NaBloPoMo 2020 The Restaurant Landgrab

 I don't have anything against it. These restaurants need to bank bigly for the long cold winter ahead. As for us, indoor dining in New York City during a pandemic feels like an excellent way to get breathed on with 'rona breath. Restaurants in NYC are not exactly known for their spaciousness. Or their ventilation. 

And so, we will be staying in when it's too cold to eat outside. Unless I figure out how to swath myself in electric blankets or stick hand warmers in my pants or something.

At first, over the summer when the outdoor dining started, each restaurant had maybe one or two tables out front their place on the sidewalk. After a couple weeks, the more entrepreneurial of the bunch started looking left and right. They noticed that the theater next to them was closed and maybe the Chelsea Man Spa too, on the other side. 

So each day I'd walk by and there'd be another table on the sidewalk, a little bit further away from the restaurant front door. Until some places had a really long row of tables that, best case, snaked around the corner. Waiters started getting serious exercise. In a lot of cases, the tables from one restaurant would meet tables from another restaurant in a wild west showdown three door down from either of their respective places of business.

And then the structures started popping up on the street. The structures became more and more elaborate.

Here's a place we eat at a lot because we can see what's going on from our apartment window. That's an unexpected advantage to outdoor dining. It sure is nice to be able to spot a free table so when we leave the house, we know there's no wait. 

They put up this lovely alfresco structure on 16th street. Heaters and everything:

Heaters & twinkly lights

A sign on the street? No problem for these builders:

No, you can't park here Tuesdays or Thursdays before 10am.
(That's what the sign says that's popping thru the roof)

Here's a place off of 9th Avenue that we ate at this evening. The decor includes a mail box. Also, there's foot traffic and it's pretty quiet so you can easily spy on people's phone conversations when they walk by. Tonight, we heard one of the finest vocal fry's I have ever heard in my entire life. This millennial said "Yeahhhh," and the word was 30-seconds long with a trailing fry that could have won awards. So there's ambiance is what I'm saying:

We walk by this joint a lot. They have a huge operation spanning a corner. Alas, we don't go there anymore. This is the place where Tom's credit card got stolen and someone tried to buy a ham sandwich in the deli with it at four in the morning:

A lot of seating at this joint.

Patis has quite a spread:

Pastis in the MeatPacking