect friend and “Satsko-ite,” as regulars are known. He did the work pro bono. “Everyone has been so great in trying to help us stay open,” said Satsko
Watanabe, Amy’s co-owner and mom. “But there’s only so much we can do, with the city cutting our space and our hours, but then offering us no relief. If things keep going this way, we won’t survive.”
Satsko opened the bar when she was in her 50s, after decades working in the corporate world. It was a lifelong dream of hers to run a restaurant that had the feel of an authentic Japanese izakaya – plus sake bombs, which had become popular with a younger crowd. The crowd at Satsko was what drew me to it initially: it was always a reflection of the irresistible diversity of New York in general and the East Village in particular, everyone from drag queens to finance bros. Because of the smallness of the bar, people would actually talk to each other, increasingly a surprise in an era when restaurants are lamentably full of people staring at their phones. “I think a lot of people come here knowing they can find someone to talk to,” said Amy, “whether it’s coming home from work or at the end of the night.”
Over the years, Satsko’s has been the site of meetings between people who have ended up falling in love, having sex, even getting married and having babies – “Satsko babies,” as they’re affectionately known. I’ve been to wedding receptions there and I’ve held many parties there, as well as a friend’s wake, which turned into the kind of party she would have loved. I’ve met friends there, interviewed sources there, filmed parts of my documentary film. Along the way, the owners have become members of my extended family. All of which makes me anxious and sad that their business may have to shutter for good. I think this is how a lot of New Yorkers feel about their favorite restaurants, which serve as our second homes. Is there nothing more the government can do?
The passage of a new stimulus bill on Sunday will help but not cure the restaurant industry’s woes. “It was better back in the spring and summer, with PPP,” said Satsko, referring to the federal paycheck protection program, which ended in early August, and has now been revived. “At least that way I could keep our employees paid.” Then the outdoor dining program began (with only about half the city’s restaurants taking part in it), and then indoor dining reopened, only to be shut down again as Covid came roaring back to New York City this winter – despite the fact that only 1.4% of new cases between September and November could be connected to restaurants and bars, compared to 73.8% linked to private gatherings.
“We never want to endanger anyone,” Satsko said, “and we would gladly close temporarily if there was some financial assistance so we could come back. I’m going to try and hang on till the [presidential] inauguration. I just won’t pay the rent or sales tax this month. Something’s got to give.”
Nancy Jo Sales is a writer for Vanity Fair and the author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. This article was updated on 21 December 2020 to reflect that the US Congress has passed a Covid relief package
It feels like we’re swimming upstream. Everyone is just so beat up, it’s hard to keep fighting
Amy Watanabe