New CDC Study on Restaurant Safety and COVID-19 Negligently Ignores Outdoor Dining Options

The Bella Vista Social Club and Caffe near UC San Diego

 

In a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), participants who tested positive for COVID-19 were twice as likely to have dined in a restaurant in the two weeks before getting ill from the virus. 

The study's sample of 314 eligible participants included 154 people who tested positive for coronavirus and 160 control participants.

 

"Direction, ventilation, and intensity of airflow might affect virus transmission, even if social distancing measures and mask use are implemented according to current guidance," the CDC investigators wrote. "Masks cannot be effectively worn while eating and drinking, whereas shopping and numerous other indoor activities do not preclude mask use."

They added: "As communities reopen, efforts to reduce possible exposures at locations that offer on-site eating and drinking options should be considered to protect customers, employees, and communities.”

 

That's all well and good, CDC. But your study is fatally flawed. Why? Because in all your alleged wisdom, you neglected to ask participants if they had dined indoors or outdoors. That is a glaring and inexcusable omission.

Indoor dining and outdoor dining are two very different experiences. In this age of COVID-19, eating outside is profoundly safer than indoor dining, if the restaurant does it right. 

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, recently told CNN, "Eating outside is less risky than eating inside, if everybody is six feet apart and the wait staff are all wearing masks. That keeps the risk as low as it can be."

Love and Respect to All Restaurant Staffers

My heart goes out to everyone in the restaurant industry. Every waitress and waiter, bus person, dishwasher, chef, manager, bookkeeper, publicist and owner. It is painful for me to see so many restaurants going out of business in San Diego and across the nation.

I've always been a champion of restaurants. It's in the Reno DNA. We are social animals. And we like good food. My parents loved dining out, and bringing us kids with them, even when we were little ones. And not just to Pizza Hut and McDonald's.

They'd take us at a young age to primo steakhouses, fine Italian restaurants and more. On our summer vacations, The Reno Family searched the Midwest for the perfect salad dressing. And I am only half-kidding.

 

We learned at a tender age to respect the folks who work in restaurants because they bring so much joy to our lives, and because it's a really tough gig. Running and working in a restaurant are difficult propositions even when the economy is booming, let alone during a global pandemic.

I wish I could frequent every restaurant that I did before this horrible situation started. But as a three-time survivor of stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who has lymph nodes in my abdomen as we speak, I am somewhat immuno-compromised.

The nodes are not growing. I am ok. But I don't want to take any stupid chances. I only feel safe in restaurants that provide al fresco dining. And even if they have outdoor options, I only feel comfortable at restaurants that are borderline-obsessive about social distancing and mask-wearing.

Thankfully, in San Diego there are many (if not enough) eateries that do have outdoor space. But of course there are many that do not. The city and county of San Diego have not done nearly enough to make more outdoor space available for restaurants.

Wait, There's More

What else can public officials do? A lot, actually. They could and should close off more streets and open them up to diners. They could and should also provide restaurant owners access to outdoor spaces throughout the area, including parks, open space, designated beach areas, parking lots, and other places where they can offer outdoor eating venues tax-free -- at least until we find a working vaccine and get back to normal.

 

Obviously, as we head into autumn and then winter, that will no longer work. Yes, even in San Diego it gets too cold in the late fall and winter to enjoy a dinner outside. 

But for the next month or so, I'd like to see a much more concerted effort on behalf of the City and County - and in cities and counties nationwide - to provide restaurant owners with more and better outdoor spaces so we can all enjoy our favorite restaurants, at least until it gets too chilly. Then we can do more takeout!

Meantime, I will continue telling my readers about restaurants that are doing it right. Below are just a few of the restaurants in the San Diego area that have passed our rigorous test.

These are three outstanding eateries that offer a superior outdoor dining experience with the best social distancing and mask-wearing and, lest we forget, terrific food, drinks and service.

You will feel and be safe when you dine at 1) Bella Vista Social Club and Caffe in La Jolla near UC San Diego, 2) Solare' Ristorante in the Liberty Station section of Point Loma, and 3) 94th Aero Squadron in Kearny Mesa.

Bella Vista

 

The easy first choice is Bella Vista Social Club and Caffe, the popular lunch and dinner spot adjacent to the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine near the campus of UC San Diego.

