Restaurant-Goers May See Fewer Outdoor Dining Seats this Summer

One of the benefits of warmer weather is the chance to eat al fresco. But some local diners may be in for a surprise when they ask for a table outside at their favorite Katonah restaurant.

Fewer seats.

Though it's up to the town of Bedford whether a restaurant may have outdoor seats at all, the Westchester County Department of Health regulates the number of seats local restaurants are allowed to have based on the septic capacity of each restaurant site.

And though the county’s restaurant permits have always specified the number of seats each establishment may have, it wasn't clear to some local business owners that the number included indoor and outdoor seating.

To clarify the rules, in the past year, the DOH has added the words “indoor/outdoor’’ to each permit, to indicate that the seating capacity covers both types of seating. And that came as a surpise to some local business owners.

"My restaurant's total capacity is 49 seats for both inside and outside, but last summer, I sat over 24 customers outside—over half my restaurant's capacity," said Mike Simos, owner of the .

Last weekend's warm weather gave Simos the first occasion this year to manage the smaller numbers and he set up three tables with two seats each.

He brought chairs from inside the restaurant to the restaurant's outdoor patio if more than two people wanted to sit at an outside table—leaving some customers wondering why there weren't enough seats indoors—essentially playing musical chairs to work within the rules.

Those rules aren't new, said Caren Halbfinger, county director of public health, information and communication.

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"The health department has a long-standing policy of regulating the number of seats in restaurants with septic systems to protect the quality of drinking water for all Westchester residents," she said.

So why the clarification of an old policy?

According to Halbfinger, during an inspection last July, the health department observed that —now closed—had seating for 25 instead of the 16 allowed due to the limitations of its septic system. The permit violation led to several reinspections and two citations for exceeding its seating capacity. The extra seating was still present until December, when the hearing process was well underway. Perks was fined $800 in January.

When the new Tazza Café there will be 16 seats, according to owner James Monica. Though he didn't specify how many would be outside, it will likely be fewer than what locals are used to at that location.

Antonio Abbate, owner of the which has always had a handful of tables outside, said the rules seemed more "severe."

"I'm not as affected as the places with large patios, but we have to spread out the diners," he said. Abbate said he had to be creative, and planned to offer dining specials for early-bird customers to try and avoid a crowd of diners and peak capacity on nice nights.

Some owners say the tightening of the rules are symptomatic of the health department's "strong-arm tactics" that could drive quality businesses out of Katonah.

"The rules have gotten more difficult—we can only make a living three months out of the year," said Jeff Goodwin, owner of the 23-year-old catering business and food shop, He purchased 12 years ago.

Goodwin described improvements the county health department requested he make to his 1850s-era building that were costly, and in his mind, unnecessary, such as adding a second door onto a bathroom that opened up to a passageway that led to a food preparation area.

"It's not just restaurants that affect our so-called pristine water supply—what about individual homes and faulty residential plumbing that leaks?" he asked, adding that the rules seemed to unfairly target "quality people" who wanted to do business in town.

Though many described them as restrictive, restaurant owners all planned to comply with the regulations.

"I've been following these rules for 20 years," Abbate said. "Sometimes they cost money, but the improvements required are usually for the safety of the customers. Whether for food safety, or because of septic, the rules make sense."

Editor's note: In the original copy we referred to the policy clarification as a "crackdown" from the Department of Health. We have re-written it to indicate it was a policy clarification.