Cuomo Says People to Head to NJ for Indoor Dining, Leaving NYC with “Disadvantage”

By:  Hellen Zaboulani

On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio both agreed that restaurants will still not be reopened for indoor dining.  By contrast, in New Jersey indoor dining will open on Friday with reduced-capacity seating.  The governor admitted that the discrepancy may lead hungry New Yorkers to head to NJ for meals, leaving NYC restaurants with a “competitive disadvantage”.

“I understand that people can go through the tunnel, go over the George Washington Bridge and go to a restaurant in New Jersey, where they can’t do that in New York City,” Gov. Cuomo said during a virtual news conference from Albany.  Still, he maintained that it would not be worth the risk of a second wave of the novel Coronavirus, especially with the flu season approaching.  “I want as much economic activity as possible. We also want to make sure the infection rate stays under control. That is the tension,” he said.

NYC, which was named the COVID-19 epicenter in March, now has roughly1,300 out of its 25,000 restaurants and bars permanently shut down, according to city Comptroller Scott Stringer.  As reported by the NY Post, officials have said that 160,000 out of 300,000 eatery workers remain unemployed.

Restaurants in surrounding Westchester, Long Island and upstate have been opened as of June for indoor dining at 50 percent capacity.  Cuomo’s budget director, Rob Mujica, said there was “no specific metric” on what needed to happen before the city could reopen the doors for its eateries.

As per the Post, Mayor de Blasio said last week that nothing would change until there’s some “huge step forward” in curtailing the virus, possibly in the form of “a vaccine in the spring that will allow us to get more back to normal.”  “Is there a way where we can do something safely with indoor dining? So far, we have not had that moment, honestly,” Mayor de Blasio said.

The news is not very encouraging to the scores of restaurants that need to pay rent and expenses and have been opened just to serve a few outdoor tables.  “It would be unbelievable to wait for a vaccine,” said Raymond Lau, manager of the Dim Sum Palace in Manhattan.  “With winter coming, it’s so hard to dine outdoors.  Right now, we are surviving, but if they are going to defer the indoor dining, we can survive only three or four months,” said Lau.