 

The Bella V, as regulars like to call it, is marketed as "The place to connect." And it is just that.

The restaurant caters to the brilliant minds and selective tummies at the university and the surrounding biotech industry, and to anyone who loves delicious food, positive conversation, killer views and fascinating clientele. 

 

Bella Vista is owned and managed by Amanda Caniglia, a dynamic, smart and spirited former professional dancer and networker extraordinaire who reinvented herself as a world-class restaurateur and doyenne of sorts in the San Diego biotech community.

Amanda and I, along with Alexis Dixon and Steve Chapple enjoyed a fun and interesting Zoom talk a few weeks ago. She loves bringing people together.

Bella Vista has been my personal favorite place for lunch and people-watching for years. It had been closed since March, but it has thankfully re-opened.

Amanda wasn't going to open her doors again until she knew it was safe and that everything was done right. And she has succeeded and then some. The outdoor space is expansive, as you can see from the photo above, but somehow still cozy, and there is now literally 11 feet between each table. 

I feel safer eating outside at Bella Vista than in any other place I have dined since COVID struck. And the setting is nonpareil, with the Pacific Ocean, Salk Institute, UCSD campus, Torrey Pines Gliderport and Torrey Pines Golf Course all within eyeshot. And don't be surprised if there is a Nobel laureate or biotech CEO sitting nearby. But hopefully not TOO nearby.

Bella Vista

2880 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive

La Jolla, CA 92037

858-534-9624

Solare' Ristorante Italiano Bar Lounge

Our second winner is Solare, an authentic Italian eatery at Liberty in Point Loma that has been named a Michelin Guide Bib Gourmans restaurant and Best Italian Restaurant by San Diego Magazine.

Owner and General Manager Randy Smerik possesses a rare knack for making every customer feel comfortable, even during a pandemic. A brilliant, people-pleasing host, Randy's only happy when his customers are happy.

And he has a beautiful space in the grass outside the restaurant where everyone feels safe (see the photo directly above). The outside tables are 10 feet apart. Perfetto!

Executive Chef Filippo Piccini's Italian cuisine is authentic, fresh, creative and delicious, and he has lots of gluten-free dishes that are terrific because. well, they don't taste like gluten-free dishes.

Cibo eccezionale. Servizio eccellente. Atmosfera romantica. E molto sicuro.

That's Solare'.

Solare' Ristorante

2820 Roosevelt Road

Liberty Station in Point Loma

San Diego, CA 92106

619-270-9670

The 94th Aero Squadron

 

The 94th Aero Squadron Restaurant has been a go-to restaurant for our family for years.

As many of you know, the restaurant is a charming and authentic re-creation of a World War I-era French farmhouse. 

 

The restaurant overlooks Montgomery Field Airport and feels like a museum with all its military memorabilia, antique farm implements, and aviation relics including a very cool Red Baron airplane replica.  

 

Its warm, cozy, traditional atmosphere and classic, delicious food keeps us coming back. But now we have yet another great reason to go: Their tremendous outdoor dining with very conscientious mask-wearing and social distancing.

The restaurant's owners decided to expand their outdoor dining in the "back yard" and laid down a new outside concrete "floor". It is a huge area, with tables set far apart and very safely. 

 

The entire menu is available now. And you're even closer to the Montgomery Field runway and can enjoy an even better view of the planes and helicopters taking off and landing.

It's nice just to get out, and restaurants like 94th Aero Squadron are doing their best to keep us all safe and well fed.

 

94th Aero Squadron

8885 Balboa Avenue

San Diego, CA 92123

858-560-6771

 

Time to Return to Your Favorite Restaurant? Yes, Carefully, but Yes!

Luca Allieri, the longtime manager of Il Fornaio, the classic Italian restaurant in Coronado, is standing near the large kitchen of his award-winning eatery overlooking San Diego Bay. Reviewing the action at this once-again bustling restaurant, Allieri is all smiles. He’s been waiting not-so-patiently for his beloved restaurant's return.

“We’re open again,” he declares, “and we're proud to say that the entire team has come back, 100 percent of our crew has returned.”

While the restaurant is hopping, not everything is the same. Allieri is strictly and thankfully adhering to physical distancing and wearing masks at all times. He has an almost obsessive devotion to keeping the place safe and super-clean.

