Up until today (when they were all closed) every restaurant near my house had a crowd of people eating outside in temperatures of around 8 degrees C. That’s not at all normal; they’d normally have abandoned outdoor seating by now. It’s a consequence of COVID regulations.
Seems pretty crazy! I’m from the northeast and I can’t imagine people doing outdoor dining through the winter! Half the point of restaurant dining is the comfortable no-stress environment. Why would people go when they will be shivering outside under a little heater?
Indoor restaurants aren’t allowed at the moment, so if people want to go out... I can’t see it continuing all the way through the winter, though; while it doesn’t get very cold here (minimum of about 0 C usually) it does get very windy.
And all restaurants, even outdoors, are banned for the next six weeks, anyway.
Yeah, my wife and I have been eating outside (in Ireland) since restaurants re-opened.
To be fair, we used to be smokers, so were used to this before. Around September, everyone else stopped eating outside, and the staff often looked at us funny when we continued.
