Patio dining in Toronto so popular some restaurants are already fully booked for the weekend
Now that patios are open in Toronto, people are certainly taking advantage and going to their favourite bars and restaurants around the city to enjoy food and drinks outside.
While some restaurants allow walk-ins on their patios, others prefer reservations - that way it’s easier to control the situation and enforce social distancing measures which still must be followed.
The Wren, a saloon-style pub on Danforth East, decided to soft launch their patio this Friday and Saturday.
The pub made 12 spots available at two different two-hour time slots between 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on both Friday July 3 and Saturday July 4.
Within minutes of publicizing their launch on Instagram, their patio was completely booked up.
“Within 5-10 minutes, all the reservations were filled,” Sousa, a bartender at The Wren told blogTO.
“We posted on Instagram to say we were taking reservations and we had to put up another post right after to say they were already filled.”
The Wren has a small patio and felt it would be more contained to put together a soft opening than to do it on a first come, first served basis, according to Sousa.
“When we start opening up more and with CafeTO allowing us to put more tables on the street, we’ll be able to offer more spots,” he said.
The Wren isn’t the only patio in town that will have a full-house this weekend.
Cibo Wine Bar’s patio at their Yonge Street location is also fully booked for Saturday night and only has one reservation left for Friday night.
Kasa Moto, the two-story restaurant in Yorkville, has a rooftop patio that opened during Stage 2.
They are currently taking reservations but are also already at full capacity for this Friday and Saturday night.
Many other newly reopened patios around the city, including Hemingway’s, Chula Taberna Mexicana, Oretta, Drake Hotel, Akira Back, Figo, and more are very close to booking all their Friday and Saturday reservation slots for this weekend as well, according to OpenTable or their respective websites.
Hector Vasquez
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