“We’re taking reservations, but we have somewhat modified the access,” he says. “The entire restaurant is sanitized repeatedly, from the top to the bottom, the chairs, the tables, the bottom of the tables, and people feel very good about it. We mark the lines, six feet apart. It’s working great.”

The best part is that Il Fornaio has outdoor dining on and near the patio (pictured above), which is just steps from the water. For safety reasons, I'm only dining al fresco for the time being. 

As I return to Il Fornaio, my smile, too, is hard to hide. After being stuck at home for months and rarely venturing out, it feels nothing less than life-affirming and joyous to be back at our favorite restaurant.

Il Fornaio boasts arguably the best location in San Diego County, the view across the bay to the popping San Diego skyline is striking. And in my opinion Il Fornaio simply has the finest food in San Diego. It is traditional and fresh Italian fare, not too pretentious but not too pedestrian.

Allieri has a keen sense of history. He and his Executive Chef Maurizio Mazzon have recipes and preparations that Italians have mastered over many centuries. They can prepare dishes from virtually every region of Italy.

And speaking of Italy, Allieri has gone through a frightening time, as so many of us have, keeping tabs on his family during the pandemic. Allieri hails from Bergamo, a city in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately 25 miles northeast of Milan.

He was terribly worried about his mother, who still lives in Bergamo, which was the haunting epicenter for the virus after it surged in Italy.

“There was no communication from the town. No travel out or in,” Allieri says. “Bergamo was in the news every day. We were very concerned. But my mom, who is 77, is totally fine, and things there are getting better there. They're back almost to normality.”

The same can be said for Il Fornaio. But for me, it’s outdoors only, perhaps for quite a long time to come absent a vaccine. I feel safer that way. Life in this world is still very far from normal. Even the “New Normal” isn’t normal. Dining and living as we remember it may never fully return. 

Despite the fact that COVID-19 is stubbornly still out there, restaurants like Il Fornaio are reopening, and most of them are taking proper precautions.

Lest you think I’m one of those people who think the virus is a hoax, a sinister plot by the Deep State, think again. This pandemic is real, and it is still on a path of destruction.

But we all know now that that physical distancing and wearing masks really do work. So we’ve ventured out a few times in the last few weeks to revisit some of our favorite San Diego haunts that have outdoor options. 

It’s surprising how few restaurants have al fresco dining in San Diego, which is America’s Finest City with America’s Finest Weather.

Here are some other San Diego-area restaurants that take safety as seriously as they take their food and service. If you do venture out to one of these haunts, tell them Jamie sent you. And pass the pepper!

Il Fornaio

1333 1st Street

Coronado

Coasterra

Harbor Island

619-814-1300

The other restaurant with our favorite view. This stunning upscale Mexican eatery on the water at Harbor Island is as good as it gets. Chef Deborah Scott is a culinary genius. Coasterra has a large outdoor dining section and the physical distancing here is outstanding. Lots of room to breathe and relax. It feels very safe.

Alexander’s

North Park

619-281-2539  

A terrific romantic Italian eatery in the heart of the city that boasts a heartwarming San Diego restaurant legacy. 

Owner-manager Alex Walter is the son of the husband-and-wife owners of Old Venice, the legendary Italian restaurant that has been serving happy San Diegans for decades in Point Loma. 

Alex has brought this own brand of city cool to this restaurant, which is hugely popular and which has a really comfortable, if not huge patio for safe outdoor dining.

Calypso Café

Coronado Cays

619-423-5144

This Greek and Italian (all Mediterranean) restaurant on the Bay side of the Silver Strand in the Coronado Cays is a hidden gem about five miles south of the Hotel Del Coronado.

This was one of the first places we ventured out to try after being shut-ins for several months. Why? Because it’s on the Strand, which is a relatively mellow part of San Diego that a lot of folks just don’t know about. It’s never too crowded, it caters mostly to the Coronado locals, and of course the Navy Seals and others who train down there.

And you can eat outside on benches that are right on the neighborhood waterways, where folks live and get around on their boats. You can even take a gondola ride and feel like you are in Venice.  You will love this place. They serve everything from sandwiches to Greek salads to pasta. 

Warm and friendly owner Hanan Martha, who moved here from Jordan when she was a child, is very conscious of physical distancing and will do whatever she can to make you feel safe… and well fed.