Customers drink mimosas at The Half Pint's outdoor dining area on October 18, 2020 in New York City. ... [+]
Getty ImagesHere lies the “Cuomo Chips.” Long live the “Cuomo Chips.”
New York State Executive Order 202.52, enacted Friday July 17, 2020 will soon be no more. Put another way: New York’s pandemic-era requirement that all bars and restaurants serve food with liquor sales is about to be repealed, according to the New York Times.
New York’s State Liquor Authority passed the edict at the height of the pandemic summer, as crowds gathered in city streets and turned parts of the city, briefly, into something that felt more New Orleans than West Village. Gov. Cuomo, alarmed by images of bar-hopping crowds, enacted the rule to keep bar patrons seated and to limit people from mingling closely or table-hopping. "If you're not eating a meal and you're just drinking and then it's just an outdoor bar and people are mingling and not isolated at tables," Cuomo said at the time.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at an event on April 22, 2021 in East Rockaway, New York. (Photo by ... [+]
Getty ImagesThe rub, of course, was that some bars , desperate for the liquor sales, yet also not able to serve meals, started requiring purchases of $1 chips to fulfill the food mandate. (A few bars gave snacks out for free.)
A New York pub became a media darling that July when it served potato chips with a side of salsa for $1 and called them “Cuomo Chips.” “We have noticed a significant increase of guests that have been coming here from different places pretty much to say, 'We're here for the Cuomo Chips,'” Matthew Bagley, the owner of Harvey's Restaurant and Bar, told CNN.
MORE FOR YOU
New Yorkers will soon be able to order drinks without food. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Getty ImagesThe New York Post notes that snarky bar owners were creative with food requirement, offering “Lunchables, a single sliver of cheese or even a bouillon cube.”
Students of New York bar history will be quick to point out that the food-with-liquor requirement isn’t old at all, just forgotten. In the 1896, New York State passed the Raines Law, an early forerunner to Prohibition-type laws. Among regulations mandating that bars could not be open on Sunday, unless they were hotels, venues also had to serve “sandwiches” with liquor orders.
The law may have mandated sandwiches, but it did not define them. While courts were tied up with legal questions of “what is a sandwich?”, turn-of-the-century bar owners got creative. In some bars, the same cheese sandwich would be placed in front of patrons, where it would sit untouched, while people drank. Then it would be placed in front of the next group, all day long, according to articles of the era published in The Journal, an early New York tabloid. This led to the popularity of the “Raines Sandwich,” which is clearly the ancestor of the Cuomo Chips.
New York bars are easing pandemic-requirements, including occupancy and closing hours. (Photo by ... [+]
Getty ImagesIn some cases, the Raines Sandwich didn’t even pretend to be edible; since no one was eating them, bar owners sometimes set out rubber or paper “sandwiches,” the Journal reported.
Pandemic-era New York bars weren’t quite so brazen, but the $1 surprise (or free) packs of Lay’s or popcorn will be remembered (and maybe even missed) by some New York as a Peak Pandemic relic.
The Link LonkApril 28, 2021 at 08:47AM
https://ift.tt/32WvsWI
RIP ‘Cuomo Chips’: New York State To End Rule Requiring Food With Alcohol - Forbes
https://ift.tt/2RGyUAH
Chips
No comments:
Post a Comment