For restaurants in the Portland area, the past few months feel like the light at the end of a very long tunnel. In February, the scrappy COVID-19 cases forced government Kate Brown to reopen the dining rooms for the first time in three months. In March, Portland restaurants were allowed to further increase indoor capacity. And April has a sunny look at the summer ahead – the patio season is almost here.
Some of those gains will be reversed on Friday, when two of Oregon’s three largest counties – Multnomah and Clackamas – will return to the high-risk category, which will again limit restaurants to 25% inside, government Kate Brown announced Tuesday. A total of six counties representing three-fifths of Oregon’s population enter the higher risk category on Friday (Deschutes, Klamath, Linn and Tillamook are the others).
For restaurants with smaller dining rooms and those who stick to the takeaway service, the new restrictions will not have much impact. Indoor meals will still be allowed, although less so. Table size remains fixed at six people per party max. Businesses still have to close at 23:00
But for others, including the old North Portland Italian restaurant Amalfi’s, the turnaround is an important step backwards for an industry still suffering from a year of waterfall crises.
“It’s a gut,” Amalfi owner Kiauna Floyd said by telephone on Wednesday. “It hurts. We are currently constructing to build an outdoor space that is not complete, so we can not benefit from it. It is devastating for an already devastated industry.”
Floyd estimates that her restaurant will lose between six and eight tables on Friday, each of which would be filled several times each time. Last summer, the restaurant may have moved guests to the patio built on its large parking lot at Fremont St 4703 NE. The surface repairs aimed at filling potholes and ironing out bumps are not expected to turn until May.
For Floyd, the back-and-forth yo-yoing of her business was ‘devastating’ after a year of figuring out how to run a business safely during a pandemic.
“I fully realize that in addition to running and running a restaurant, there is no more impossible position to have in this situation,” Floyd said. ‘But from an equity standpoint, it’s frustrating as a business owner to know we can travel. We can get on a plane and go to another state. We can gather in households without wearing masks. And yet it is the restaurants and bars that are being punished. ”
Campana, also in Northeast Portland, is one of the restaurants not expecting much of the change on Friday. Even when Multnomah County switched to the moderate-risk category in March, George Kaden and Annalisa Maceda’s year-old restaurant did not have enough space to expand indoors, while still keeping tables at least six feet apart.
“We never went up when they increased capacity,” Maceda said. “There was just no way to see our layout.”
Campana, a new Italian restaurant that started as a pop-up at Grand Army Tavern, replaces the bar Northeast in Portland from Friday.Thanks to Campana
The restaurant, which replaced the couple’s Grand Army Tavern at 901 NE Oneonta Street, is currently focused on helping the rest of the staff access the vaccine, and they can prepare for the patio season. Monday was the first day that restaurant workers and other front-line officials were officially eligible in Oregon. But even here, the restaurant takes things slow, preferring not to renew its seating permit on the street.
“We did it last year, but we’re going to sit on the sidewalk with our regular chair for now,” Maceda said. ‘Because it’s not just about increasing capacity. It’s about doing it in a safe way, so we do not have to hire a bunch of people to fire us within four weeks. ”
David Kreifels just got used to inviting in-house diners at Laurelhurst Market, the steakhouse he built at 3155 E. Burnside St. with Jason Owens and Ben Dyer opened in 2009. And on March 17, an employee tested positive for COVID-19.
Kreifels and his partners consulted various agencies to find out the best way of action, and finally closed the restaurant for two weeks and announced the exposure on Instagram. When the restaurant reopened on March 31, it helped with the pick-up service through its own butcher shop.
“The underlying message for me is just to keep everyone safe,” Kreifels said. “It’s such a downer. We did so well, and then it happened, and it was a kind of eye opening. And that’s why we’re not opening indoors right now. ”
Kreifels does not provide immediate return to indoor eateries, although he would be open to the possibility that COVID-19 cases would drop or spring temperatures would rise to the point that he could open my doors and windows without freezing my customers. ‘
Outdoors has returned to the large deck of the restaurant, which was built during the first few months of the pandemic and opened this past summer.
“I feel bad for people who do not have it,” Kreifels said. “Without a parking lot to build that deck, we would be in a whole different ball game.”