Indoor dining returns to El Dorado County. How new rules will change the experience

Looking at Old Town Grill’s back room Monday, John Sanders saw hope.

Revenue at Sanders’ downtown Placerville restaurant is down 78% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and catering has shrunk by 90%. Yet on the first day El Dorado County restaurants could partially reopen for indoor dine-in service, Old Town Grill’s 18-seat back room was full of customers chomping down on burgers and chicken sandwiches.

“I don’t see it going back to 100% capacity anytime soon, but we’re beginning to have some normalcy. I know we can operate and what that looks like,” Sanders said. “These seats are our real estate. Without filling these seats, you don’t make it.”

California’s county watchlist was abandoned Friday in favor of a color-coded tiered system, allowing counties to gradually reopen services based on whether coronavirus risk is widespread (purple), substantial (red), moderate (orange) or minimal (yellow). Counties with “substantial” risk such as El Dorado — fewer than seven new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents and a positive test rate lower than 8% — were allowed to reopen indoor dining at 25% capacity.

Calaveras, Nevada, Lake, Lassen, Sierra, Napa, San Francisco and San Diego counties are also down to “substantial” risk, while 11 other remote Northern California counties are “moderate” or “minimal” and can further reopen their economies. The list will be updated every Tuesday.

California’s indoor dining ban has particularly hurt concepts such as steakhouses and diners, where meals are intended to be eaten hot and customers go for the ambiance as much as the food. Old Town Grill’s menu is full of grilled meats and fries.

“The last thing we want to hear is that we have to go back to shelter-in-place or outdoor-only. It’ll be killer for most of us if people can’t dine indoors, because food to go is not the same by the time you drive and get it home,” Sanders said.

Busy streets and sidewalks have been closed off to let restaurants expand their patios, but that works better on a city block than in a strip mall. Smoke and heatwaves has made outdoor dining less safe and enjoyable in recent weeks, and the foothills’ winter chill could make it even less appealing in a few months, Sanders said.

Even with thick air and temperatures in the 90s, about half of Los Pinos Restaurant & Bar’s dine-in lunch customers opted to eat on the Cameron Park restaurant’s outdoor patio. The other half, most of them seniors, felt comfortable sitting down at the seven booths and four tables spaced six feet apart inside, server Rosana Fuentes said.

Restaurant operators, like customers, are stepping forward with varying levels of trepidation. Umi Sushi hasn’t bothered setting up tables on its small patio, manager Landy Ge said, and won’t reopen for dine-in service either for at least several weeks.

Ge runs Umi Sushi with her siblings, and their kids often do distance learning from the El Dorado Hills Town Center restaurant. If their schools were going to be closed, she didn’t want them to risk infection in the restaurant, she said.

El Dorado County restaurants got state permission to serve customers indoors in mid-May thanks to its low coronavirus infection rates. But Ge decided to wait and watch how other local restaurants handled reopening, despite Umi Sushi’s revenue being slightly more than half what it was before the pandemic.

El Dorado County had zero to four positive tests per day when restaurants reopened in May. On July 14, the day after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all restaurants statewide to cease indoor service, it had 31. Two El Dorado County residents have died of COVID-19 so far, and at least 951 have been infected.

“Last time when the county said we could reopen, we said we just wanted to wait and see when others opened up how the (infection) numbers would go. We (saw) two or three weeks of the numbers going up, so we didn’t open,” Ge said. “This time, it’s the same thing ... if the numbers are not going up or lowering maybe we’ll reopen, but if not we’ll just do takeout.”

A trio of El Dorado County restaurants infamously reopened for indoor dining without any COVID-19 safety precautions or state permission earlier this summer, causing the county to revoke their health permits. The first two, Cafe El Dorado and Apple Bistro, asked for hearings then never showed up, and will be fined $500 per day they illegally stay open, county spokeswoman Carla Hass said.

Yet despite the headlines and mid-summer surge, El Dorado County’s coronavirus rate has stayed lower than most other places around the state, suggesting residents are following health orders, Hass said. As the leash loosens, that vigilance will be necessary to avoid another spike.

“I know that business owners are delighted to have a little more ability to increase their business, while at same time understanding that being indoors with people outside of your own household is one of the easier ways the virus can be transmitted,” Hass said. “We’re pleased for businesses, and have a healthy concern for what it might result in.”