September 30, 2007
Why would New Yorkers want to eat outside?
New York City - Outdoor Cafes - Restaurants - Dining - Food - New York TimesTheory 1: It lets them pretend they’re in Europe. While many Americans outside New York get excited about “freedom fries” and dismiss Europeans as too-thin scolds with too-small cars, New Yorkers envy their fuel efficiency, their monuments, their cheese, their eyewear.
And their cafes. Never mind that eating outside in Rome means a Bernini statue and a Baroque church while eating outside in uptown Manhattan means an unobstructed panorama of Bed, Bath & Beyond. New Yorkers are fantastic at make-believe, which leads me to ...
Theory 2: New Yorkers have a highly evolved, unrivaled knack for glossing over the limitations, absurdities and dubious habitability of an unforgiving metropolis.
They walk into a friend’s 545-square-foot two-bedroom (one bath, no tub) and stammer: “Just $4,965 a month for this?” They walk into the Spotted Pig at 5:55 p.m. on a Tuesday night and exult: “Only a 90-minute wait?”
And they sit in a sidewalk cafe — sirens blaring, vagrants swearing and jackhammers jittering all around them — and sigh: “It’s so relaxing to soak up the street life.”
Theory 3: If something is in limited supply, New Yorkers want it, period.
Most restaurants don’t have sidewalk cafes. If they do, there are fewer seats outdoors than indoors. So these seats take on an exclusive aura, and once all of them are occupied, they become more exclusive still. In New York, the only thing better than something there’s not enough of is something there’s absolutely none of.
At the restaurant L’Impero on a recent night, most of the precious few tables in front of the entrance were taken. Most of the dozens of tables inside weren’t. When I turned down the hostess’s offer of one of the remaining perches outside, she just about went pale with shock. I explained that while I was fond of fresh air, what I was really gaga about was air-conditioning.
All good theories.
Posted by TY at September 30, 2007 2:17 PM
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