Syracuse, N. Y. — Terry Riley has a sense of what will happen Wednesday when he opens his North Side bar/restaurant for the first time in 13 months.
“It’s going to be horrible,” he said. “There will be crying, and hugging. People will say ‘We’ve missed you.’ More crying. More hugging. It will just be horrible. I don’t think I can stand it.”
If you’ve ever met Terry Riley, you know that’s his way of saying: “All our friends are going to be back. It’s gonna be great!”
Riley’s, at 312 Park St. reopens Wednesday for the first time since it closed under the initial Covid-19 shutdown order on March 16, 2020. For now, it will be open for dinner only Wednesday through Saturday nights.
Riley’s occupies a spot not far from Schiller Park that has been a tavern/saloon/bar since at least 1898. Terry Riley bought it and named it for himself in 1979.
He’s still sees it as a neighborhood bar with restaurant, rather than the other way around.
Either way, there are decades worth of loyal customers eager to come back.
“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard from in the last 13 months,” Riley said. “Ever since March last year, when the (stuff) hit.”
Riley remembers that day well. For one thing, it was day before St. Patrick’s Day. Also, he was hanging out with his friends at Jake Hafner’s Tavern in North Syracuse.
“And we’re there and it comes down,” he said. “We have to shut down. And none of us knew what that meant. Nobody knew it would be this long.”
‘No mingling? No Riley’s’
The initial shutdown in March 2020 closed dining rooms (and outdoor patios), allowing restaurants the option to do takeout/delivery only. Many owners did just that.
Not Terry Riley.
“We are a place where people come to mingle,” he said. “No mingling? No Riley’s.”
By early summer, the state’s guidelines began to allow for limited reopening, with mask and distancing, and limit of 50% capacity.
Riley’s stayed closed. The main reason? “Unemployment,” Riley said.
At the time, laid off workers got $600 supplements to their unemployment checks.
“We like to take care of our employees,” Riley said. “At the time, they were doing well with the checks. And everyone could stay home and be safe. So we just let that be.”
Riley spent most of the summer at his camp in the Thousand Islands, returning about once a week “to get the mail and pay the bills.” Yes, some bills kept coming even when the place was shut down.
He applied for an got a federal Payroll Protection Plan loan, and that helped. But it came with a little catch: There’s no need to repay the loan as long as the money went to pay employees. Since that wasn’t happening at Riley’s, he has to pay that back (though it’s only about 1% interest for five years).
“So we can live with that,” he said. “It all worked out.”
Fall came and more and more restaurants started to reopen. Riley’s stayed shut.
“We always knew we were going to come back,” he said. “We just weren’t sure when.”
Then came what Riley calls the “rollercoaster” of the winter. He was glad he didn’t get on.
Places opened, then many were forced to deal with stricter requirements under the state’s color-coded zone system. The city of Syracuse was initially in a yellow zone, with a limit of four people to table, then in November went into the orange zone, which prohibited all indoor dining.
The zones weren’t lifted until late January, and the pre-existing restrictions are still in place, including distancing and capacity limits.
And then there was the statewide bar curfew — 10 p.m. starting in November, and relaxed a bit, until 11 p.m., in February. It’s still in place.
“So it was a lot of ‘do this,’ ‘don’t do that,’ " Riley said. “So we waited again.”
Streamlined and ready
For much of the past year, a sign hanging outside Riley’s has assured customers that the restaurant/bar would be back. Terry Riley initially thought it might be March.
But he first wanted to make sure his staff was ready. And there was work to do.
Riley and his kitchen manager, Spike Sienczak, have been working to clean, restore and restock the place. Beer and food delivery trucks have been unloading at the corner of Park Street and Whitwell Drive for the past few days.
And there have been surprises: When they tried to restart the coolers, they discovered they needed to replace a compressor, at a cost of $2,400.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to do that more than once,” Riley said.
To meet Covid requirements, they’ve also added large partitions to the booths in the dining room (so they can keep all six open), and have moveable plexiglass barriers that can be placed between parties at the bar. They will come close to the current 75% capacity limit.
The menu, at least for now, will be more streamlined than in the past. There will be one featured soup and salad for each day, and a limited number of chicken, steak and seafood entrees (including the fish and chips).
Gone are the the famed “Irish” fries.
“I was getting a little tired of those anyway.” Riley said. “We’re going to make sure that we can handle what we’re putting on the menu.”
Like other bars and restaurants in Central New York, Riley’s is discovering that it’s hard to find kitchen and dining room staff. It will probably open with about eight people.
Now, Riley awaits the crowds. even if there will be crying and hugging.
“We always said we would reopen,” he said. “And now we are. Just like we said.”
Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.
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