Shacks! Rats! Regulations! New York City's outdoor dining scene has been on a wild ride
It was never meant to last: When the pandemic hit, New York City's political leaders rushed to save restaurants, granting an outdoor-dining lifeline via an executive order.
New Yorkers watched as restaurants, previously contained indoors, spilled onto city sidewalks and streets (read: parking spaces). With few restrictions, restaurant owners erected dining sheds for their patrons — adding everything from heat lamps to air conditioners to garlands of flowers, twinkling lights, and roofing — and for the most part, kept their heated igloos and sheds and tables as a year-round offering for the next four years.
At the height of the pandemic, there were estimates of as many as 12,500 outdoor dining structures throughout the five boroughs. And for a while there, parts of New York City resembled places like Paris or Buenos Aires.
The executive order, called Open Restaurants, was extended in 2022 and 2023. By this point, after consecutive years of makeshift dining sheds — of varying sizes, shapes, and stature — many of the city's restaurants were leaning hard into shantytown chic until the laissez faire days screeched to a halt after public complaints of abandoned sheds.
Soon, it (mostly) came crashing down. New Yorkers watched last fall as they were torn down, plank by plank, and the freewheeling al fresco days came to an end. Outdoor dining hasn't vanished completely in the city, nor have the memories of an unexpectedly dramatic era in its ever-evolving food scene.
Diners loved them and came to expect sidewalk (or street) seating while neighbors hated them for reasons ranging from noise at night, to missing parking spots, to rat sightings, to later complaining of abandoned dining sheds that became eyesores.
Former West Village resident and current Brooklynite Bria Schirripa remembers the wild days without much sentimentality. Not only were some dining structures covered in graffiti and abandoned, she recalls one dining structure obstructing traffic, making pedestrian life wonky.
'In one specific instance, the outdoor dining structure at a restaurant blocked the stop sign so drivers couldn't see it, creating a hazard for pedestrians crossing,' Schirripa remembers. 'This was a problem for me on more than one occasion and I would always think of my elderly neighbors and worry.'
In the five years since the first summer NYC officials aimed to save restaurants, it's clear that for many restaurant operators, it was a bumpy ride, with some riding the wave of outdoor seating until they couldn't afford to operate any longer.
Sommelier and restaurateur Yannick Benjamin co-owned and ran Contento, a well-received Peruvian restaurant in Harlem that was devoted to accessibility (Benjamin himself uses a wheelchair) and operated from June 2021 until December 2024.
'Ironically, the pandemic brought an unexpected benefit when the city implemented outdoor dining,' Benjamin says of the early days. 'As a small restaurant with limited indoor seating, the addition of outdoor tables was a game-changer for our bottom line: It allowed us to serve more guests and even expand our team — which had a significant positive economic impact.
'And as a restaurant committed to accessibility, particularly for guests with disabilities, we welcomed many individuals with compromised immune systems who continued to dine outdoors long after indoor restrictions were lifted. Outdoor dining enabled us to serve this vulnerable population safely and comfortably.'
Benjamin, who's also the founder of Wine on Wheels and the co-founder of Beaupierre Wines & Spirits in NYC, says overall, the looser restrictions had a profoundly positive effect on both his operations and the community they served in the early days of the pandemic.
Until it came to an end.
To be sure, outdoor dining venues in NYC have not gone away and there are still more outdoor seats than pre-pandemic. But those that remain have faced a bureaucratic scramble to get their facilities up to code, taking down old dining structures, getting a prized permit and rebuilding to the city's specifications. This means using easily moved modular seating and adhering to a limited season: April 1 through November 20.
In March 2020, there were 1,224 active sidewalk cafe licenses, the majority of which were in Manhattan, according to the city council. As of March 31, 2025, there were just over 2,400 permitted outdoor dining setups, according to NYC's Department of Transportation, about 1,800 sidewalk seats and 600 roadway seats. In total, 2,600 establishments are approved to operate on city streets or sidewalks.
'The nation's largest permanent outdoor dining program — already over twice the size of our legacy program — will bring renewed life to our streetscape with safer, cleaner setups citywide. We look forward to the program's growth in each successive year,' said Jeff Roth, deputy mayor for operations, this spring.
For restaurateur Yannick Benjamin, the new rules made it difficult to continue operating Contento.
'Unfortunately, once the city designated outdoor dining as seasonal [in 2024], it became financially unfeasible for a small business like ours to dismantle the patio in the fall and rebuild it in the spring,' Benjamin says.
