Outdoor tables saved thousands of New York City restaurants from ruin when they were forced to close their dining rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. But four years into an experiment that — briefly giving it a sidewalk cafe scene as vibrant as Paris or Buenos Aires — the freewheeling era of outdoor dining has come to an end. Over the weekend, restaurants hit a deadline to choose between abiding by a strict set of regulations for their alfresco setups or dismantling them entirely — and thousands chose to tear down the plywood dining structures that sprouted on roadways in the pandemic's early days.
Fewer than 3,000 restaurants have applied for roadway or sidewalk seats under the new system, a fraction of the 13,000 establishments that participated in the temporary Open Restaurants program since 2020, according to city data. Mayor Eric Adams said the new guidelines address complaints that the sheds had become magnets for rats and disorder, while creating a straightforward application process that will expand access to permanent outdoor dining. But many restaurant owners say the rules will have the opposite effect, dooming a vestige of the pandemic that gave them unusual freedom to turn parking spaces into rent-free extensions of their dining rooms with minimal red-tape.
“They’ve found a middle ground to do one thing while saying another thing,” said Patrick Cournot, the co-founder of Ruffian, a Manhattan wine bar. “They’ve managed us out, essentially.” Ramsha.