Enjoy these 5 NYC outdoor dining setups before they change this fall

At some point, it seems, everyone in New York City passes through the intersection of Prince and Mott streets. There’s the Little Cupcake Bakeshop, Everlane and the tourists clogging the sidewalk outside Prince Street Pizza.

And then there’s Cafe Gitane.

Since the pandemic, the sidewalk in front of Cafe Gitane has drawn even larger crowds after the Nolita institution more than tripled its number of outdoor tables, thanks to the city's relaxed rules around outdoor dining during the pandemic.

“It’s iconic, everyone knows the striped awning and the blue tables outside,” said hostess Maria Majoli. “We allow people to sit and chill, we don’t pester the customers to turn the tables like a lot of places do.”

“Even the small tables, people will say, ‘Oh, we’ll be a group of four,’ and then another friend comes, and then another friend comes, and then it’s 10 people around the tiny table,” Majoli said. “Every day it’s like our own little block party.”

Now the party’s over.

In a preview of changes that threaten to drain the energy from New York’s street life this fall, Cafe Gitane had to remove 70% of its outdoor tables last month, according to manager Isobel Brown. She said the change occurred not because of the city’s new outdoor dining rules but after the city enforced accessibility rules about maintaining 8 feet of sidewalk space.

On Aug. 3, many outdoor dining setups across the city may begin to go the way of Cafe Gitane’s. Restaurants must dismantle their street sheds by that deadline if they’ve decided not to apply for the city’s new program .

Fans of the current program credit it with helping restaurants survive and thrive during and after the pandemic-era lockdowns. Critics say the sheds attract rats, reduce parking, and allow restaurants and diners to unfairly dominate the city’s sidewalks with little oversight.

Some restaurant owners have said those regulations, which require restaurants to store their sheds during the winter months and ensure that sheds follow specific design rules, are too expensive and onerous to follow.

Many restaurants that apply for the new program will have to shrink their seating capacity or adjust their setups throughout the fall before taking their sheds down from December through the end of March.

The scene outside Cafe Gitane has quieted since the restaurant reduced its seating. With revenue more than halved, the restaurant has had to cut positions, reduce staff hours and let people go, Brown said.

“It looks like a death,” she said. “What we keep saying here is, 'It feels like going back to winter.'”

As fall and winter’s outdoor dining changes approach, we’re highlighting five well-loved outdoor dining setups to enjoy before they have to change.

CakeBurgers, East Harlem

CakeBurgers is an unusual sight on its stretch of East 120th Street, just off First Avenue: a retro 1950s-style dinette serving burgers, shakes and sweets out of a tiny storefront with just a few stools inside the brightly lit and kitschy interior.

The restaurant opened months before the pandemic lockdowns, when it was able to survive by expanding to roughly eight seats in the roadway and nine on the sidewalk and stoop, according to owner Evette Zayas.

“This new rule is gonna kill me,” Zayas said. She said she’s struggled to understand the convoluted requirements and regulations in the city’s new program and believes her setup will have to shrink considerably. She can’t tell which seats she’ll be able to keep or not, how much a new setup will cost, and whether or not she’ll be able to afford it.

“It makes me want to cry that I put six years into building this business and the city doesn’t seem to care,” said Zayas.

Chez Oskar, Bedford-Stuyvesant

Chez Oskar, on Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant, more than doubled its seating capacity when it expanded into the roadway and sidewalk during the pandemic. Its funky outdoor setup, with gnarled tree branches framing an arched canopy on the lengthy sidewalk shed, turned the block from a quiet commercial corridor into a lively destination.

“If I can’t get approved and I can’t get a decent dining setup, I might as well just close my doors,” said owner Charlotta Janssen.

She’s applied for the new dining program and expects to lose about a quarter of her outdoor seats if approved, along with the creative design that made her setup known throughout the neighborhood.

“They should allow people to make art of this, and we’d have such a beautiful city,” Janssen said.

The Commodore, Williamsburg

The Commodore opened in Williamsburg in 2010, and its backyard deck quickly became a go-to for outdoor seating in the fast-changing neighborhood. During the pandemic, that seating expanded to the front of the restaurant, with more than 40 seats spread across the sidewalk and roadside space.

The Commodore's owners are applying for the city’s new outdoor dining program, but given what they know of the new rules and constraints, they said they expect to be down to a third of their current capacity and called the changes “a huge hurdle for businesses.”

Mama Fox, Bedford-Stuyvesant

Samantha DiStefano has been running restaurants in the New York City area for nearly 30 years. The owner of Mama Fox in Bed-Stuy is grateful that the city’s new rules will allow for sidewalk seating — something that was prohibited before the pandemic due to landmark zoning.

But the cost of building, dismantling and storing new roadway setups, which she called a non-starter, tempered her gratitude. DiStefano has decided not to apply for the new program and will have to lose the roadside seating that she said has become her restaurant’s most popular area. The sidewalk seating will remain.

She has plans for her outdoor dining area come Aug. 3.

“I’ll just be trashing my roadside structure,” she said.

Pisticci, Morningside Heights

The Italian restaurant Pisticci immediately transformed the character of its short, quiet block in Morningside Heights when it constructed an elegant wooden roadway deck during the pandemic. The block quickly became an “Open Street” that hosted jazz bands and kids’ activities in the evenings.

The restaurant is applying to the new program and expects its outdoor setup will only shrink by about 10%, according to general manager Chris Yamamoto. More unnerving are the changes to the design of its roadway setup, which have become immediately recognizable as a destination, with al fresco diners stretched down the gently sloping block throughout the warm months.

Under the new rules, Pisticci must adjust its roadside setup, remove the decks that it built on the sidewalk and cut 25% of its new sidewalk setup's seats.