Queens restaurants brace for snowy setback

Austin Street restaurants created elaborate outdoor dining areas, but will have to close due to a coming blizzard. Eagle photo by Rachel Vick

By Rachel Vick

Outside Mojo in Forest Hills, an elaborate dining enclosure complete with heating lamps and wooden dividers stretches for almost half a block along Austin Street. 

The restaurant updated their sidewalk patio as the weather got colder and it became apparent that indoor capacity restrictions weren’t going away anytime soon. But now general manager Alex Marquetti and his staff face a new challenge: winter weather.

A blizzard is expected to blow 50 mph gusts of wind while dumping up to a foot of snow on New York City. The forecast spurred Mayor Bill de Blasio to suspend outdoor dining to make way for plows.

“It’s hard when you invest money in hopes that it'll bring in extra revenue and then there’s a new change or modification,” Marquetti said. “It’s been a struggle but everyone is in the same boat.”

The city has instructed restaurants like Mojo to remove heaters and outdoor coverings with wind gusts expected to reach 50 mph on Wednesday and Thursday. For now, restaurants can leave the rest of their outdoor dining structures largely in place. 

Marquetti said he worries one-size-fits-all directives will force him to disassemble his well crafted curbside patio.

“Look at it. It’s pretty substantial and if they want us to remove it it’s going to be pretty much impossible,” Marquetti said. “Because of all the money we put into doing the outdoors, for us to remove it is more expensive and put it back in such a short period of time would be a problem.”

He said the structure held steady during hurricane season winds and should do so again this week.
De Blasio said Monday that the city is willing to “work around” outdoor dining set ups like Mojo’s in case of heavy snow.

“What we're saying to the outdoor restaurants is bring in everything you can bring in to protect all your equipment, also to make it easier for the snowplows,” he told NY1. “But we know some of these restaurant structures are built in a way that's really hard to take apart and that's okay. We'll work around them to the best of our ability.”

Other restaurateurs say they are less worried about their structures holding up in bad weather than they are about their customer base.

Indoor dining is on hold for the foreseeable future, and snow-suspended outdoor dining will force eateries to rely on delivery and pick-up, just like the darkest days of the pandemic in March and April.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Alex Cici, the manager of Reef in Forest Hills. “Our structure will hold, but for the winter it’s nothing.”