'The cost and logistics were simply unsustainable given our modest margins. While outdoor dining may have started as a pandemic protocol, it quickly became an essential feature for many of our guests — especially those with health concerns. Contento built a reputation for inclusivity, attracting a beautifully diverse clientele, and for many, outdoor seating wasn't just a preference — it was the only safe option for gathering and dining.'
Benjamin stresses that it would be inaccurate to say that New York City's updated outdoor dining regulations were the sole reason for Contento's closure — but he says they were certainly a contributing factor.
'We had every intention of pushing through to April 2025, knowing our outdoor space would thrive again in warmer months. However, the costs and challenges associated with dismantling and rebuilding the patio made that plan unrealistic. It was simply beyond our control,' he says.
Of course, not all restaurants are drawn to the outdoors. Down in Lower Manhattan, Rahul Saito, a co-owner of two restaurants in Tribeca, admitted that maintaining the quality of hospitality his team perfected doesn't always translate when outside.
His Michelin-starred L'Abeille serves Japanese-influenced French cuisine and next door, L'abeille à Côté offers a more relaxed yet refined experience — but neither would be considered casual dining.
'We've struggled with balancing the additional staff required for outdoor dining, and maintaining service quality for the indoor dining room is difficult,' Saito says. 'You'll probably notice that fewer fine-dining restaurants offer outdoor dining for that reason — unless it is a permanent part of their operation.
'Our style of cuisine isn't really suited for outdoor service, given the high-end touch we provide. While we tried to offer a slimmed-down menu of more casual items (like oysters and Champagne or lobster croquettes), ultimately the neighborhood demand for those items didn't match the increased expenses and operational complexity of outdoor dining required.'
Keith Durst is the founder of Friend of Chef, a consulting firm that works at the intersection of hospitality and real estate in New York City, placing restaurants in prime locations. Durst says outdoor dining lends value in a myriad of ways and in many cases, has become a non-negotiable in leasing commercial real estate because it's now such a significant piece of brand development.
'[Outdoor dining] isn't just the added revenue you get — you also get this incredible advertisement or billboard for your business in the community,' Durst says. 'It's also a brand differentiation; it's a great opportunity at an incredibly low cost.
'You need to think it through before you sign a lease now — whether the space you want has an opportunity for outdoor dining—because New Yorkers have gotten accustomed to dining outside and want to be outside, specifically in certain neighborhoods.'
However, Durst points out that even with a prime location — and assuming you can get past a neighborhood's community board and permitting isn't a problem — there are still ways businesses can be affected, and notes that sometimes there are elements out of restaurateur's control.
He mentions Chef Wylie Dufresne's Stretch Pizza on Park Avenue South — a restaurant that went from having a full outdoor seating campaign to having no outdoor seating because the city is doing work on the street, a major outdoor construction project that will last all year.
Still, most chefs felt the need to keep a presence outdoors out of necessity. Chef Alex Stupak owns and operates a handful of esteemed Manhattan restaurants: Empellón (in Midtown, the East Village, and the West Village) and The Otter in Soho, and says that pre-pandemic, outdoor dining was very rare and coveted, and has since become an essential.
Diners now demand it, he says. In the West Village, Stupak's team built expensive structures for Empellón that they barely had money for because, he says, 'if you're not outside, you're nothing' and points out that on a beautiful day, particularly in the West Village, people are looking for outdoor seats first and a specific cuisine second.
'It was veritably impossible to offer outdoor seating in New York City before Covid — it was very rare and difficult to get [a permit for],' Stupak recalls. 'Then it became vital because no one was allowed to sit inside.
'But what really changed is because outdoor seating is more common and more ubiquitous, you're screwed if you don't have it. [Now], it's not about [the cuisine]: it's about sitting outside and sipping rosè — and if you don't have outdoor dining, the clientele will go elsewhere. They're not shopping for restaurants, they're shopping for outdoor seating.'
With such demand from diners, restaurant owners have had no choice but to roll with the outdoor dining changes over the past five years, and budget-permitting, build only to tear down and rebuild.
Angie Rito, chef and co-owner of Don Angie and San Sabino in the West Village, also experienced highs and lows — from building outdoor structures that she says cost upwards of $75,000, only to take them down and start all over again, reconstructing to the city's new rules. Nonetheless, Rito is looking ahead to the summer and keeping her eyes on the added-value outdoor dining provides her patrons.
'At Don Angie, we had a more robust pandemic-era outdoor structure and this summer will mark a new chapter for us with a simpler, more traditional outdoor footprint,' Rito admits.
'Overall, the fact that the city has taken the time to figure out how to make outdoor dining work post-pandemic has been a really positive, dynamic value-add for our restaurants—both of which are small to begin with — giving more diners the chance to experience us and simultaneously enjoy the warmer season.'
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