‘It’s a huge mess.’ Restaurant owners angry over Miami-Dade’s 9 p.m. curfew.
The police showed up at 11 p.m. Friday, just as the last batch of guests were finishing their dinners at Ariete restaurant in Coconut Grove, and told Chef Michael Beltran he was breaking the law.
“Three cop cars showed up and they told me we were breaking curfew,” Beltran said. “I didn’t know about [Miami-Dade Mayor] Carlos Gimenez’s latest whim to push the curfew back to 10 p.m. that night. A lot of our guests didn’t know what was happening either.”
Beltran said the police officers allowed customers to finish their meals in peace. The following night, Ariete remained open until 11:30 p.m. despite the county curfew being pushed to 9 p.m. on Saturday.
“We’re in the phase of restarting our economy and understanding what our new normal is,” Beltran said. “We’ve been told restaurants can only operate at 50 percent capacity. I told my staff on Saturday if they felt they needed to go home, they could. But after months of being barely able to breathe, this was our first pseudo-successful weekend.”
Beltran said that after the first weekend of protests, all the subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations have been peaceful, and that it seems “unconstitutional” to tell people they have to be home by 9 p.m.
“This curfew is not an economic problem. This is an injustice for Americans. It feels very reminiscent of a country [Cuba] my parents fled so I could have my freedom.”
Throughout Miami-Dade County, restaurant owners expressed befuddlement, confusion and anger over Mayor Gimenez’s decision to reinstate a 10 p.m. curfew on Friday night via Twitter, then a stricter 9 p.m. curfew on Saturday, due to “increasing unrests in parts of Miami-Dade County.” Gimenez had previously loosened the curfew to midnight on June 4.
Gimenez tweeted the new curfews during large but peaceful protests against police brutality held in Wynwood, Homestead, Miami Gardens and FIU’s south campus over the weekend. The mayor’s office has not responded to a request for comment from the Herald.
Public safety
Myles Chefetz, CEO of the Myles Restaurant Group, said he doesn’t understand why other major cities such as New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles have all lifted their curfews, even though many protests there have turned violent, but Miami-Dade needs to remain in lockdown. Broward County lifted its curfew on June 3.
“I get the concern for public safety,” said Chefetz, whose restaurants include Prime 112, Big Pink Diner and Prime Italian, all located In Miami Beach. “But other jurisdictions that have exponentially larger populations than we do don’t have curfew. We can work with a midnight curfew, even though I’m not happy with it. But moving it to 9 p.m. is devastating. If you open at 5:30, you’re lucky to get half a dining room by 7 o’clock.”
Some restaurants around the county were allowed to reopen their dining rooms on May 18, two months after they were ordered shut to avoid the spread of COVID-19. Restaurants in some local cities, such as Miami, Hialeah, Miami Gardens and Miami Beach, had to wait until May 27.
But even after reopening, restaurants still have to enforce the six-feet separation rule, meaning their dining rooms can only hold 50 percent of their usual capacity.
“Not only did we hire staff back, but we ordered all this food product for our walk-in refrigerators,” Chefetz said. “On Saturday we changed our whole style of service. It’s become a rushed service, which doesn’t really go well with fine dining. Our employees, from the valets to the busboys to the cooks, are desperate to work and make tips. But they are confused about being allowed to go home at 9 p.m. during the curfew. The messaging hasn’t been clear. After two and a half months of being closed due to the coronavirus, a nine o’clock curfew is completely insensitive to the restaurant business.”
Even restaurants not directly impacted by the curfew are opposed to it. Niven Patel, the chef at Ghee Indian Kitchen, said his restaurants are closing at 8 p.m. nightly since they reopened, so the curfew only impacts guests who are finishing their meals.
“The protests have affected some of our curbside pickup business at our Design District location,” Patel said. “But I’m in support of the protests, so that doesn’t really matter to me.”
Several restaurant owners said that Miami-Dade needs to form a restaurant association because that group would carry more political clout with local government. Daniel Serfer, owner and executive chef of Blue Collar, tweeted on Sunday night he was throwing his political support behind Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, (D), the U.S. Representative from the 26th Congressional District. Gimenez is running against her in November.
“We should band together and make sure our collective voices are heard,” Beltran said. “The problem is politicians don’t represent the community. They don’t know us and they don’t want to know us. I feel that as a community, we’ve done a good job making our voices heard. Our leaders have not.
“We need to make a lot of noise because they need to lift this curfew. It is against every American ideal I have ever stood for. We can let them try to control us or we can say we’re not going to do this.”
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 1:54 PM.
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