Vive la Distance, Terrace Season in the Second Wave

The last days of the French summer that wasn’t

Strasbourg, France: As France cautiously adjusts to the new normal, one summer tradition is ideally suited to social distancing guidelines: outdoor dining and drinking on terraces. Outdoor seating has long been a mainstay of the French dining experience. But as the country entered the first phase of its deconfinement from COVID-19 this June, it became a necessity and a matter of business survival. Restaurants with terraces were the first to be allowed to open, just in time for summer. The tourists are fewer this year and tended to be mostly French (much to the chagrin of business owners who sometimes complain that their fellow citizens make stingy tourists.) Tour groups, traveling by bus or riverboat, are ordinarily a reliable source of visitors for this city on the Rhine; their numbers were down 92% in August. The number of visitors who came to see Strasbourg’s iconic Notre Dame de Strasbourg Cathedral (once the world’s tallest building) was half of last year’s total.

Evening drinking and dining on a terrace in Strasbourg, France. This summer tradition has adapted itself seamlessly to COVID-19 distancing. (Photos by Charles Daly)

Anyone who made the trip, whether from elsewhere in France or from one of the handful of countries on the “Green List,” would be greeted with the enduring charm of summer in the Alsace region. This is the area with the highest number of Michelin Star chefs in France. In response to the crisis and the drop in tourism…