Here's a little note to restaurant owners in American cities:
It's probably not a very good idea to try to do the whole "sidewalk cafe" thing. Sidewalks in this city are only about six feet wide to start with, and if you're going to string up red velvet theater rope, the only tables you're going to be able to fit are two-tops. Your servers will now be balancing trays of food in the middle of outdoor urban foot traffic.
All over downtown, restaurant after restaurant has dragged a handful of cramped tables out onto the broken, birdshit-splattered sidewalks and attempted to serve customers at them, as if their tiny corner of the world opened out onto the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. This doesn't look like a whole lot of fun for the diners, who get to enjoy their overpriced meals wedged between a brick wall and the general public with less than a foot of clearance on each side. Still, it adds four or five paying tables to a restaurant in an area where every square foot of retail space counts.
A lot of restaurants do have outdoor dining - but they do it on private property, on terraces or patios or rooftop decks. Italian restaurants seem to love to put their diners on display out front - every Italian restaurant on Main Street has a row of two-tops surrounding it.
This rant's been brewing for a while, since I've been picking my way through tables to get to work for some time now, but it sort of came to a head earlier today when I needed to get something out of my car - and quickly. I was hustling off down the street when I found myself face to face with a waitress in full uniform carrying a tray of spaghetti dinners, and we did that little "you go this way no you go that way" dance on the two feet of sidewalk available to us between the curb and the diners, all of whom were looking suspiciously up at us as if half-expecting to be rinsing spaghetti sauce out of their clothing later tonight.
And if I could put on my snob hat for a minute, it does seem a bit declasse to spend a hundred bucks on a night out and be forced to eat on the porch with the pigeons because the front of the house is full. I'd rather wait for a table with a roof on.
Love, Who?
It's probably not a very good idea to try to do the whole "sidewalk cafe" thing. Sidewalks in this city are only about six feet wide to start with, and if you're going to string up red velvet theater rope, the only tables you're going to be able to fit are two-tops. Your servers will now be balancing trays of food in the middle of outdoor urban foot traffic.
All over downtown, restaurant after restaurant has dragged a handful of cramped tables out onto the broken, birdshit-splattered sidewalks and attempted to serve customers at them, as if their tiny corner of the world opened out onto the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. This doesn't look like a whole lot of fun for the diners, who get to enjoy their overpriced meals wedged between a brick wall and the general public with less than a foot of clearance on each side. Still, it adds four or five paying tables to a restaurant in an area where every square foot of retail space counts.
A lot of restaurants do have outdoor dining - but they do it on private property, on terraces or patios or rooftop decks. Italian restaurants seem to love to put their diners on display out front - every Italian restaurant on Main Street has a row of two-tops surrounding it.
This rant's been brewing for a while, since I've been picking my way through tables to get to work for some time now, but it sort of came to a head earlier today when I needed to get something out of my car - and quickly. I was hustling off down the street when I found myself face to face with a waitress in full uniform carrying a tray of spaghetti dinners, and we did that little "you go this way no you go that way" dance on the two feet of sidewalk available to us between the curb and the diners, all of whom were looking suspiciously up at us as if half-expecting to be rinsing spaghetti sauce out of their clothing later tonight.
And if I could put on my snob hat for a minute, it does seem a bit declasse to spend a hundred bucks on a night out and be forced to eat on the porch with the pigeons because the front of the house is full. I'd rather wait for a table with a roof on.
Love, Who?
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