On Monday, June 22, after months of inactivity due to COVID-19, many Montreal restaurants will be reopening. Of course, they will do so under strict conditions regarding social distancing. But some customers are better than no customers.
To qualify for this reopening your establishment must be considered a ‘restaurant’ and not a ‘bar’. That means the owner must possess a food preparation permit, in other words, the place has to have a functioning kitchen. If you do not have a kitchen, and therefore only have a permit to sell alcohol, you are out of luck.
However, to make matters even worse, the Government of Quebec has loosened the food preparation permit regulations and will allow restaurants to admit customers who only want to drink: who will not be ordering food.
So if I have this right, I can go to a ‘restaurant’, sit at a table and only order a beer, or two. Yet I cannot go to a ‘bar’ and do the exact same thing.
With no solution for bars on the horizon, not surprisingly several Montreal bar owners have decided to fly in the face of the government and reopen on Canada Day, July 1.
If you have read this blog over the years you are aware of my appreciation of bars and bartenders. No one wants to see bars reopen more than I. But a part of me thinks that a boycott of restaurants-acting-like-bars until the playing field has been leveled, and bars can reopen, may well be an idea.
On the other hand, and I think this may well be what happens, those bars without kitchens that cannot, therefore, open on Monday will slowly but surely, without great fanfare, go ahead and reopen starting on June 23rd. A few here, and a few there. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the government is assuming this will happen, as it will get them off the hook for appearing to promote drinking establishments.
DCMontreal 