Restaurants have been fielding a “relentless” number of calls from customers looking to book tables over the Christmas period.

Restaurants and gastropubs will reopen their doors for the first time in six weeks on Friday.

Bookings are restricted to six people per table and pubs must serve food that is “prepared on site” to reopen.

    

On The Hard Shoulder this evening, Gina Murphy, owner of Hugo’s Restaurant in Dublin said the weekends were booked up withing hours of the Taoiseach’s announcement last week.

She told Newstalk reporter Barry Whyte that restaurants all over the city are “chockers” for the coming weeks.

“It is relentless,” she said. “It is like being caught up in an avalanche of emails and phone calls. It is wonderful. It would do your heart good.

“The difference between the bookings coming in now and traditional December bookings are that these ones are all friends and family so everybody is looking for Friday and Saturday nights and it is getting hard to back-fill the week.”

Christmas

She said Hugo’s will only get 14 days trading out of the Christmas season as she has decided only to open Wednesday through Saturday.

“Fridays and Saturdays are gone,” she said. “They were gone within 24 hours of the Taoiseach’s speech. The phone was ringing while he was speaking so it was wonderful.”

“I know from anybody I have been speaking to, any of my restaurant colleagues, everybody is chockers Friday and Saturday night. If you don’t have a booking, I wouldn’t be chancing it.”

New Year

Meanwhile, Adrian Cummins, CEO of the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI), told Barry that some food businesses chose not to reopen over Christmas for fear they would simply be shut down again in January.

“Obviously not every restaurant will reopen because they will look at the financial viability around reopening for a number of weeks,” he said.

“There is this weight hanging over our shoulders around whether we will be closed down in the New Year or not and some businesses will be looking at that.

“Is it profitable to stock up your kitchen, stock up your shelves, get ready to reopen and then, possibly in January or February, get shut down again?

“So, our intention is that we reopen and stay open until we move into the phase of vaccination of the country. That is where we need to move to now as a country – the vaccination of our people so we can get the economy reopened.”

Punters

These people in Dublin had mixed views on returning to fine dining in the coming weeks.

“I am not at all worried because I believe the restaurants the last time, certainly, had great control,” said one.

“They did exactly what was required of them and I am glad to see them opening again.

“I have two nights booked out and I think it is important that we actually support our restaurants. I am looking forward to it, I really am.”

“I mightn’t go to a restaurant until well into the New Year, if I do go,” said another.

“We go regularly to restaurants but we won’t be going for now.

“I am just cautious. No-one knows anything about this virus so I am not taking the chance, simple as that.”

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