Is there anything more extraordinary than dining in New York City? Whether
you’re sitting down for the Michelin star experience of a lifetime at Le
Bernardin or squeezing in at the counter of Vanessa’s Dumpling House on the
Lower East Side ($1 a pop), the New York restaurant combines atmosphere with
quality food in a way that few other cities around the world can match.
Every cuisine is on offer, 24 hours a day: and if you’re willing to do a
little research beforehand, you can all but guarantee yourself a meal worth
every penny. Under normal circumstances, cuisine competition between London and
New York isn’t really a contest at all. Of course, London has its staples. And
options have dramatically expanded in recent years; but from old classics —
like the American Bar nestled in the Savoy Hotel — to new barbeque joints (like
SMOKESTAK, out east past Shoreditch), many of its dining highlights have been inspired
by — or lifted from — New York.
But if the Big Smoke’s restaurants have vastly improved in recent decades,
they’ve still got nothing on the Big Apple’s — or, at least, they didn’t. Until
Covid-19 came along.
Every major city saw its restaurant industry collapse during the pandemic.
Dining out, particularly indoors, was, in both London and New York, one of the
last things to return. While neither city’s dining scene has recovered fully,
London’s comeback has been far quicker.
According to data
from OpenTable leading up to the end of March, restaurant reservations in
London sat 13 per cent below their pre-pandemic levels. In New York,
reservations are nearly 40 per cent below the 2019 baseline.
Just as it’s impossible to ignore how full and bustling London’s hospitality
scene feels once again, it’s impossible not to notice how much quieter New York
feels. The Omicron surge didn’t help things: New York City dwellers rushed
out of the city in droves, dropping the city’s number of seated diners down to
70 per cent below pre-pandemic levels.
But even on a visit in mid-February, the buzz (and the people) were still
missing. From bistros around Grand Central Station to dimly-lit French
restaurants in Brooklyn, the tables were empty and the ambiance slightly eerie.
It’s a strange feeling, to miss the strangers that used to be crammed into
tables and booths next to you. But their absence is acutely felt. Compare this
to London, where people are back to spilling out of the pub into the streets.
Where tables are sparse, it’s not due to lack of customer demand, but a lack
of staff. The labour crunch is a shared problem in both cities, created by the
shutdown of economies and the outflow of service industry workers that has put
further strain on the hospitality sector. For customers, this means longer
wait times and slower service, but for restaurant owners, it means finding
the extra cash for wage boosts to entice workers back: in New York especially,
these costs threaten to make or break establishments. According to Eater New
York, an online dining guide for the city, some 1,000 restaurants have already
folded in New York since the pandemic first hit, with estimates that the
unofficial figure will run far higher.
The staggering difference between London’s bounce-back and New York’s
freefall can, in part, be explained by how the respective governments responded
to the plight of hospitality at the height of the pandemic. Neither New York
State or the federal government offered anything like Britain’s furlough
scheme, which allowed restaurants in the UK to hibernate their employees and
spring back as soon as restrictions were lifted.
But perhaps the biggest difference wasn’t what either city’s officials did
at the start of the crisis, but the decisions that came after.
When vaccine passports were being debated last summer in Britain, groups
like UK Hospitality came out against them, citing not just the bureaucratic
hurdles restaurant owners would need to jump — like implementing checks at the
door — but how vaccine certification might usher in a change in consumer behaviour,
turning people off the restaurant scene altogether.
In London, the debate was won, and vaccine passports were never brought in
for dining. But New York became the case study of what happens when you do
introduce them — and how badly wrong it can go.
Proof of vaccination for dining inside was brought in last summer and
became more onerous as months went on. By Christmas this year, all children
over the age of five needed at least one Covid vaccine dose to be allowed
inside at a restaurant. Fines were threatened if restaurants didn’t comply, so
checks were taken seriously. Not thinking twice about it, I brought my proof of
vaccine along to a downtown restaurant right before New Year’s, but was asked
to show a photo ID as well as my certificate. Having left it back at the hotel,
I managed to get away with it — just — by matching my credit card details to my
proof of vaccination.
After a string of lawsuit threats and restaurant closures, Mayor Eric Adams
scrapped New York’s scheme at the beginning of March, a great relief to the
thousands of restaurants just trying to survive. With the Omicron wave having
settled, and onerous restrictions lifting, its residents are hoping the
city can enjoy a new lease on life. ‘My Covid-worried friends made a reservation
for us to sit inside our favourite Italian joint,’ one New Yorker tells me. ‘It’ll
be the first time in over two years.’
When I last wandered around the city I tried to stop by one of my favourite
spots, Bar Sardine, in the West Village: not much on the outside, but some of
the best cocktails and tostadas around. To my horror, but not surprise, it had
closed. One of the many restaurant casualties of the past few years.
Still, I’m not ready to hand the food title over to London just yet. As
restrictions lift, and life finally returns to normal, the best parts of New
York City are bound to return. And they must: it’s the city that never sleeps,
not the city that doesn’t eat.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2022 World
edition.
