Paula Simons: Here's a toast to setting our sidewalk cafes free
Raise a toast! Charge your glasses!
This week, we drink to the decision to liberate our summer decks from the surly bonds of Prohibition. Finance Minister
Joe Ceci announced Sunday that Alberta’s arcane rules governing the consumption of alcohol on outdoor patios have been relaxed.
Until this week, no restaurant or bar could operate a sidewalk cafe unless it was enclosed in a one-metre-high fence or barricade. No one could just enter a patio and sit down. You could only access them by walking inside a restaurant first, then back out again.
Restaurant and bar owners will no longer have to go to the expense of building and fencing a patio. Instead, owners will be able to mark out a patio space with dividers such as planters or ropes and stanchions. And licensed patios won’t have to be physically connected to the interior of restaurants.
You’ll be able — gasp — to step right from the street onto the patio!
Even more radical? Servers bringing you your beer or sangria can now step right out the front door of the restaurant, on the public sidewalk, to hand you your libation.
Civilization will not crumble. It might actually get a little bit more urbane.
Matt Phillips is the co-owner of Northern Chicken, which opened last fall on 124 Street, and doesn’t have a patio —yet. But Phillips hopes to take advantage of the new rules to open a 12-seat outdoor dining area this summer, using planters and ropes to mark the licensed area.
“It’s just wonderful news for us and for the industry,” he says. “124th Street is just a beautiful place. Blocking it off with metre-high walls would have been a shame.”
