Dining in post-coronavirus NYC will include gloves, masks and lots of space

A mask with your martini, and a side of surgical gloves with your filet mignon.

The city’s bar and restaurant scene will be transformed when it reopens after the coronavirus pandemic with rules about wearing gloves, donning face coverings, limiting capacity and focusing on outdoor service, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.

“When you think about what we were used to just a few months ago with restaurants and bars and everyone super close together and it’s part of the energy that we love about this city, that’s not happening right away to say the least,” de Blasio cautioned during his daily coronavirus briefing at City Hall.

“Restaurants, bars and nightclubs combine lots of people and usually in very limited space so there’s a lot of good ideas around the world now about how you could bring them back properly,” the mayor said.

“I can’t give you the exact timing, we’re not there yet,” de Blasio said, before offering a preview of what the post-COIVD dining scene could look like.

De Blasio listed “inevitable restrictions” including limiting the number of people allowed inside establishments as well as requirements about “face coverings” and “gloves.”

“Outdoors is an interesting and promising possibility to rely on more of the service being outdoors, we still need precautions, but that’s an interesting option were looking at,” the mayor said.

A Dutch restaurant, at arts center Mediamatic Biotoop, is seating its diners outdoors inside individual greenhouses.

“Don’t expect any time soon the kind of crowded bar and restaurant we knew before,” he added.